Malmö, Sweden - 02/26/18

Malmo downtown

We don't plan to stay in Sweden for long: We changed our plans, Malmo is going to be our last stop here for now. It's sad that we couldn't even visit Stockholm, but we are surely coming back.

Sweden is currently facing grave immigation problems and a big 'muslinification' effect, with a drastic change in violence rates, security and normal day to day life.
The increase in violence is something rather subjective in more generalistic terms, but is a fact comparing with the country's own levels. For exemple, some say that the violence is the same as in some bad neighbourhoods in the USA, but a dramatic shift in the country's culture, also considering that Sweden is a relatively small country.

These problems led to the creation of No-go zones in some cities; this term is colloquialy used by the citizens and the police, and designates danger areas populated mostly by muslim immigrants.There are cases of murder, Rape, and terrorist activity/attacks, which continue to happen daily, leaving a sense of fear hanging around everywhere.

Malmö is such a city with no-go zones: that was the first thing we learned about it, and secondly, we learned that that spiralled building we saw in our last album is located here.

Turning Torso

The building is the 'Turning Torso', and its an immoble residential skyscrapper. The building was the first of it's kind in the world, and is the tallest building in Scandinavia. It was designed by the Spanish sculptor, archtect and painter Santiago Calatrava and opened on 2005. The tower reaches a height of 190 metres (623 ft) with 54 storeys and 147 apartments.

 Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth in Scandinavia. Almost half of the population has foreign background (43%)

Interesting Facts:

• In 2011, 174 countries and about 150 languages were represented in Malmö
• As of 2015, Malmö had the fourth-highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any municipality in Sweden
• Almost 10% of the population of Malmö works in Copenhagen.
• Malmö Arab Film Festival (MAFF), the largest Arabic film festival in Europe, is held in Malmö.

  

  Konsthall

Right next to the center we visited Malmo Konsthall, which is the largest exhibition gallery in Europe for contemporary art. The building was opened in 1975 and is made of concrete, glass, wood and aluminium. It was awarded a Kasper Salin Prize, given to Swedish building projects "of high architectural standard, The KSP is considered the most prestigious architectural prize in the country.

There are over 10 exhibition each year, including modern art classics and current experiments. The hall is also used for theatrical performances, film, lectures and other educational activities, recieving circa 200.000 visitors annually. Admissions are free - for the time we were there though.

• In 1994, the hall was renovated and expanded, creating space for a book store selling books, posters and postcards, a children’s area and a restaurant that offers south Swedish food.

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We also caught a glimpse of the mall we were learning about on our way to Sweden, Emporia.
We didn't know it, but it is actually here in Malmo, and is one of the largest in Scandinavia and was opened in 2012. On the way in we watched this great video, introducing it and it's design.

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Our last stop was the bridge we walked through on our way to Denmark, connecting Malmo to Copenhagen. The famous Oresund Bridge, the longest combined railway and motorway bridge in Europe with 8 km (+4km tunnel), and the setting for the crime drama series 'The bridge'.

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Göthenburg, Sweden - 02/13/18

The capital

I figured we shoud learn a bit more about Sweden before we visit Gothenburg, not no be too overwhelmed with our experiences there.

Sweden's COA

Firstly, Sweden is the third-largest country in the EU by area, with 450.255km² (173.8mi²) and a total population of 10 million, the highest concentration being in the south, just like we've seen in Norway. - Also similar to Norway, Sweden is a constitutional monarchy, with Carl XV Gustav as the current king. 
The capital, as you may know, is Stockholm, the most populous of the nordic countries. Again, as we have learned about the "Scandinavian Model" Sweden also maintains a social welfare system like Norway, and ranks highly in numeral metrics of national performance; quality of life, health, education and so on. -What we still don't know is how they affort it, in Norway's case we know is the petrol, but what do they sell here:?

Interesting Fact: Feudalism never developed in Sweden as it did in the rest of Europe, slavery also was practically nonexistent. Slavery was abolished by King Magnus IV as early as 1335 in Sweden.

We are now on the other side of the conflict between Sweden and Norway, as we got indtroduced by Fredrick III (of Denmark and Norway) and Charles X of Sweden in our last stop, Halden.
 Sweden was the 3rd largest country in Europe (after Russia and Spain) under the rule of Carolus Rex's grandfather, after the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 which Sweden imposed over Denmark, conquering 1/3 of the land.

Interesting Fact:

• In the early 20th century more Swedes lived in Chicago than in Göthenburg (Sweden 2nd largest city)

• The country joind the EU in 1995.

• The country's border with Norway  (1.619km) is the largest whitin Europe.

• In the capital Stockholm, daylight lasts +18 hours in late June, and around 8 hours in late December

Sweden has brought up many important people, whitout whom the world as we know it would probably not exist, including: Alfred Bernhard Nobel; Inventor of dynamite and creator of the Nobel Prize, Anders Celsius; Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741, and in 1742 proposed the Celsius temperature scale which bears his name. Lars Magnus Ericsson; entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson. Carl Linnaeus; astronomer, physicist and mathematician. formalised the modern system of naming organisms called 'binomial nomenclature'. He is known by the epithet "father of modern taxonomy" Nils Gustaf Dalén: founder of the AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Jonas Wenström; "Edison's new invention of electric light: a glowing carbon strip, is the same thing that I discovered a year ago ... If I had his laboratory, and resources, I would have done the same and better ... a graphite strip between two mica plates provide a more effective light than Edison's."  - Jonas Wenström was an early pioneer in alternating current and is along with Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla credited as one of the inventors of the three-phase electrical system.

