RtW Cities: Copenhagen (+ Lund)

Grüezi Mitenand! (Swiss German for roughly: Hello everyone!)
It has been a rather busy past month, visiting no fewer than five countries in two weeks - Switzerland (naturally), Australia to be best man (congratulations, Bodie & Courtney!), Germany (picking up furniture), and both Denmark and Sweden in a recent visit covered in today's post.

First up was Lund - a town of about 100k focused around Lund Univerisity, which is where a friend from Sydney (and our host for the trip) is currently studying. The abundance of cobblestone streets and cute small alley-ways was rather nice, and the sudden transition to hearing Swedish and using Krona was someone lessened by the fact that, being a university town with lots of imports, pretty much everyone spoke English. I appreciated that they also made good coffee at cafes, something I'd been missing in Zurich.

On the first night I also made it to Helsingborg (Sweden's closest place to Denmark, apparently) to watch Tommy Emmanuel play. It was rather amusing being so far from home sitting with four other Aussies and watching an Australian, but having grown up trying to emulate him on guitar, I couldn't miss this - and wasn't disappointed! To the right you can see him using his guitar as a drum, something I didn't expect (nor his solo voice parts).

I can't talk about the concert without mentioning the trip home - just before leaving, two guys ran onto the train and barely made it in, one of them carrying a Carlsberg who then pointed at me and cheered. Coming from Australia, guys with beer on late trains had be a bit worried, especially when he randomly started talking to me across the carriage, but it turns out he was just a extroverted ('tipsy', maybe) friendly Icelander on his way to a party, and our group ended up chatting about IT, train-track laying (he said he'd layed the track we were travelling on) and life in this part of Sweden - Skåne.

The rest of the time in Lund was spent touring around the Xmas festivities, which were out in force in the main squares. Additionally I managed to try some local Swedish food and explore the impressive cathedral pictured on the left - Lunds Domkyrka, a nice example of Roman architecture including an underground crypt-like section, and cool calendar which appeared to be useful for calculating what day of the week any date was on. One small part of the time in Lund was spent buying a better winter layer - useful, as what I heard was the first snow of the season fell on us later that night, covering the town in white for the following day.

The very last day of the trip was flying back to Zurich, the best way from Lund being to fly out of Copenhagen so after a train trip in the morning (another border crossing, another not needing to take out my passport) the rest of the morning was walking around the city center - unfortunately not for hugely long, due to the snow which had continued, and now become quite heavy. Still, there was quite a good view from the Rundetaarn (round tower, with an observatory up the top), loads of churches and clocktowers covered in white, and a look at a more commercial tourist street, closer to what I've come to expect in Australian cities.
Overall, definitely a city that, if I chance longer than half a day to visit I will return - it'd be nice to explore more and see things like the little mermaid and the palaces. That said, next up: Stuttgart booked for Xmas!

Also, for more photos from the trip, see this album.