Coffee – Page 6 – It's all about the coffee

Berlin or Bust

After the delayed train in the morning by 20 minutes we were on our way to Berlin. the delay was only 20 minutes, so I didn’t really think much of it until I check my ticket and the exact change over between trains in Hamburg was exactly 20 minutes. I’m thinking this could be a tight changeover. Website says they arrive on same platform, one on platform 5 and one directly opposite on platform 6. If this holds true it might just be do-able. We start making up a bit of time, but this goes to custard when we get to Rodby where the train is put on a ferry, and the ferry doesn’t wait. We have to wait at Rodby for the next ferry. It’s offical. I’ve missed the train I’m booked on and not quite sure what will happen now

Where I was sitting was too good to be true, in all the confusion back in Copenhagen with the delay and two trains coming in, I’d got on the wrong carriage. This train splits and the half I was sitting on didn’t go to Hamburg. Luckily the ticket inspector pointed out my error and I was soon where I should be, with more people around me.

The Danish ticket inspector doesn’t know what we need to do about the missed connections and says to talk to the German ticket inspector once over the border in Germany. When that happened, it was easily sorted. Just get any train she says and tell them this one was delayed. Bummer is I’ve lost my seat reservation. To fix that, there are two trains out of Hamburg that will get be to Berlin before 4pm, so I get online and reserve a seat on both of them just in case I miss the 12.51pm as it even looks like that would be a tight connection.

Putting the train on the Ferry was very interesting, cars, busses, trucks and this train. It’s basically a car carrying duty free shop with a few cafes. Food options were Schnitzel, fish and chips, hot dog or spaghetti. Most of the major European food groups covered… As soon as the cars and train were on, we had to exit the train (safety in case the boat sinks) and almost everyone bolted for the duty free to load up on cigarettes and booze.

Train going onto the ferry, trucks beside it, cars one level up and it was a tight squeeze getting off the train to the stairs / lift up to the main deck.

A few shots from around the ferry. Last one is the train actually going into the ferry. Not sure if it was pulled, pushed in or under its own power.

We get into Hamburg in plenty of time for 12.51 (6 minutes wait) it pulls in and it’s an old Czech Republic run train. Nothing wrong with them really, I took one from Auschwitz to Krakow in Poland and it was fine. A bit old and worn out, but I’ve paid to travel on the high speed ICE trains and damn it, I want that one. It leaves almost an hour later, but only arrives in Berlin 20 minutes behind the Czech one, so decision is made. Turns out it was an excellent decision, the ICE train is wonderful.

Old Czech train vs modern sleek high speed ICE train.

I need not have bothered booking a seat, 1st class was almost empty I had little booth all to my self. Sure enough when the ticket inspector came around I told her the Danish train was late and she said that’s all fine and scanned my ticket.

Train gets up to 230kph. It may have gone faster but this is what it was doing when I stuck my head around the corner to look at the display

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Arrived in Berlin, HBF is ginormous. One of the biggest train stations I’ve ever seen. Found my hotel easily, its next door. Fantastic room, ultra modern, decent internet and it also includes free metro travel. Damn… I’m only here for two nights. A few coffee places around, headed over to Alexanderplatz to join my bike/food tour. Thought I might miss this tour with the train stuffups but made it easily with an hour to kill. Photos are of the Alexanderplatz TV tower (built during the East Germany times), the Berlin HBF station and a metro train.

I had an ice cold coffee whilst I waited for the tour.

Travel

Dinner and Tivoli

After cycling down to 108 and sampling the coffee, I noticed another large outdoor food market. This is something Copenhagen excels at is food markets. Apart from the cafe where I’ve had a coffee I have not set foot in a restaurant, it all been street/van/market food, and its all been amazing quality and delicious.

It’s not cheap though by any means, Copenhagen is living up to it’s expensive reputation. The sandwiches with soft drink have cost me around $23, and tonight’s dinner and lemonade cost me $32. This would be super expensive for a family of 4 or 5. Add in an ice cream after dinner and per person you won’t get much change out of $50 per person. And remember, this is food stall prices. Coffee that costs me $4 at home cost $8 here.

So after riding around a bit past the Opera house, I went back to the street food place and had a closer look

Some of the food options

I couldn’t go past the Singapore ribs with roti bread.

After devouring that, I rode back to the Tivoli gardens. Even though it’s not really my thing, you can’t come here and not go inside. Single entry to the gardens, no rides included, A$25. O-U-C-H. An unlimited ride pass will cost you another A$50. Individual rides are between $6 and $18 each. No rides for me….

The gardens are pretty. Worth A$25 for entry? Umm…..

Since this is my last night and I had some coins to get rid of, nothing better than ice cream on a warm night. I’ll be paying heavily for this food indulgence when I get home…

Here are some of the restaurant boards of your wondering what restaurant prices are like. All prices in Danish Kroner. A$1 = 4.72DKK at time of writing

Yes you read that right peeps, on this board below a serve of snitty is $42. Add a beer and you just dusted $56. Probably closer to $60 with the fees on exchange etc….

