Saunas, cinnamon buns and coastal views await on Malmö-Oslo rail link

LONDON, 6 OCTOBER 2026 —

‘T his carriage is due for modernisation. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience 90s Germany style,” reads the sign on the door to the dining carriage. The couple inside aren’t missing theirs: they’re taking endless selfies in the clinical pink-and-turquoise carriage that looks like a hospital canteen and smells like cinnamon buns and strong filter coffee.

I was first seduced by Scandi rail travel a decade ago on a journey from Stockholm to Gothenburg, when I was berthed in a cosy dark-wood cabin and listened to a pianist play in a dining car. This time, starting in Malmö, I will take advantage of the new route to make a series of stops along the country’s western shore.

In my view Malmö, across the Øresund Bridge from Copenhagen, is too often overlooked in favour of Stockholm. The southern port city is less polished than the capital and grittier, but its residents seem more outgoing and curious. Within an hour of arriving, I’m invited to drinks by a group of local people – a level of openness I never experienced living in Stockholm.

Almost half of the population is under 35, and 187 nationalities are represented, making it a hotbed of creativity. In the centre of town, the Form/Design Center occupies a former 16th-century grain store, now a meeting point and exhibition space for design, crafts and architecture enthusiasts. Then, there are Moderna Museet and Malmö Konsthall modern art galleries.

At Möllevången , or Möllan, a trendy neighbourhood popular with creatives, everybody looks as if they’re at art college, or have just returned from a weekend in Berlin. My friend Rob, who has lived in Malmö for nearly a decade, guides me through Folkets Park, the “people’s park”, pointing out his favourite pizza spot, Far i Hatten , which occupies cute wooden huts.

We find a table at Ava nearby for a beer on a leafy square dotted with hip restaurants and organic wine bars – it feels like Malmö’s equivalent to London Fields in Hackney. Resisting the urge to continue our purposefully staid bar crawl, we down a nightcap at Bar Bobo and call it a night.

Snälltåget operates just one direct Oslo-bound train a day, at 6.38am from Malmö Central (plans are in the works to increase this next year), so it’s an early start at a station teeming with families and backpackers with rucksacks the size of fridge-freezers. We soon pass the romanesque towers of Lund Cathedral before chugging through pancake-flat yellowing agricultural fields, then skirt Apelviken bay – Varberg’s long, sandy horseshoe beach popular for kitesurfing and surfing.

Varberg is Sweden’s equivalent of a coastal British market town. It’s got bunting, cobbled streets, intimate cafes and a weekend market with vendors peddling fresh vegetables, fruit, marmalade, leather belts and socks. It’s also a spa town, which inspired my visit.

I was intrigued by its pretty, Moorish-inspired Kallbadhuset (cold bath house), set on wooden piles above the Kattegat sea, where for about £8 visitors gain access to segregated men’s and women’s saunas, both with spellbinding sea views. A plunge in the brisk water after the sauna proves the perfect antidote to a 6am start after a bottle of red wine the night before.

Floating on my back, I look up to see a group of Swedish veterans sitting on a wooden bench, baring all (it’s a nude bathhouse), the building’s mustard shades completing an almost Hockney-esque scene. According to a sign outside Skarpe Nord – a community-run women’s bathing spot nearby – people have been nude-bathing in Varberg for more than 100 years.

Walking along the promenade by a cavernous passage of blasted rocks that resembles a secret pathway from Lord of the Rings, I pass a collection of other designated naked bathing spots. But with the grey weather showing no sign of clearing, my hotel’s spa proves more inviting. In the bowels of Hotell Gästis hides a replica of Vladimir Lenin’s favourite bathhouse.

The hotel’s owner, Lasse Diding, built the spa as a homage to his idol, inspired by a visit to the original bathhouse in St Petersburg in the 1980s. This slightly eerie space is clad in more than 75,000 cobalt tiles and decorated with candlelit busts of communist leaders. Diding’s interest in the communist movement began during the Vietnam war and never left him.

The eccentric entrepreneur is responsible for Varberg’s many visible politically left-leaning monuments – a giant Palestine flag, Hotell Havanna (an ode to revolutionary Cuba) and a statue of Danuta Danielsson , who became a symbol of solidarity after hitting a marching neo-Nazi with her handbag in Växjö in 1985. The following morning, I hop on the fast train to Gothenburg, a 39-minute ride away.

After checking in at the sophisticated, French boudoir-style Hotel Pigalle, just five minutes’ walk from Central station, I wander along Kungsgatan, the city’s modern shopping artery, towards Magasingatan. The area is packed with vintage shops ( Ragtime , Pop and Humana ) and craft stores such as Customwood , which makes bespoke wooden furniture to order.

I grab a fika (the Swedish tradition of taking a break to drink coffee and indulge in a sweet treat) at Da Matteo , a barn turned cafe spread across three floors. The Scandi-industrial interiors are straight out of a design magazine, as bespectacled folk work away on their laptops.

Scents of bread and coffee drift from the in-house bakery and coffee roastery; my bullar (a classic cardamom bun) and a latte cost just under a tenner.