3rd – 4th September
A day on the rails
Tuesday was a train day. First from Osnabrück to Hannover, then a second train from Hannover to Hamburg with the final third leg, a nearly 5 hour train journey to Copenhagen (Køpenhavn), arriving at about 19.30. Perhaps in time for dinner, but we hadn’t booked anywhere.
We had 80 minutes’ transfer time in Hannover but the connection in Hamburg looked a bit tight at under 20 minutes. We had thought about trying for an earlier train to Hannover, but our ticket was prescriptive about the trains from Hannover to Copenhagen, and that’s the connection we were worried about making.
We decided to leave as planned just before 11am from Osnabrück. That’s when we hit our first snag. For a journey of 67 minutes, how can an intercity train arrive 93 minutes late? This was a full 15 minutes after the departure of our next train! We had clearly already missed our next connection to Copenhagen! The only other train to Copenhagen that day would be two hours later.
Our Deutsche Bahn App informed us that to catch this later train the connection time in Hamburg was only 17 minutes. That filled us with dread as we daren’t miss that train. So we set off for a second visit to a Deutsche Bahn service centre. This one was just as helpful as the one in Cologne. They allowed us to change our seat reservations to the later Hamburg to Copenhagen train and put us on an earlier train to Hamburg which, despite arriving 25 minutes late into Hamburg allowed us plenty of time to purchase some sustenance before getting on the long train journey (with no cafeteria service) to Copenhagen.
Hamburg Hbh Curry wurst
The train journey to Copenhagen was marred by the unruly behaviour of the bored boys in the next seats and the fading light. We did enjoy crossing the Rendsburg High Bridge, 42m above the Kiel Canal, built in 1911-1913 and then the Rendsburg Loop, a big loop which allows the train to lose height. However it was difficult to see the Little Belt and Great Belt bridges as we crossed from Jutland to the islands of Funen and Zealand.
This route is temporary from Hamburg to Copenhagen, after the closing of the train ferry at the end of 2019 and before the innovatively-constructed Fehrmanbelt tunnel is opened currently envisioned for 2029. This will avoid the 160km detour that we took and involve a 7-minute train journey through the tunnel under the sea.
Peter remembers, as a boy living in Gothenburg, travelling on the ‘Rødby – Puttgarden’ ferry to Germany on summer holidays. The just over one hour voyage was a wonderful break from hours of driving, with a sumptuous smörgåsbord that we looked forward to every time.
On this trip our train stopped at Padborg on the German/Danish border for a passport inspection. Whilst Denmark and Germany are both in the Schengen area, these inspections are becoming more common (witness the inspection on our train crossing from Italy to France last year) as Governments try to control the cross-border movement of migrants.
It was pitch black as the train struggled with signal problems before we drew into Copenhagen Station another half hour late at 10pm. Fortunately our hotel was less than 5 minutes from the station. A rather sad affair, with no proper mattress, lacklustre pillows and open windows to a backyard with huge litter bins, rather than air conditioning!
But after the excitement of our day on the trains, we were content to have reached our destination, even without dinner. We shall never know whether the overnight stay in Osnabrück rather than Bielefeld gave us any advantage.
A day in Copenhagen
Our training programme prescribed a 5km run in Copenhagen. We decided to run on the paths around the five small lakes in downtown Copenhagen and then find breakfast. Lynne struggled with her warm-up routine, so she enjoyed a bracing walk, while Peter got his kilometres in on the pedestrian paths encircling these interconnected lakes, popular with runners and a host of birds, including swan couples with their ‘ugly ducklings’.
Scandinavia is experiencing a late heatwave and so after a delightful breakfast we continued with a long walk to the Kastellet fortress, the Little Mermaid statue and through the centre of the city back to our hotel in the sunshine.
We discovered the stunning Amaliehaven formal gardens and cascades across the water from the astounding Opera House. We happened across Nyhaven, which was full of tourists having lunch in the sunshine. Lynne remembered the food poisoning she got there 35 years ago and declined to stop. We crossed the lush gardens of Kongens Nytorv, and passed through the mixture of grand shops and tourist trash on the long Strøget pedestrian shopping street, before enjoying a coffee and pastry at Lagkagehuset, which passed for lunch.
Opera House Nyhavn Amalienborg Formal Gardens Refreshing
Famous shopping Oh dear…🧁 Kongens Nytorv
We stopped by the railway station to check that our tickets allowed us to catch an earlier train to Malmo to mitigate any chance of missing our connecting train to Stockholm. Indeed we could take any train in the preceding 3 hours. That put our minds at rest!
Peter had booked dinner at Frida’s, a typical Danish restaurant where we sat outside, with a steady flow of bicycles whizzing past, as the sun set. We tucked into herring and then huge portions of typical Danish fare. We took a dusk stroll around one of the small lakes before heading back to our hotel to prepare for a reasonably early departure.
Sold Fantastically Danish
Copenhagen is a delightful city to visit, especially in the late summer sunshine. The open spaces, the gardens and greenery, heroic bronze statues of men on steely horses while slaying dragons, the street stands selling five different versions of ‘pølse’. We also noted how youthful and vibrant it is, with many runners and cyclists.
