To Malmö and Back Again

I travelled to Malmö Sweden for the Øredev developers conference, where I was giving a presentation (subject of the next post). It was a whirlwind trip and I went solo, as Kat had no interest in doing a European long haul trip that was only for seven days. I flew out of SFO on November 3rd to Copenhagen and then back on the 9th. The flight there was a red-eye, so I didn’t land until Tuesday the 4th.

The flight there was, thankfully, completely uneventful. I took the train from Copenhagen Airport to Malmö, and that was also really easy and quick. Before I went I checked on YouTube to see if there was a video showing how to get to the train and of course there was. I know they’re mostly ad-bait, they’re still pretty helpful if you haven’t been to a particular airport before. The body of water between Copenhagen and Malmö is referred to as The Sound, but it’s part of the Baltic Sea. Malmö is also in the south, so I was still very far away from the Arctic Circle.

I didn’t have anything planned, other than getting to my hotel and unpacking. I did that, and then struck out to explore the area. I hadn’t slept much on the plane but the common practice is to just get on local time immediately, so that’s what I did. Luckily that night the conference organizers had arranged a dinner and nordic sauna for the speakers. That night we all piled into a couple of buses and headed to the Ribersborgs Kallbadhus. I will say that it was a traditional sauna and if you know, you know.

Wednesday was the opening day of the conference, so I was mostly indoors, but that night the city hosted us for a dinner at the Malmö Rådhus. You might be thinking that dinner at a city hall building is odd, except that this building was originally constructed in 1547. It was nice that the city appreciated how the conference puts Malmö “on the map” in terms of the technology scene in Europe. Also, it was just a magnificent building!

Thursday was the day of my talk, but also the football club from Malmö was playing a Europa League match, so of course I went. Did I get scarf? Do you even know me? Of course I did! I went early enough to hang out in the stadium bar and talked to as many locals as would put up with somebody that didn’t speak more than two words of Swedish. Everybody was lovely and many had even been to California, so we had a lot to talk about. They were very interested in what was going on in the US, and the best I could offer is that we’re in a phase and that there will undoubtedly be an adjustment. Sadly, Malmö lost the match.

Friday was the final day of the conference. My talk was behind me, so I was in full enjoy the conference mode. During the conference I was lucky to make the acquaintance of Joshua Kerievsky, founder of Industrial Logic and champion of Modern Agile. We decided to explore the more urban parts of Malmö after the conference concluded and had dinner at Ruths. Other than a little mix up on what we were ordering, the dinner was exquisite.

Saturday was a break day. I didn’t fly out until Sunday, so after visiting the largest IKEA in the world, I made my way to Copenhagen via the train to do all the touristy stuff I could cram into six hours. Nyhavn for lunch, The Little Mermaid, and a stroll around Kastellet was just the ticket. Getting back to Malmö was trickier than I wanted it to be as there was maintenance happening on the tracks. They were running buses, but it wasn’t clear at the train station what bus one should get on to get back to Sweden, but I got there eventually.

Sunday at last and it’s time to fly home. Joshua and I are on the same flight, so we travel together to Copenhagen airport for our flight back to SFO. We have a little “fun” trying to get into the SAS Lounge and then come closer than I was comfortable with to missing our flight because there were only two people working passport control and there were hundreds of people in line. For reference, there were eight lanes, but only were staffed. Our plane ended up being held for 30 minutes to allow people to get through, so we lost our takeoff position, and left 50 minutes late. But, I was on the plane and at that point it was the only thing I cared about.