I’m in a cafe chatting to a local musician who tells me: ”Twenty years ago, just the name Malmö would scare young children. Now it’s kind of hip.”
Sweden’s third largest city was buzzing from the minute I arrived. From the heavy banging of building a new rail-link at the station to the fabulous sounds of a Romanian jazz trio in Stortorget, everywhere I walked there was a different beat and a sense that things were happening.
They were. The Malmö Festival was heading to town. This week long event, which has been running for 25 years, takes over the city’s streets, parks and venues with music, performance, art, turning trees into giant red condoms, and a lot of complaints about the noise.
The red condom: you either love it or hate it
Indeed, with the battle won for women to bathe topless here, the locals now had a different axe to grind. It seems the festival is either loved or hated by the people . And so having listened to the frustrations and divided opinions, the marketeers came up with a novel campaign slogan this year: ”Malmöfestivalen: Du kanske hatar mig men jag älskar alltid dig.” (Maybe you hate me, but I will always love you)
Personally, I have a love-hate thing for guided tours. I’ve taken a fair few on this trip because there’s always a bit of trivia to be had and tips to explore further without following the crowd. But I don’t find it a pleasant experience; being herded around in pursuit of a lofty umbrella and even worse if you have to wear a sticky blue dot on your chest.
In Malmö I took one of the boat tours, a voyage of not-much-discovery under the city’s 21 bridges. The guide was obviously as bored as she sounded, reeling off her scripted sentences from paper in Swedish, English and German without really understanding the puns, written in earnest but lost without the right delivery.
”And the building to the right is called the …errr…Slaughter House, because it used to…errr…be one – now it’s a nightclub so you could say it’s ….errr….still a meat market.”
I switched off and instead turned my attention to the views. It was obvious to see how redevelopment has helped to colourfully transform the city’s image from industrial grey. Admittedly, before coming here, I had the old-school reputation in mind and put Malmö up there with Mogadishu on my list of places not to visit.
The Turning Torso: it's a good picture isn't it?
It remains very much a working city and, like any other, has its challenges to address but there’s a new look to Malmö. It’s not only about the modern coastal skyline of the Western Harbour and Turning Torso; young people are no longer afraid of the place but rather moving here in numbers. And when you ask what there is to do in Malmö nowadays the answer need not be go across the bridge to Copenhagen.
Another love-hate entry in my top ten goes out to the sisterhood of feminist overkill. Bravo for equal rights I say but if you’re going to make a big deal of being able to get your boobs out in public then make sure you do it.
Exploit it. En masse. Get them out, bounce them around in victorious celebration and rub it in. I kept my eyes peeled as I walked by the beach but it seemed no one wanted to rub their breasts in my face.
So I went Ribersborg bathhouse where nudist bathers can let it all hang out, take a sauna and a dip in the sea. As a first-time nudist, I shelved both British prudishness and my bikini to spend a few sunny hours in ’natural’ surroundings.
Ribersborg bathhouse: the naked people are round the back
So with a subtle tan and no white marks I leave Malmö with neither love nor hate for the place but a recommendation to others to visit where they may have once feared to tread.
At your first naturist experience, you may feel apprehensive and worried that people will be staring at you. But a visit to naturistspace.org is much different than you would experience anywhere else. At there, you will not find people trying to undress you with their eyes, from afar or near, because there is nothing left for the imagination to remove. You will not find people throwing outdated, lewd or offensive pickup lines at you.
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Welcome Christine to the big nudist family! I have been frequenting nude places since I can remember and I must say it is soooo nice to swim with nothing rubbing your body!
So, whats your next nudist visit?
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I used to live in Malmo and thought it was a great town. I would go down every week to watch the all the progress on the Turning Torso as well as all the other new houses down there. Then go have a coffee at Espresso House.
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After reading the story from Malmo, I might want to learn some swedish before visiting. The openness sounds fun; the prudes can find somewhere else to be nosy.
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