Blogs from Skåne County, Sweden, Europe - page 5

We started out to the Malmo Arena on Sunday, January 5th with high hopes for Canada to win the Bronze in their game against Russia. Unfortunately, our boys were not playing well, looking a little tired and lacking in control. Russia took the bronze medal in the 2-1 game. As we were a little tired of rink food and all of the nearby "restaurants" (Subway, McDonalds, etc.) had long lineups out their doors, we crossed the street to the Emporia mall to find a restaurant for supper. The crowds were just as bad there but we found a Chinese Dim Sum place in the food court with only a small crowd of hungry people waiting. We got our food quickly, and found a table near the back of the HUGE seating area and we all enjoyed ... read more

Saturday, January 4th started with us at the larger venue, the Malmo Arena for the 3PM game. Our seats were at the centre line, 2nd row of the upper deck above the penalty boxes. We watched Sweden beat the Russians 2-1 in a game that ended with fighting that will likely result in some suspensions on both sides for Sunday's games. Although we cheered along with the Swedes that were sitting all around us, we secretly hoped the Russians would win as our preference was to play Russia in the medal round rather than Sweden. Canada played Finland at 7PM and as usual, the stands were FULL of Canadians as well as a lot of Swedes too. It was apparent early on that our boys were not quite up to the task of taking on Finland. ... read more

Our day started off early, taking the bus to Emporia shopping mall by the Malmo Arena. We wandered around with minimal shopping then had lunch at a couple fast food places by the arena. We went to the Sweden-Russia game in the arena after lunch and while looking for our seats, we were approached by one of the volunteers. She was waiting for us with four new tickets, 11th row centre ice, because the system had accidentally generated our original tickets in seats that did not exist. Great service! And always nice to get a free upgrade! It was an exciting game and the Swedes were winning when we left after the 2nd period to bus over to the Malmo Isstadion for the Canada-USA game. We watched the Swedes win their game on the big screen ... read more

December 29 A couple of buses got us into downtown Malmo with our first stop at Gustav Adolfs torg, a square with a variety of food booths, crafts and ice sculpture going on. From there we walked through some pedestrian shopping areas, and along the ocean and through the train station and shipyard areas until we passed by the Turning Torso building. The vision of HSB Turning Torso is based on a sculpture called Twisting Torso. In 1999 HSB Malmö’s former Managing Director Johnny Örbäck saw the sculpture in a brochure which presented Santiago Calatrava in connection with his contribution to the architectural competition for the Öresund Bridge. It was on this occasion that Johnny Örbäck got the idea to build HSB Turning Torso. Shortly thereafter he travelled to Zurich to meet with Santiago Calatrava and ... read more

We flew out of Regina the morning of December 22. COLD weather that we were happy to leave behind. Our flight was a little late as the plane was coming into Regina from Toronto where the Ice Storm of the Century was occurring. That didn't bother me so much as the fact that we were flying TO Toronto to connect to our flight to Europe. We ended up flying out of Regina about an hour late, at 12:12PM, by the time de-icing was completed but we had a 5 hour wait scheduled for Toronto so no worries there. As we approached Toronto's Pearson Airport we could see that the roads, trees, buildings were all completely covered in ice. The runway was clear at Pearson airport but the taxi lanes to the terminal were covered in really ... read more