Project: Yellow Scarf

The clock strikes 12 on the large Dieter Ramsbraun (Braun Head Designer) train station clock, it’s black and yellow, in fact everything around is black and yellow. This station is like something from a surreal spy movie, the station is bleached from all colour and you can hear smooth jazz in the distance.

We join the queue at the airport to catch the train to Malmö, we get our passports checked and we are soon whizzing away at high speed out to the sea.

Then we see it! and it overwhelms us a bit to be honest. We have been watching the Swedish Detective drama The Bridge quite intensely for the last few weeks and we were finally at it, on it, driving through it then we pass what we think is the location of the final scene from the fist season of the bridge –  fjärilar! (that’s Swedish for butterflies).  The train stops at the border and the POLIS (Not Scottish slang! that’s how they spell it) come on to check our passports we stops for about 10 mins and our anticipation and impatience grows.

We reach Malmö and it’s deserted! OK so we’ve done it again! We seem to have a talent for traveling places on a Sunday that’s a public holiday. Everything is closed, it’s so quiet and haunting but really pretty. We walked around the outskirts of the city for an hour or so, eventually coming across a main square. Since we’re in Sweden, the home of one of our favourite bands Ghost, we break out the band t-shirts and get a funny selfie or two for our scrapbook.

After hitting up google maps we come across the main park which contains a castle and an old windmill, we dump google maps and do it the old fashioned way and go for a gander around the area and that’s when the fairy tale begins! We see a mother duck with her 15 or so chicks walking through the park, followed by a group of people it’s a quite hypnotic so we decide to tag along with the group. Fate is now in charge of the afternoon, where will it take us next? Excitement in fluffy duckling form.

Cute overload ?

A post shared by Ainsley??????? (@gallus_ains) on May 1, 2016 at 6:40am PDT

We follow the ducks by the river side all the way along to the main area of the park. The mother duck has to defend her chick from some other ducks but the passerbys are having none of it! No one can stand by and watch something so cute being chased and harassed. We turn a corner and the ducks have lead to our first point of call. We find ourselves crossing over a bridge and in front of us is a huge old wooden windmill, it’s so Scandinavian and rustic; we feel like we’ve stepped back in time.

We traipse on a bit further and come across the 15th century castle, and as is our luck of late, it’s firmly locked up because of the holiday. What do we do now? We aimlessly wander on for a bit more enjoying the scenery and begin to hear music in the distance, we notice quite a lot of people are moving towards it, quite a mixed bag of families, young people, old people, strange looking people,  just lots and lots of people walking in one direction so we again think yeah ok, the ducks worked lets see what happens here.

10 minutes later we find ourselves at a free open air Music festival come political and socialist event.

HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?

Such a random day but were now sitting down in a park full of families and hippies chilling out and watching some Cuban or Latin inspired rock and blues music.

Boring guy at a #musicfestival #sweden lol

A post shared by J ? ??????? (@gallus_jay) on May 1, 2016 at 6:41am PDT

This has been the perfect introduction to a country we have ever had. These guys sounded like the Mars Volta and we are big fans of that sound.

#beerque 🙁

A post shared by J ? ??????? (@gallus_jay) on May 1, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

The place is jumping and so we go on the hunt for some food,  There is a large tent with a wide selection of street food. J notices some sort of donner kebab with a creamy sauce looking sandwich and the deal is done. We get in line to get a quick beer, I then remember that we also have some IRN-BRU with us ( as is always the case) as well as two mini bottles of wine form the flight; we crack the Bru, enjoy the amazing fresh breed kebab and then open out two red wines and lie on the grass. Such a surreal experience, we had no vision of this being our end game today. Fantastic.

What a perfect little day. Plonk, Sunshine, Good vibes, Good Music, Good Food and now time to chill for a bit and take in what was going on around us.

We unwind and chill for an hour or so then take ourselves back to the station and buy fridge magnets as it is our thing…..

WOW! Sweden is more expensive that Denmark  – Fridge magnets are £7 each!

We quickly catch a sleepy train ride back to Denmark, no passport check this time. Probably in our top 5 Great Gallivants . We seen so much in such a short time and were thinking of making a trip back very soon to see more of the country.

Jaimsley Signing off