GUWonder

Given the likelihood of MENA people in Malmo living in more densely packed accommodations than average, I have no doubt that the young males of those backgrounds living in those accommodations are way more likely than most others in Malmo to want to seek an escape in the malls at this time of the year. The Emporia mall is quite interesting nowadays in that regard. Ordinarily most people associate malls with disproportionately higher female traffic and that is almost true during most normal years at that mall. However in recent weeks, it remains disproportionately more women working in the malls but disproportionately more groups of males hanging out. But that is for more recent weeks.

Im a new user

How does ticketing work in this situation? Do they pass through a ticket vending machine or do they have to pay a tilläggsavgift/kontrolafgift?

GUWonder

There are ticketing machines on the street level above the platforms, but the police escort and the escorted most commonly go up from their train arrival platform and cross over directly to their train departure platform without stopping by the machines for ticket purchases. Even when the passengers ask about needing to buy a ticket. And it goes this way even when the turned away travelers only have a one-way train ticket into Sweden.

The inadmissible passengers’ removal from Sweden is the responsibility of the carrier that brought them into Sweden.

Im a new user

Isn't this only the case if the passenger arrives to Sweden from a non-Schengen country?

GUWonder

No. I made my comment in relation to mainly the trains going from Denmark to Sweden. [It's also happened with regard to some flight arrivals into ARN and GOT from a variety of Schengen countries, but don't expect me to inform further about that.]

Go back to see what happened with DSB, Skanetrafiken, SJ, Veolia, some of the ferry operators and even some of the international buses serving Skane around 4-5.3 years ago to see what their issues were. They were not having all that much fun dealing with the Swedish government back then about who should be responsible for what and why.

Im a new user

At that time, there was a law saying that the carrier had to verify that the passenger was in possession of an identity document with a photo. However, the carriers were not required to verify that passengers were admissible to Sweden. A passenger who was inadmissible to Sweden but had an identity document was allowed to travel. In the beginning, they took a photo of my ID card at Kastrup as evidence in case I "lost" my ID card before reaching Hyllie. After a few months, they stopped taking photos. The law affected short ferries (Helsingør-Helsingborg, København-Ven) but not long ferries (Grenaa-Varberg, Frederikshavn-Göteborg), but Stena Line nevertheless asked me to show identification, probably due to some other law. I'm unsure whether Rønne-Ystad was a long or a short ferry. Flights were also unaffected, so people could book CPH-ARN-MMX if they didn't have the right documents to take the train across the bridge. I also heard of some people taking a taxi. Although there was a passport control at the Swedish end of the bridge, people were allowed to enter the country after the border guard (policeman) had looked them up in a database.

GUWonder

I was around going between Denmark and Sweden a bunch back then too: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25812582-post3.html Merely having an identity document with a photo wasn't sufficient, it had to be what would be accepted by the Swedish police. I tried every manner of US-issued ID I had back then with the contractors as well as with the police.

Check out what happened to people who were found to be inadmissible when coming off those trains and ferries or even the buses back around that time. Whether it was the law or not back then too, the police were getting the carriers to take the inadmissible back.

There may still be indications of what went on then in this thread: ID Checks between Sweden and Danish borders

GUWonder

Sweden had a government spokesperson say it was going to allow only Swedish citizens back into Sweden if coming from the UK under a ban the country had put in place in response to concerns about a UK variant of this coronavirus being way more transmissible. The country has since publicly backtracked on that and said that residents of Sweden will also be allowed back into Sweden regardless of citizenship. There are other exemptions also, but who knows if they will also publicly highlight that.

UK persons who were working or otherwise living in Sweden but didn't yet have formal status as residents recognized by the Swedish migration authorities are sort of in a pickle if they already went to the UK for Christmas. Sweden's migration authorities have said they will be allowed to have their status recognized even after the end of this year if they can demonstrate that they had already become a resident in Sweden prior to the end of the year.

Big weddings and funerals have been high risk events indeed.

Hanging out in crowded indoor spots with questionable air during this pandemic is bad optics, but it is also simply a bad way to avoid/prevent exposure to Covid-19. But the "start to think it's the immigrants' fault" isn't really new with "middle class Swedes" with regard to Covid-19 spread in the country. That said, southern Sweden is a different crowd than Stockholm, even as the gap has been sort of narrowing a bit in that regard.

Some Malmo hotels have to thank the Swedish government for again increasing border control to keep out people coming from Denmark. And since the Swedish border control coverage is now more comprehensively around the clock than has been the case in at least 3+ years, it is going to run up the hotel bills pretty fast.

nacho

Yeah, saw quite a few male in the mall with MENA background and I did see security guard grabbed a few of them too. I noticed something really weird: there's a guard standing by the trolleys facing the exit gate (level 2) peeping at cars leaving the mall. I have seen that several times now, I guess they are trying to catch shoplifters trying to escape by car or attempting to run through the gate to avoid parking fee

Emporia is a perfect hang out place: it's right by a train station and with great bus connections. It's the "newest" proper mall in Malmo (unless you count Entre) that has a very nice ICA and Willys that fit all income groups. Emporia has more shops than Mobilia and everything is under one roof (Mobilia is kind of chopped up into sections which is not exactly nice when it's windy and rainy outside). There are tons of toilets and benches to sit and even the cleaning staff are making use of the benches (they have them inside lady's rooms) to chat instead of doing their work.

