An Afternoon In Sweden

If you’ve watched the scandi noir The Bridge, you’ll know it makes you want to hop on a plane and see both Copenhagen and Malmo all at once. Luckily for me, that’s exactly what I did about a month after binge watching the show. Hopping from one country to another may sound improbable, but it’s incredibly easy, feels like any other quick train/tube journey and includes a ride over the bridge itself.

In order to spend an afternoon there, I bought a return train ticket from Copenhagen Central Station for around £15 (I can’t actually remember how much it was – but it must have been cheap because I’m stingy and would remember if it had been expensive). We got the train over the bridge at about midday and stayed until 8pm, giving us enough time for some burgers, a wander around the city and cocktails by a fire after freezing our toes off.

It’s worth noting if you’re going during the winter months, I’d make an early start as there are limited sunlight hours. We only had a few hours of daylight when we arrived but still had a lovely time.

The journey itself takes a mere 30 minutes and you’re dropped off right in the centre of Malmo. DON’T FORGET your passport! Because it’s such a simple journey, it can be easy to forget you’re actually crossing a border so do make sure you have all the right paperwork or you’ll be wasting your time and money, because they will come through the train to check.

If you’re on a really tight schedule, it might be worth buying the train tickets in advance, but we bought them at the station as the trains run about once an hour each way, so it’s a very regular service.

To be honest, other than it being a beautiful city, there isn’t a whole lot to do there. When you Google ‘things to do in Malmo’, the top thing is the bridge, which, obviously, is half in Copenhagen! But we had the loveliest time looking around the surviving Christmas decorations and hunting down a vegan spot or two, and if you’re addicted to travel and are trying to tick off countries, it’s definitely worth the effort. If nothing else, it’s actually much cheaper to stay in than Copenhagen, so if you were trying to scrimp you could stay in Malmo and get the train back to Copenhagen every day. It would probably get a bit tiresome, but worth looking into if you need to save money.