Trondheim to Copenhagen

I decided to not learn my lesson about night trains, and booked one from Trondheim to Oslo and then on to Copenhagen via a short stop at Gothenburg. Google Maps tells me that’s just over 1,000km but it felt a lot longer.

It all started going wrong at Trondheim — I arrived at the station a couple of hours early, just to check where I’d be only for the information screen to have a big “CANCELLED” next to my train. I knew that they’d had problems with the line so it was supposed to be a bus partly, but I didn’t know if they meant the whole train was cancelled or just “the train is cancelled so get ready for a bus”. There was no-one around to ask and not wanting to be tricked I decided to outwit the train company and got to a couple of stops away where I caught the night train.

It wasn’t as bad as last time (no muttering, elbowing Norwegian) but I still struggled to sleep, and as the train was late setting off I was a bit worried about arriving into Oslo late. If that happened I’d miss my onwards connection and then miss the train to Copenhagen which would be quite costly. All was fine in the end, and I made it to Gothenburg.

I was disinclined to explore much as I was very tired by now and it was grey, overcast and I had all my luggage with me. There were a ton of people begging too, which is always awkward when you have nothing to give. I did like woman who kept thrusting her hand in front of people without saying anything but lost all respect for her when she did it to an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair.

Anyway, my train to Copenhagen soon arrived and I was happy to be on it (in my mind making the train was all I had to do, then I’d be fine). I was also happy with the people I was sat with — there was an alcoholic yuppie man, a woman who looked on the verge of screaming in terror and a lovely young lady opposite me who kept resting her leg against mine. All was well with the world until there came a babble of Swedish over the loudspeaker accompanied by loud groans.

It is my fault for not speaking the language, I admit that, but when something unfortunate has happened that will affect you and you don’t know what’s going on it is a little alarming. Worse, my lady friend had departed the stop before so I had to ask the alcoholic yuppie what was going on. Apparently the train had broken down or there was a problem with the line or the conductor just didn’t like the look of my face, so we had to get a bus to the next station and then the next available train.

I’m a pretty new traveller but I’ve done a lot of public transport before and I’ve never seen such blatant disregard for the passengers. No-one had any clue what to do, what bus to get on or where to get it from. There was no-one to ask apart from fellow passengers. Replacement coaches eventually showed up, but without helpful signs saying where they were going. It was raining, I was cold and tired and at the moment Sweden was the last place I wanted to be.

I was also a little peeved that the “women and children first” rule (although I’d like to amend that to “women and children first, then English tourists who don’t really know what’s going on” rule) didn’t seem to apply here. After the first 2 coaches had left there were still a few families with small children left standing in the cold which seemed a bit harsh to me. Upon reaching the next station I managed to miss the next train by about 20 seconds so I took the opportunity to invent some new swear words and go look for food and pay a modest fortune to use the bathroom.

Anyway, I finally made it to Copenhagen, by now quite weary indeed. However, it did give me the opportunity to create a new Travel Rule: try not to arrive at a destination late on a Friday night. Everywhere in central Copenhagen there were drunk people, some of which wanted to talk to me about my “cool bag” (it’s not a cool bag if you need to make a little “hup!” noise to yourself every time you hoist it onto your back, trust me) and seemed very disappointed that I wasn’t from somewhere exciting “like Australia or Ireland”. Well excuse me, but I thought rural Lancashire was where it’s at.

The hostel was a couple of kilometers from the station, so it wasn’t too badly located. I’ve recently put my first travelogue entry on Medium and compared to how I was then with shared rooms I’m much better. I’m positively eager now to see who I’m to be sharing with, although by now I’ve done it enough times to be realistic in my expectations — as long as they’re not actively engaged in murder when I arrive I count that as a good thing.

This time I showed up and there was a guy who completely ignored my hello (I didn’t get the name, obviously, so we’ll just call him rick with a capital P) and left the room, and an American lady who was polite but not very friendly and stayed in with me for the evening.

It is quite strange doing the usual domestic tasks with someone there you’ve never met before. In this case it was almost exactly how I’d imagine it feels when your wife is very angry with you but doesn’t want an argument. It was strange but also quite funny and I thought I did very well to not burst out giggling awkwardly when she asked if it was OK if she could turn the light off.

This is one of the weird things about solo travel, you come across quite a lot of people that you share a bit of time with in quite close proximity (if we’d been of a mind to we could have held hands from our respecting top bunks) but your time together is short and if people aren’t friendly you tend not to go to much effort either, because there’s always more people around. Still, as pretend wives go she was OK I suppose, and I’m sure I had my failings as a pretend husband too.

Copenhagen was much nicer in the day than I’d remembered from the previous evening. I’d arranged to meet the inestimable Adam for a coffee in the afternoon, so I had to be on it in the morning. I hadn’t really researched very well, so I went to the first museum I came across which was the very silly Guinness World Record museum, which I’m not ashamed to admit I enjoyed quite a lot. I did make a mistake in also buying the ticket to the tacky ghost house, which was clearly meant for children but fortunately was empty so no-one noticed my embarrassment.

I felt I should balance out the cheap world records with something Classy and Sophisticated, so I went to a really cool art installation that was a representation of a ship inside a church. Then I wandered over to the Thorvaldsen museum which had sculptures set to live musicians which was an amazing effect. The purple toga-clad musicians would wander around the exhibition playing their music as if you’re not there and the effect was so good. I wish more places did things like this, these things can be a bit dry so it’s nice to add something to the atmosphere.

I meant to go and have a look at some of the other museums too, but time was running short so I went to meet Adam for coffee at a waffle place in Mindeankeret which was nice, great to have a catch up and I also got a fantastic tip about a place to go for food. This was especially useful as I’m very bad at finding good food places.

The place I went was the street food place on Paper Island, which is this large industrial warehouse that’s home (for the moment anyway, it’s closing on the 22nd of December) to a large variety of street food vendors. It wasn’t too expensive (I’d come from Norway the day before, remember — it’s all relative) and was just the right amount of people to be not too empty or too busy. I had a delicious ostrich burger and felt very pleased with my choice.

I was only in Copenhagen for 2 nights so I thought I’d take a stroll around the streets before I left and I enjoyed it, Copenhagen is much nicer than I gave it credit for when I arrived. I do this a lot when I’m in a new place (one day it’ll get me mugged, I’m sure) and usually not much happens other than I get a bit lost, but this time I managed to upset a guard outside Fredrick’s Church (if you’re reading this by any chance I’m really sorry!) by accidentally stopping in his guard pacing path. It was horrible because the whole plaza was deserted and it looked like I’d stopped there just to be annoying. That wasn’t my intention, I thought I was being clever walking where he wasn’t so I wouldn’t get in the way, I didn’t know he’d want to turn and come back.

Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, I made my apologies and went back to my pretend wife wondering if I should buy flowers on the way but decided that would be a bit weird.

Overall though I liked Copenhagen. It’s still a Scandinavian city so it’s not cheap, but I think I should have done another day and night there. It’s much more lively than the other places in Scandinavia I’ve been to but it’s not too busy (although I’d avoid the area around the train station at 10 on a Friday evening). I will definitely come back and finish off the stuff I didn’t see, but I might wait until that guard has retired first. Written on November 9th, 2017 by David Seddon