Of cabbages and roller coasters

As usual, I woke up at stupid o’clock. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. It was all quiet outside. I am pretty sure I’ve been in room 304 before. It looked over the back of the hotel into a sort of garden which is preferable to the other side which overlooks a busy road. And so, nice and peaceful.

I went downstairs for the usual very hearty breakfast (saves me having lunch on the train) at around 9am then turned around and returned to the room. There was not a free seat to be had. Even for ready money.

Returning at 10am, things were a lot calmer.

I sat next to a trio of English women who were clearly in Copenhagen to celebrate someone’s 50th birthday. I know this because propped up on one of the seats was a blow up thing with a photo of a woman printed on it and the words ‘fabulous 50’ written across it.

The woman sitting next to the balloon monster said she went to get something out of the wardrobe this morning and scared herself silly when she saw it.

My reaction was similar when I arrived at Copenhagen statin to find that I appear to be the new face of Fisherman’s Friend.

Train #3: Copenhagen to Hamburg

As I was waiting for the train to arrive, I spotted a Danish named train sitting at the platform. The name on the driver’s cab was Kaj Munk. Now he was a fascinating man which is, obviously, why they named a train after him.

Munk was both a playwright and a Lutheran pastor. He made an unfortunate remark about admiring Hitler when he first came to power, uniting Germany but then decided he was, in fact, an arsehole. Still, people didn’t let him forget it.

Then the tables turned, and he started preaching about Danes who collaborated with the Nazis. This pissed the Nazis off, and so they killed him, dumping his body in a ditch beside a road.

As well as being a bit anti-fascist, he also wrote quite a few plays, all of which have been performed at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen. His most famous and admired work is called Ordet (The Word) which he wrote in 1925. It was subsequently turned into a movie in 1943 by Gustaf Molander then, again in 1955 by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Anyway, enough about the train that I didn’t catch (Kaj Munk was going to Göteborg) and onto the one I did catch. I should have realised when the carriage I was booked into wasn’t where it was supposed to be that I was in for a bumpy ride. But I was lulled into a false sense of security by a father and son who were sat opposite me and helped pass the time as we chugged through Denmark and then Germany.

Jan and his son Ian were from California. Jan was half German, which turned out quite helpful later on the journey. His wife and Ian’s mother had been with them (in Paris and Stockholm and various other places) but had to head back to the US for business reasons and Ian wanted to visit a playground in Hamburg before they visited Jan’s German parents.

Ian was a total cack. We discussed all manner of things (he was about 4 years old and very gregarious) including the interaction between Delta planes and German ambulances, from cabbage trees growing beside the railway line to visiting Disneyland almost every week and the roller coasters.

Jan explained that they don’t live very far from Disneyland and Ian loves going and visiting with Mickey, Goofy and many other Disney characters. It has got to the point where the people inside the costumes have got to know Ian quite well and make a big fuss of him.

Anyway, the three of us had a splendid trip until we started running late. Did I write ‘we’? It wasn’t us, it was something on the line ahead of us. At first, it only affected the train by about five then ten minutes. By the time we reached Hamburg we were delayed by two hours.

The train didn’t make it to Hamburg. We sat at a station in the middle of nowhere until the train guard announced that we were not going anywhere and should all go and catch a bus. I have no idea if there was supposed to be a special train replacement service but there were not many buses and an awful lot of people.

Jan had the brilliant idea to get an Uber and asked if I’d like to join them. It didn’t take me long to consider his offer. We moved away from the bus stop that was overflowing with people and moved to the min road to wait. Eventually a nice chap pulled over. He was our ride. We had a very pleasant drive to Hamburg, non-stop and everything. This was where Jan’s command of the German language came in very handy because the driver had less English than I have Swedish.

I bid my new-found friends adieu at their hotel and dragged my bag up the hill to the station where I had a ten-minute wait for an ICE train to Cologne. On the next platform across from mine there was a sizeable crowd waiting for a train which I’m glad I didn’t have to catch.

Train #4: Hamburg to Cologne

And so, my final train for today took me to Cologne and was, predictably, late in arriving. Still, it was a very comfortable ICE train with hardly many passengers. The journey was comfortable and even had table service so I could make up for the fact that I didn’t get a bratwurst at Hamburg station like a usually do. Clearly I’ll have to make up for it on the way home.

Arriving in Cologne at just gone midnight on a Saturday night is not particularly pleasant unless you’re one of the late night revellers of course. I wheeled my bag through various crowds of late night drinkers until I reached my hotel.

I drank an entire large bottle of fizzy mineral water before collapsing onto the bed.