Copenhagen

As you can see by the train schedule at the Lübeck bahnhof, shown above, the train to Koebenhavn (Copenhagen, 4th from the top) leaves Lübeck each day at 10:06 a.m. I've looked at this schedule board many times and have longed to be on the train to Copenhagen sometime. This past Monday, January 28th, we were on it!

Before we departed, I bought myself a bit of lunch (a little pizza) from one of the take-aways at the Lübeck bahnhof, for eating on the train. I have yet to see lunch counters or fast food places use styrofoam for to-go orders: they pack everything from sandwiches to pastries in biodegradable paper bags like this.

Our visit to Copenhagen was short: just two days. We figured we'd hit the high points and see if we liked it there, and as it turned out, we should have stayed longer, because we loved it. We felt at home there, probably because the Danes speak English well (they actually apologize if they speak Danish to you before realizing you don't speak Danish, which made me feel bad), but also because it's elegant and pretty, and because the Danes named the main street through town Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. 

The train ride to Copenhagen is a four-hour trip from Lübeck (shown by the blue line below), a journey that requires a 45-minute ferry ride from Puttgarden, Germany to Rødby, Denmark. The entire train goes onto the ferry, and everyone disembarks and enjoys the ferry's duty free shop and sea views. 





Here's the view out the train window as we headed into the ferry:

And here's our train on the ferry, on the train and truck deck (can you tell I'm fascinated by the idea of a train on a ferry? I suppose Europeans think it's no big deal):

We walked along this narrow corridor to a door leading up via stairway to the passenger part of the ferry, which looked like this, with a cafe and a duty free shop:

We wandered around on the ferry and looked out the windows and stood out on the deck until it was time to go back down to the train. And then we were in Denmark, where the terrain was much like the terrain in northern Germany (and in Minnesota, for that matter): flat, with a few trees here and there, and lots of farms.

When we got to the Copenhagen bahnhof we did what we normally do: we found the Tourist Information office and asked about various things, including how to find our hotel. Unfortunately we didn't listen very well:  we took a long, circuitous route to our hotel and we eventually found it, about a block and a half from the bahnhof.

We stayed at an inexpensive but new hotel called SteelHouse, which is actually a new style of hostel. We used to stay in hostels in Europe before the invention of Air Bnb, but this one was a cut above what we've been used to. It had a big modern kitchen surrounded by windows, where people can cook their own food, and a game room and house-concert room for the younger folks. You can check in online at a bank of computers in the lobby, and everything is run by your room card, even the elevator. If you don't scan your room card in the elevator, you don't go anywhere, we discovered, until someone clued us in. 

Our room was teeny tiny: just a queen bed and bathroom, and a little bit of floor space so you could walk from one to the other. What does a person really need a floor for at a hotel anyway? The room had a TV and good internet and a shower and a hairdryer; the mainstays of life in the 21st century. The lights were automatic; you didn't have to bother yourself with turning them on and off, but I noticed that you had to flush the toilet and run the sink tap manually. Someday I suppose even that will be automated and we'll never have to touch anything again, just walk around making water taps run and lights go on and off. 

I admit, I felt bad for the housekeepers, though, as making the beds at this place requires kneeling on the mattress and tucking the sheets along the wall. I hate making beds like that, and can't imagine doing it every day, many times over! I hope they have a trick to make it easier.

Anyway, in our tiny room we set down our little shared backpack (we travel light) and headed out for a walk around Copenhagen. We walked past the Tivoli Gardens (the second oldest amusement park in the world, closed in January) and along a pedestrian walkway that wound along for blocks. It felt very safe and was lively with people.  

After about a kilometer of this, we arrived at our destination: Nyhavn, a collection of old houses from the 17th and 18th centuries along a canal with swans in it (who appeared to be doing some mating dances -- heavens!). 


