Day Three: Monday 12th August
Journey: Boden, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark
The Öresundståg which crosses the bridge from Sweden to Denmark.
After one more peaceful night and a morning more to get acquainted with the blood-thirsty Icelandic Poet Egil, we arrived in Stockholm. Upon arriving Linnea ran to the ticket desk with all the frenzy a Marathon-runner can summon when her ego is challenged and managed to get us new tickets for the next train to Copenhagen. We therefore only stayed in the Swedish capital for about forty minutes.
The subsequent hours spent in the Stockholm-Malmö-Copenhagen line were boring as hell and besides having clear weather while passing the Öresund bridge, nothing of note happened. When reaching Copenhagen we quickly got tickets for Hirtshals, the departure port for the Iceland-bound ferry and ended up with a good deal of free time in the Danish capital. We put our luggage in safes and simply went out of the station.
Because we already knew the area around the Tivoli amusement park quite well we simply decided to go in the other direction. This proved to be quite an interesting choice indeed as it directly led us to the uglier part of the capital where the only thing outnumbering old Kebab shops were the various sex-shops and cheap strip-clubs.
Wandering the streets of Copenhagen.
Finally in Copenhagen! Lyonel consults the map.
We thankfully managed to get out of there rather quickly and entered a café. We drank some very good chai latte but, in an effort to contain our inner Hipsters, ran out of there before starting to Instagram about the place. We walked a bit more, there were some pretty buildings, some less, some boutiques that made us wish we’d come earlier in the day (strangely enough, we’re never in Copenhagen during day/week time, weird…) and ultimately found refuge in a trendy cinema not so far from the central station.
There, following counsel from our fellow Utropia propagandist Cameron Thompson, we saw a movie. The movie was called “Now You See Me”. It was about magicians and illusionists. It was quite good. (If you want to read a better account of the film you’d better read Cameron’s piece in Utropia. After the film we headed back to the station and waited for the last leg of our journey by train.
While waiting, we couldn’t help to notice a small band of hippies, quietly smoking pot in front of a couple of the DSB train company’s conductors. The conductors seemed to be either completely oblivious or just acted laid-back as Danes tend to do.
These office workers were obviously so bored they started playing Pac Man.
Shortly after this the train arrived, and in rushed an insane amount of people. Strangely enough for a late Monday evening, the train was almost full, and besides driving the whole night, it had neither couchettes nor any other sleeping apparatus ready for its travelers. As a result, this last (and first, too…) night in Denmark proved to be rather hellish, with very little actual sleeping and continuous disturbance from the conductor’s increasingly un-fathomable Danish accent.
After having slept for just about five combined minutes and crossed the whole country, we changed trains to get on the regional Jylland-Bane for the last twenty minutes of our journey…
