Day 16 - Sweden has Rail Replacement Buses Too

I said goodbye to Copenhagen this morning. It was raining. A lot. I also, unbeknownst to me at the time, said goodbye to my travel adaptor. I learnt this having emptied out my rucksack in Gothenburg, and then emailing the hotel in Copenhagen who at least were able to put a stop to the search. Thank you for your service, adaptor 🫡.

I took the train from a soggy Copenhagen to an equally soggy Malmo. Crossing the 10 mile long bridge was pretty cool, and I do still find on-train passport checks to be quite a novelty!

With a couple of hours in Malmo, I walked to the central square, where they were clearing up from an event. It was still nice though, and there were some very fun caches too!

I continued my wander to the castle, where I also got a decent view of the Turning Torso, a famous skyscraper that was apparently the Nordic region’s tallest building until 2022.

I could have walked to see the Turning Torso close up but it really was raining so I took shelter with a cup of tea in a cafe.

It was then onto the three hour train from Malmo to Molndal. I enjoyed the journey, as the countryside looked suitably rugged in the bad weather, and I was listening to a very exciting afternoon of test cricket courtesy of TMS!

Sadly, at Molndal - a station not really set up for large amounts of passengers - we all had to get onto a rail replacement bus due to planned engineering work. Sigh. It really isn’t just the UK.

Said RRB (as I wish to call it) was mercifully short as I achieved RRB bingo - a neighbour talking loudly on the phone throughout, a crying child, and a seat right near a very pongy toilet! I was VERY happy to get off (into more rain….) in Gothenburg.

It was a short walk to my hotel, which is very proud of being Gothenburg’s oldest hotel. I had primarily chosen it on the basis of it being very reasonable for somewhere that offers free tea and cake every afternoon! It is certainly cute, although possibly leaning too much into its heritage at the expense of practicality in places (massive metal room keys are not super practical).

After a soggy day with some minor frustrations on the way, I had my first small bout of home-sickness - missing some combination of hugs, my own washing machine, custard creams, and Cheerios - but consoled myself with an excellent fish and chips meal at a local restaurant. A shout out to ChatGPT for translating the whole menu for me!

It looks like tomorrow might be an indoor activity kind of day, but it looks like there are a lot of fun options around - weirdly ‘The World of Volvo’ comes highly recommended…

Stats Update:

Countries: 🇬🇧 🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇩🇪 🇩🇰 🇸🇪 - 6

Distance travelled by train: 1968km

Geocaches: 28 traditionals, 29 virtuals, 3 mysteries, 1 webcam and 233 AdLabs

Parkruns: 2

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