Malmö

Malmö is Sweden's third largest municipality with a population of about 271,000. It is a port city located on the southern tip of the country. Malmö, along with the southern parts of Sweden, belonged to Denmark until 1658. In many ways more Danish than Swedish, some inhabitants feel more longing towards Denmark than their home-country. The city is also very much like Copenhagen in its mentality and architecture.

Malmö has a large part of its inhabitants born abroad, thus contributing to a rich cultural life and many exotic and fine food opportunities. The ship building Kockums company used to be the city's biggest employer, but today the industrial city of old has been replaced by something more middle class.

Malmö, and the rest of southern Sweden have an oceanic climate. Despite its northern location, the climate is relatively mild compared to other locations in similar latitudes, or even somewhat further south, mainly because of the Gulf Stream. Because of its northern latitude, daylight extends 17 hours in midsummer, to only around 7 hours in midwinter.

Summers are warm and pleasant with average high temperatures of 22°C (72°F) and lows of around 14°C (57°F), but temperatures do sometimes exceed 35°C (95°F+)[citations needed] and occasional heat waves are common during the summer. Winters are cold, with temperatures steady between -1 to 3°C (30 - 37°F), and it rarely drops below -10 °C (14 °F).

Rainfall is light to moderate throughout the year with 169 wet days. Snowfall occurs mainly in December through March, but snow covers do not remain for a long time, and some winters are virtually free of snow.

Malmö offers five shopping plazas in the centre, HansaCompagniet, Triangeln, Entré, Storgatan, and Caroli. Storgatan mostly has clothes for young people and coffee shops. The others offer the usual mixture of town shopping with clothes, cameras, jewelry, electronics, books, movies etc. blended with eateries, both international fast food chains and local ones. World famous Swedish glassware can also be bought there.

The main shopping streets are Södergatan and Södra Förstadsgatan, where you can find all kinds of shops. Look out for Village, well designed homeware, at reasonable prices.