Malmö + Malmöhus Slott

You can never see enough of frozen rivers, like in the picture above. Few things are as beautiful as an icy, sunny day. Went on a solo trip to Malmö to get my fill of museums beginning with the Malmöhus Slott, or the Malmö Castle Museum. Most sites are quite empty, being winter, so it was extremely disconcerting to be walking down dark corridors in the castle by my lonesome, especially when I got down to the artillery stronghold, and they were playing a spooky, atmospheric soundtracks of cannon bombs and shreiks to recreate the Swede's defence against the Danes. Damned creepy rooms. I hightailed out of there like no tomorrow. Back upstairs there were some lovely rooms like the ones below though.

See this darkness in the last picture? I felt like I was in a Goosebumps novel/episode, where I was going to be trapped inside the spooky castle, trying in vain to find a way out but finding only dead-ends around every corner with the shrieks of dismembered Swedish soldiers ringing steadily in my ears. Eventually I would find my way out and no-one would know who I was and I never actually existed. I'm pretty sure I once saw an episode on TV like this set in a castle, I'm not completely insane. I also really wanted to visit Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark (Hamlet's Castle!) but it doesn't look like I'll have enough time before I leave for Siena on Thursday morning. It would have been particularly atmospheric to visit the original Emo's castle, in winter, alone. Although I suspect the effort involved in restraining myself from performing a monologue to a skull may have killed me. Maybe in the Summer I'll venture over. One nice thing about having a year in Europe is not having to cram, and luckily I always have a place to crash in Sweden.

Not a bad post office.

View from Kungsparken, marked by iPhone Hulk corner.

The Castle itself. Clearly a castle in the Northern-European 'sturdy fortress' sense.

Ducks being clichéd, swimming in the still-liquid parts of the lake. I've seen this now on a couple of occasions and I just find it so inexplicably funny.