The Swedish travel ban from Denmark is simply insane, giving a 7 hours notice (they finished saying the things about it at around 17.00 and took effect at midnight). It's simply crazy, what about a Swede bringing his/her foreign spouse and children from Asia/US etc. and fly into CPH? If they are on a long haul flight they would have been on board before the ban announced and ended up at CPH after it has taken effect. I saw a French/Swedish family on Sydsvenskan that the father who is not a Swedish citizen had to go back to Denmark - even though they have just landed. I think the father had to fly down to Germany and then into a Swedish airport - it's crazy.

GUWonder

Due to Swedish border control being ramped up there again, there are more Swedish police vehicles around the mall than has been typical in prior weeks this quarter. But the police aren't primary responders to any shoplifting going on at the mall, and their priority is with other things. So it's all the contract security and the ordinance control people doing the response to noted shoplifting incidents.

They've had more shoplifiting problems this fall than in prior years, but what has been sort of new this year is shoplifters making a dash for the exits via the above ground parking lots there. Maybe the shoplifiting problems have grown when the economy -- or at least part of the employment picture in Sweden -- is sort of in the tank in Sweden due to the pandemic.

The numbers and percentage of passengers from Denmark being turned back by Swedish passport control near the mall has dropped, so the word is getting out that it's not situation normal anymore for coming to Sweden from Denmark. The Swedish police doing passport control near the mall too are at times checking non-Swedes' claims about being entitled to an exemption (to the Swedish ban for Denmark) on the basis of living or working in Sweden and other factors.

Yes there are people who get to Denmark and then become aware of problems getting into Sweden from Denmark; and then if they want to get into Sweden anyway they have to do a more convoluted trip to get into Sweden -- a more convoluted trip that increases the risk of the impacted (but persistent) traveler spreading or getting infected with this coronavirus. But this kind of hassle does send a signal out that reduces travel demand, and that reduction is really the main point of some of these restrictions.

Taking a private boat from Denmark to Sweden? The Swedish police aren't checking that like they are checking the bridge traffic, commercial flight traffic and commercial boat traffic.

nacho

I did see a police car stopped some MENA background people in a car before the entrance gate at the above ground level at Emporia once. There are some "ordningsvakt" in the mall - I have seen one checking someone's shopping bag (young male group) and one said he just bought the pizza and couldn't show his receipt.

The restriction is just ridiculous - why can't they let spouses of Swedish citizens in? I really don't get this. Sweden is telling Danes not to come to Sweden to spend $ - basically they are responding to the requests from some people in Skane to look like as if they care.

GUWonder

There has been a major change in public transit connectivity from the poor neighborhood of Rosengard to Svagertorp and Hyllie, something that coincidentally took place during this pandemic: that big change being the commuter train station opening at Rosengard. The station opening in Rosengard has made the journey from Rosengard to Svagertorp and Hyllie using public transit much faster than used to be the case pre-pandemic, as it's something like 10 minutes now for a journey that used to be closer to 30+ minutes each way at the start of the year.

Due to the pandemic, ticket checking on public transit is not all that it used to be. Especially for people who realized the pattern about RFID Skanetrafiken cards not being scanned by the conductors even as people nearby with mobile phone tickets get them scanned by the conductors/ticket checkers. And with just a ten minute ride, the chances of having a ticket checked are much lower than would be the case for a longer public transit journey. And this is even more true during the pandemic than it was pre-pandemic.

nacho

Yeah, the new train stations in Malmo - that explains why Emporia is such a hang out place compared to Mobilia. Mobilia is more car friendly as they have 3 hours free parking without any required spending. I think the ticket checkers were more obvious a year back when I had to use the train to go to fetch my car.

Im a new user

Those ticket checking systems are so stupid. If you are on an international train and between Malmö C and the bridge, just show a Danish rejsekort. Some time ago, I had an old card which was about to expire and I needed to empty it, so I checked in at København H and checked out at Malmö C. The Skånetrafiken conductor couldn't scan the card, so he just looked at it and went on to check the next passenger.

GUWonder

The ticket checking systems are a clumsy beast of their own, but at least with the cross-border trains there is a mix of ticket issuing parties that at least provide some additional grounds for excuses. But I was speaking about the Skanetrafiken's own RFID card tickets not able to be checked at times even by Skanetrafiken's own conductors on the purplish Skanetrafiken commuter trains that are only used within Sweden itself.

The first people in Sweden have now been vaccinated today. Some nursing home residents outside of Linkoping were the first to get vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Sweden. The supply came in from Belgium. Only a mere 9,750 doses sent by Pfizer to Sweden, but soon it's to go up to around 80k doses. About prioritizing which regions in Sweden get the vaccine, it's clear that the initial shipment and distribution decision have made Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo a lower priority for getting the vaccines when looking at distribution per capita by locality.