Hamburg to Copenhagen
It’s nearly a five hour train journey from Hamburg to Copenhagen. Today I will officially enter Scandinavia.
Train IC 394 departs from Hamburg Hbf at 12.53 and arrives at Copenhagen’s Central Station at 17.36. On the way the train travels around 370 km at an average speed of just over 80 km/h.
Getting from the Reeperbahn to Hamburg Hbf is relatively straight forward, allowing me to arrive early and to board the train armed with a coffee and sandwich, all around 15 minutes prior to departure.
According to the InterRail app seat reservations for this trip are mandatory and I’m thankful that I have an allocated seat. In reality though, the need for a seat reservation seems to be a bit arbitrary. By the time the train is ready to depart the carriage is stuffed full of people, many standing in the isles and others sitting in the passageways. This train seems to be very popular with backpackers and there is luggage deposited everywhere.
The main highlights of the journey are:
Approaching Rendsburg, Germany, the otherwise flat landscape is interrupted by a monstrous steel girder railway bridge (the Rendsburg High Bridge). This viaduct, cum bridge, rises some 42 metres into the sky in order to cross the Kiel Canal. The viaduct is around 2.5 km long, providing the train with a gentle enough slope to climb up onto the summit of the bridge. To add to the spectacle the viaduct also turns through a 360 degree loop (the Rendsburg Loop) to allow the train to both pass over the canal and serve the town of Rendsburg, situated immediately to north of the canal. As if this wasn’t complicated enough, the bridge additionally includes a vehicle / passenger transporter (gondola) facility suspended beneath its main span – By comparison to this eyesore, Middlesbrough’s transporter bridge is a non-starter.
Much less dramatic, but equally puzzling, is another 360 degree loop in the track at the town of Flensburg, just south of the Denmark border. Here, the loop is provided to allow the train to serve the town’s station, located to the east of the main route alignment.
Slightly further north, just after crossing the German / Denmark border, the train stops.at Padborg. Here, despite Denmark being part of the Schengen area, passports are checked by government officers who board the train. To be fair though, the whole operation is very low key and may simply be a remnant of the Covid era.
Finally, between Nyborg and Korsor the rail line crosses the Great Belt, a sea passage separating the Danish islands of Funen and Zealand. This rail crossing (the Great Belt Fixed Crossing) is some 18km long and is made up of a western low level bridge and a 8km long bored eastern rail tunnel. The former carries both road and rail traffic while the latter is paralleled at high level by a road only suspension bridge.
The low lights of the trip are being surrounded by screaming kids and an inability to reach the loos because of the overcrowding.
On arriving at Copenhagen Central Station it is a short walk to my accommodation at Annex Copenhagen, a reasonably upmarket hostel providing a private room with shared bathroom. The major upside of this hostel is that it is accessed through the adjoining Absalon Hotel so you have all the facilities of a ?? star hotel at a hostel price. These include a bar, a reception seating area and access to an automated laundrette facility.
Talking of automation, this hostel is my first introduction to the Scandinavian revolution of ‘Self Service hotel Check-ins’. Everything, including delivery of a door card key, is achieved via a ‘self-service’ computer screen and keypad. All you need is your booking reference and passport details and you’re in. I suppose with the high cost of labour in Scandinavia it all makes sense.
Retiring to bar for a well earned beer following check-in I quickly understand better the cost of living issue – a 0.5 litre beer was around £8 in English money. What’s more, when I went to pay for it I discovered for the fist time that Denmark does not partake in the Euro. Instead everything is in Krona so I have to pay by credit card – What am I now going to do with all these Euro I have in my wallet !!!!
As my journey proceeds I also start to realise how obsolete paper money has become. Nearly everywhere, throughout Scandinavia, seems to accept credit cards even for the smallest items – A trend that, likewise, now seems also to be becoming the norm in the UK. Indeed, in some locations in the UK (i.e. – within football stadiums) cash is simply not accepted. One must start to wonder whether the tourist based ‘Currency Exchange booth’ business has much of a future going forward.
After my beer I venture out into the night air to explore a little. Two things strike me during my evening stroll. The first is how cold it has suddenly become in the evening and the second is that at night Copenhagen has a slightly old fashioned sentimental feel about it.
I suppose the first should not be a surprise to me, after all, it’s getting towards the end of September and Copenhagen is roughly the same latitude as Edinburgh – What I do need to do though is to start wearing a sweater at night. I’m now glad that I packed for all eventualities.
The second was drummed home by the sight of Tivoli Gardens – an amusement Park situated right in the middle of the city. This brought back childhood memories of when London had its own permanent Battersea Park fun-fair all those years ago. I noted that this Copenhagen version still seems to be popular with the locals, judging by the queue at the ticket office.
Resisting the temptation to sample the rides within Tivoli Gardens I instead find a coffee house and settle down for a latte and cheesecake. While sitting outside Cafe Vivaldi, wrapped up in a cafe owned blanket and watching the world pass by I wonder, between shivering fits, just how I am going to survive when I eventually reach the Artic Circle.