Malmö Festival

As is becoming customary for me here in Sweden, I had a nice quiet Friday morning.  After lazing about Icelandia in the morning, I finally emerged for fika.  I walked to the square and enjoyed a pastry and a coffee at Konditori Lövet.

As promised, at 5pm Johan Persson picked me up from Icelandia to begin our night at the Malmö Festival. We made quick stops at the Systembolaget (a government owned chain of liquor stores in Sweden.  It's the only place to buy drinks higher than 3.5% alcohol by volume) and the grocery store we met Lucas Grip at Johan's apartment.  We enjoyed my second round of the day of fika and talked about music and, of course, football.

Johan and I walked to the station while Lucas, plastic wine glass in hand (or mouth) rode his bike alongside us.  We made it to the station in what we thought was plenty of time, but after Johan bought his ticket we found ourselves hustling to the train, but made it with time to spare.

On the train with my gorgeous dates we met a girl who suddenly began taking pictures... of Lucas?  She claimed to be taking pictures of the reflection in the window next to him, but it was a little suspicious.  We had a nice coversation, although most of it was in Swedish.  So really, Johan, Lucas, and she had a nice conversation.  Apparently photography is a hobby for hers.  She showed us some of her work.  Lucas was definitely in some of those pictures.

We made it to Malmö after about an hour train ride and exited to a busier than normal train station and much busier than normal streets.  Even famous Swedes were around, as a girl popped out of the crowd to grab Lucas's attention.  It was Nilla Fischer!

Nilla is a member of the Swedish National Women's Football team.  She lives in Malmö and plays for LdB FC, a top division soccer club in Malmö.  She and Lucas are family friends, as Nilla is from nearby Kristianstad.

Finally we made it to the city square, which had the main stage set up, as well as a ferris wheel seen her behind the now dwarfed statue that is usually the focal point of the square.  We had almost two hours before the concert was going to start, so we decided to walk around the festival in search of food.

We got some fair food, but the thought of eating at an American restaurant with an American was too tempting to pass up, so we stopped at TGIFriday's for a drink and some appetizers.  I felt a little ashamed to be in Europe and eating at a TGIFriday's, but it was kind of comforting to be eating food that was so recognizably familiar.

We worked our way back to the square a few minutes before the concert was about to start.  The main purpose of our coming down to Malmö was to see the Teddybears, a Swedish band out of Stockholm that has a large following nationally and is starting to get more worldwide attention.  You may have heard their track Cobrastyle on a commercial or elsewhere.  They're mostly an electronica band with some hip/hop flavor.  Not really my style in general, but I enjoyed the show.  Lots of energy live, and very visually stimulating.

We had a pretty good place in the crowd, with a clear view of the stage.  Wait a minute are they wearing...

... bear masks?  Yes.  The dual necked bass/guitar player and the other bass player had the heads on the entire show.  A third mask was out, but its unclear exactly who wore it, as some songs had vocals, others had heavily altered vocals (sung by a guy in a bear mask), and other songs had vocals by non-masked men, at least one of which I think was a guest performer.

One even changed his mask for his special speed-metal Yngwie Malmsteen-esque guitar solo.  Very shiny.

Again, a good show, even if it wasn't my particular brand of music.  Afterwards we started to make our way back to the station to catch what we thought was the last train out of Malmö for Hässleholm.  Johan, again, needed to buy a ticket.

So did all of these people.  After waiting for about 40 minutes or so, he got out of line and we just tried to head for the train, that was now scheduled to leave in a little over 5 minutes.  Around the corner we slipped through a mass of people only to be stopped by the Polis.

They were trying to do some crowd control.  As you can see, there were way more people trying to leave than a train could hold.  Little by little they inefficiently started allowing some people through, which basically led to lots of pushing, a near fight, and a generally feeling of helplessness as you were carried along without really trying to go anywhere.  Finally the three of us made it to the other side... only to be told they'd moved our train to another track.

So, we rushed back toward all of the people we had just escaped who were also being told to go to the new track and were stopped again by authorities, only this time much closer to the front.  A few minutes later we had claimed three seats on the train.  We had to wait almost another 40 minutes while they packed people on the train, then told a bunch they had supplied a second train so they needed to get off, then more allowed more people to get on, before we and our packed train departed the station.

After such a struggle to even make the train, some were exhausted:

And some were a little punchy:

Another great night with great people in Sweden.