So now we know, most of the Swedish economy is based on the export of technical inventions and engineering, i.e:Tetra Pak.

Turning Torso - the world’s first twisting skyscraper and Scandinavia’s tallest tower at 190 metres.

Göthenburgis probably the second most 'important' and visited city in Sweden, specially the park in the city center, which is the most popular atraction in the country

Regarding recent bands and music, Sweden also presents many interesting figures, the most famous probably being the group ABBA, one of the first internationally well known popular music bands from Sweden. Other bands include: Roxette, Ace of Base, Europe, A-teens, The Cardigans, Robyn, The Hives and Soundtrack of Our Lives.

Most importantly, many heavy metal bands such as: Opeth. Bathory, Amon Amarth and Ghost, also come from Sweden!

SWEDISH ARCHITECTURE : 

NEXT STOP:

Halden, Norway - 02/04/18

Halden Harbour

A week later, we arrive in Halden from Oslo, the capital. The trip didn't actually take so long, we just wanted to enjoy what is probably our last proper stop in Norway.
So far we have walked over 637 miles in Norway, visiting 7 cities between Bergen and Halden, and covering the entire southcoast of Norway on foot.

Halden was what made us curious about Norway in the first place, because of a very thought provoking documentary called "Breaking the Cycle"

Excerpt

Watch the full documentary on Netflix (used to be free on youtube though)

We will try to find more about the prison later, for now we are checking out the more visually intriguing places in the city, having had just arrived.

Interesting Facts: 

• The Fesivals in Halden include Tons of Rock (Hardrock and Metal) in June and Vegetarian Food Festival in August.

• The pub "Siste Reis" near the train station has been voted among the top 10 best in Europe.

Halden has an interesting history in Norway, in the late 1960's the most powerful mainframe computer in Norway was here. - The city has the title, "Halden, IT and Environment city", due to the large amount of Information Technology companies, and... - From the 1960's the city was infamous for high levels of pollution, mostly from a paper mill called Saugbrugs, which emitted sulfur oxide (among other wastes) into a river (Tista) which drains into the local Idefjord. The pollution from the waste made the fjord biologically dead, 

After hundreds of thousands NOK's (Norwegian Crown/krone) of investiments by the city and the company, by 1995 the emissions had been reduced enough to reestablish basic life in the Fjord.

IF: The mill produces the "Supercalender" (Magazine) paper, recognized worldwide as the reflective paper used in magazines.

• In 1996, the city was dubbed Norway's Environment city.

Another interesting find is that one of the 2 nuclear reactors in Norway is here in Halden, the "Halden Boiling Water Reactor", and it's adjacent to the Saugbrugs papermill, and also supplies it with steam.

Norway has currently no interest in nuclear power, and the reactor is actually a 'research reactor', only functioning 50% of the time. In addition, it's also an experimental facilly, holding many research projects; the most interesting one to us was the "Halden Virtual Reality Centre (HVRC)". Most of the power in the country comes from Hydro-plants.

Interesting Fact: Opera Software, creators of the Opera Browser, Nintendo DS Browser, and more, is a Norwegian company founded by an Icelandic (Jon Stephenson Von Tetzchen). The current CEO was born in Halden (Hakon Wium Lie), and is Known for having developed the CSS (Cascading Syle Sheets) programming language.

Bands from Halden Include: Motorpyscho, Madrugada (it means 'dawn' in Portuguese, Metalefs is from Brazil), Morten Harket and Kurt Nilsen.

Charles XII memorial
in Fredriksten fortress

The first thing that caught our attention was a grandiose installation, a large fortress on a mountain across the river. - Exploring the area, we found a monument saying Carl XII(Charles XII) so we wrongfully assumed the fortress was on his name. Far from that, how wrong we were! -

The fortress is called Frediksten, after King Fredrik III of Denmark and Norway.

IF: Halden was also originally named after him(King Fredrik III), being known as Fredrikshald between 1665 and 1928.

Charles XII was the king of Sweden, and impressively led 6 assaults on the fortress. It was after 3 attacks that Fredrik saw the importance of a fortified fortress, so improvements were made and caught the sweds by surprise on the 4th attack. Halden was probably the most important border defence, protecting against Swede domination and giving the best view to the borders.

He was a skilled millitary leader, tactician and politician. The monument we saw earlier was where he was shot and died trying to conquer Norway via the fortress.

IF:

• Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton, has an album and song named Carolus Rex (latinization of his name)

• Charles never married and had no children, he was succeded by his sister Ulrika Eleonara.

• Charles and Fredrik of Denmark-Norway were cousins.

After 1905 the fortress lost all military significance, as of today it hosts the defence logistics and an administration college. There also are several museums and art exhibitions here, and outdoor concerts during the summer.

It is Halden's most popular attraction and Norway's largest most important and venerable border fortress.

read more: the-history-of-fredriksten-fortress

Halden first city in the Nordic countries on Google Glass

We could see the war unveil before our eyes after each museum we visited in the fortress. We went to: War museum; with military artefacts and information on Halden's experiences of war from 1660 onwards, Byen Brenner ("City in Flames" *The Norwegean set fire to the city to prevent it from being captured) and many other buildings.

Well, as we imagined, we couldn't learn much more in person about the High Security Prison. When we asked for it, they gave a demonstration of their Induction Process.

eyesore NEXT STOP: GOTHENBÜRG, SWEDEN - 119 MILES