Here's me at Nyhavn:

And here's Gary, looking like a character from some Danny Kaye movie, admiring the clear water in the canal:

From here we walked through the Christianborg Palace (seat of Danish Parliament), and started looking for a place to have dinner. We noticed two helicopters hovering overhead, and the main road was blocked off by the police. My royalty radar was on full alert, even though I knew I wouldn't recognize the Queen of Denmark even if she rode past in a horse-drawn carriage. We came upon a gathering of people in front of the town hall who were waving Danish flags and cheering, and we learned that Denmark had just won the 2019 IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and that the team would be appearing on the balcony at any moment. So that was what all the fuss was about! We didn't know anything about handball or the team, so we continued on, happy to see so many people so happy.

Day Two in Copenhagen

On our second and final day in Copenhagen (we would have stayed longer if we knew we'd love it there so much), we visited the National Museum of Denmark, where they have an amazing collection of Viking artifacts -- we had no idea so much has been unearthed from that era -- and a great history of Denmark from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages too -- right up my alley. I was too busy gawking to take many photos, but I managed to get a photo of these things:

I thought these were part of a modern art installation set inexplicably in the middle of the Bronze Age exhibit, but I learned that these are Lurhorns, "used to create an atmospheric background for Bronze Age rituals." This strikes me as very odd: they had all they could do to make bronze items just to survive through a day, and they made these fanciful horns? So bizarre. All of these lurs were found in bogs around Denmark (as were most of the items in the Danish pre-history part of the museum, including a few human bodies).

We had lunch of open-face Danish sandwiches and beer in the museum cafe, then walked over to the Bertel Thorvaldsen museum. I had never heard of Thorvaldsen: he was a Danish sculptor (1770-1844) who was extremely prolific in his lifetime, carving what seems like hundreds of marble statues, busts, and reliefs, which can be found all over the world. He carved marble in a classical Greek style, such as this one:

... and he's buried in the courtyard in the middle of the museum, which was his request. 

After this, we had to say farewell to Copenhagen, sadly, as we had tickets for the ferry back to Germany that evening. We went to the bahnhof and bought tickets for the train to Malmö over the new (since the year 2000 anyway) 4-km bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. We arrived just as the sun was setting, so we had to wander around Malmö in the dark. We saw enough of it to see that it's a pretty little city, but next time I definitely would like to see it in the daytime!

I managed to find in Malmö what I had hoped to find: semlor! They used to serve this heavenly little cardamom bun -- filled with not-too-sweet whipped cream and marzipan and dusted with powdered sugar -- only between Shrove Tuesday and Lent. But now it's available in bakeries shortly after Christmas. Halluliah!!! (This reminds me, we didn't see many pastry shops in Denmark, which was a surprise considering that the Danish was invented there, I presume.)

We had a busy and somewhat hair-raising evening in Malmö: we had to be at the ferry terminal by 9:00, and we knew we had to take a bus to get there. But we couldn't find a travel information office at the Malmö train station, which would have provided information on where to catch the bus, which bus to take, how much it cost, and how to pay. By asking around, we got a variety of wrong answers and enough correct ones to get us to the remote ferry terminal just in time to board the ferry for Travemunde. It was a good thing we didn't follow through on our idea to grab a bite to eat at the ferry terminal, and had our dinner instead in Malmö, because the ferry terminal consisted of a ticket counter and a too-brightly-lit waiting area with a row of plastic chairs and a vending machine full of candy bars. 

A van drove us and the other "foot passengers" (two girls from Holland) to the ferry and dropped us off next to an elevator on the car deck, which we took to the reception area to get directions to our cabin. The ferry was full, but it was mostly truckers and car drivers. We had a glass of wine (for me) and a Bailey's (for Gary) in the ferry bar, and watched the departure.

After saying goodbye to Malmö (we hardly knew ye!) went back inside, picked up a bottle of cloudberry liqueur at the duty free shop (this is unavailable in the U.S.), and hit the hay, waking up just in time to disembark in Travemunde and head for "home."