Trains and more trains

Copenhagen - 2/5
Finally made it……thank goodness we were able to get this apartment at short notice, expensive but very nice, very central with the famous 17th century Round Tower almost on our doorstep. We have two bedrooms and a big fold-out bed in the living room, coffee machine but no toaster (not a common appliance apparently), dishwasher, laundry, plenty of room to move. There’s a nice square a couple of hundred meters away with cafes, shops, a fountain, small flower market, bakery – when Pete and I stayed in Copenhagen in 2017 we were very close by, it’s so handy to everything.

It was a day of travel, more than we expected but that will be explained later. Pete popped into the nearby church after we checked out of Hotel Refborg, the receptionist told us that it had been built by the man who owned Lego 50 years ago in memory of his daughter who had died in a car crash, and it had just been refurbished, has beautiful stained glass windows – the photo looks like marble I think. She also said the international school is very popular, takes students from age 3 to Year 10, then they have to go to a local secondary school.

We got a local bus to Kolding from Billund, not sure if I’ve said drivers are very conscientious about their passengers wearing seatbelts, big fine if they don’t – even on buses. It was lovely to see the countryside for about 45 minutes, some of it looked very like Canterbury being quite flat, big areas of green, some huge ploughed paddocks, big skies, what looked like shelterbelts but with fairly spindly trees just starting to green up. Then we were into low hills, a bit of forestry, some wind turbines, little lakes including one in the middle of a town with a castle overlooking. Not many rivers or creeks. The paddocks of bright yellow rapeseed were a magnificent sight, some were enormous.

Houses could be dropped into NZ, mostly brick single story or maybe stucco, not the wooden houses we’ve seen in Norway, though I did see a couple of thatched houses in one small town we passed through. There are tall white churches (stucco), two-lane tarsealed cycle paths alongside the main roads. We saw a couple of what looked to be Christmas tree farms, but maybe just tree nurseries. The land was mostly crops, saw quite a few horses and stables, some big goats, a few chooks.

Getting the train was easy, and we had almost three hours through to Copenhagen. The seat numbering had us completely puzzled with window seats numbered in ‘order’ along the carriage 36, 45, 46 and 55. The other side’s double seats were numbered 51 and 53, 42 and 48, 41 and 43. No sense at all.

About half way we came to the Great Belt Bridge which has a train line and a four lane road, it goes across from the island of ZEALAND to tiny Isle of Spogo then splits off for the train to go into an under-sea tunnel, and the road continues over an enormous suspension bridge. It’s an 18km stretch of ‘bridge’ from end to end, what a feat to build it and at that time it was second-longest in the world, beaten by one in Japan. I have put in my own photo but cribbed a couple from the internet including the Spogo lighthouse which I did see but wasn’t quick enough to take a photo, it sits on its own on the island with all the traffic rushing by, very pretty.

Got a cab at the station, lucky they have seven seaters. The driver asked the usual 'where are you from' and when the answer was New Zealand started a conversation about cricket. He was from Pakistan so very happy to talk about his favourite players, Martin Crowe and Richard Hadlee, and the current cricket series in Pakistan just now .

The apartment is lovely and light, an old building built round a central courtyard and they’ve installed a lift which goes directly to only four apartments – it’s pretty clever, bolted onto the outside of the building, you punch in a code to get started and when it stops you open the door directly into the apartment. All the other apartments, you’re on your own, stairs only up to five levels and a narrow staircase. Shame if you have heavy bags, hence my booking this one. They have on-site ‘concierge service’ so we were able to get extra pillows straight away and they replaced the leaking coffee machine very quickly which was appreciated.

Having settled in we had decided to take the local train two stops to find ‘Wild Kiwi Pies’ for a late lunch https://www.wildkiwipies.com/home so we walked through a busy little local square, finally found the right train line (not the Metro which is in the same area), got tickets then…….got on the wrong train and found ourselves headed back towards Billund! Managed to get off at the first stop half an hour away, got on the next train back to the city, gave up the idea of genuine steak and cheese pies (poor Andy, he was hanging out for them) and had McDonalds at the station instead. We were ready for it too, it was close to 5pm.
Had time to look around while waiting - the main concourse has stained glass windows and big chandeliers, quite impressive. Also I went to the toilet and had to pay 5 kroner, around NZ$1, for the privilege. Pay by card, not a problem at all.

Ah well, the train thing was an easy mistake, there’s not much English around. Last stop was at a small supermarket at the corner of our street, and a quiet evening in our new ‘home’. We’ll try for pies another day, fingers crossed.

An observation: There are some very tall people in Denmark – and that’s not just said because I’m short. I think I barely come up to their waists.Read more