Travel

A Danish Danish in Danish

After deciding that I was just going to cycle around by myself today, after grabbing my coffee at Wecycle (which was excellent). I decided to cycle down to Christiana Freetown. Thankfully I got my coffee where I did, as whilst there were people about, not much was open and I seemed to arrive in the middle of a drug bust / sweep as there were cops everywhere. I’m gathering that a lot of the locals made themselves very scarce at this exact point. The literature on this place says to avoid taking photos as it makes the locals nervous, but given the “enhanced” police presence I snapped a few anyway as it was unlikely anyone would complain or try and stand out at this exact moment.

I spent about 10 minutes there before heading off, this place is probably more lively in the evening and when the boys in blue go home. If this little place had a king it would be Bob Marley. Overall I think Christiana Freetown was the least interesting most overhyped thing I’ve done in Copenhagen. I’m just not into this stuff.

I decided to head over to the old water storage cistern on Copenhagen thats been turned into an art display hall. It was about a 30min bike ride away, i could have gone a shorter route but I wanted to take the bike snake again.

And here is a video of the bike snake.

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If you are wondering how I navigate around town on the bike, google maps on the phone in the basket. The spoken navigation makes it a breeze. I had a Danish person ask me for directions. They were amused to see an Australian riding in the back streets of Copenhagen.

The cistern is pretty cool, literally cool, about 10c cooler than outside. Its quite humid. The display was interesting, lots of reflective things, fire and balls gonging on metal bowls. Not sure the actual artistic intention but it was pretty cool none the less. The fire bit was interesting, the closer you got to it, the more it shot out flames. Of course geeky me was looking for all the fire safe mechanisms to see how it cut out to prevent someone roasting them selves, and sure enough there was a sensor that would cut it out instantly if you got too close. There were also fire blankets and extinguishers for that “one person” who would get a little toasty. The whole place was quite dark, the photos show it brighter than it was in reality.

The cistern is an old 19th century water storage area which was taken out of service in the 1930s and drained in the 1980s. It’s on a hill and they used to pump water into it. It’s under these beautiful gardens.

The actual display. In reality much darker than this

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It was raining a little when I came out, so I decided to head down to Torvehallerne where I had lunch yesterday and get another Danish open sandwich. The queue was massive so I decided to grab a coffee at the “COFFE3 COLLECTIVE” again. Another awesome brew and I noticed its actually written up in my guide book as a recommend coffee place.

I couldn’t come to Denmark and *not* have a Danish pastry. I tried ordering my Danish Danish pastry in Danish “Jeg woud som et dansk wienerbrød tak”, however failed spectacularly as the sales person at the counter spoke to me in English as soon as I even tried. Interestingly enough Danish Pastries are not called a “Danish” here. They are Viennese Breads ! What ever it’s called, I called it delicious.

Wandered around for a while and the queue for the open sandwich (Smørrebrød) had died down so I ordered a roast beef one. It had roast beef, corn pickle, dried onion, pickles and onion. It was sensational, way better than the one yesterday which was chicken.

Some of the other mouth watering selections

The food being prepared

I rode round the neighbourhood a bit, it started raining again so decided to head back to the hotel for an hour or so until the rain is predicted to clear. Much cooler here today than it was yesterday.

Cycling in Copenhagen is easy. Interesting when turning left (the difficult turn, as riding on the right hand side) you never ever sit in the centre of the intersection, cyclists are expected to do hook turns just like you do in Melbourne to avoid trams

Even though I rode in Paris, on the road it was still a little hair raising when not on a bike lane, In Copenhagen it feels very safe. Here I am doing a left turn.

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Once I’d had a break and the rain had died down, I went out to the Round Tower. Read about that adventure here

Travel

Wecycle Copenhagen

Wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do today, there are a few options, I’ve decided already that I love this city. I’d signed up for the bike share so thought about hiring a bike and cruising around

Those bikes worked out at $6 an hour, not outrageously expensive but I had to find a local docking station. I discovered the hotel has bike rental for 125DKK (about $26) and I have it till midnight.

I wanted to cycle over the famous “bike snake” so headed that way and thought I’d cruise towards Christiana, a cool hip neighbourhood in the city, and if it’s full of hipsters with the munchies it’s likely to do good coffee somewhere.

I didn’t even make it into the area when I went past Wecycle. A combination bike shop and cafe. In essence, my dream cafe. To top it off the coffee was awesome, 9/10

Here is the link to their website.

My ride for the day

Travel

The Bridge (not too far)

Copenhagen to Malmo.

So what do you do on a hot afternoon after a bike tour of Copenhagen ? You hop on a train and go straight to Sweden of course!. Copenhagen is one of Europe’s best cycling cities, so I absolutely wanted to experience that, but it also has one of Europe’s most recent engineering marvels, the Øresund Bridge which links Copenhagen in Denmark with Malmo in Sweden. Ideally I would love to cross it by car, but that seems way to much hassle to hire a car just to drive across the bridge. Apparently the toll is also extravagant for single use, around €45, so it would also be an expensive adventure crossing it twice. Luckily there is a train that crosses it, and the bonus with that is I can take some pictures whilst crossing it. Not an option if I’m driving a car.

Well I thought I’d be able to take pictures, unfortunately the actually crossing on the train is visually boring. The train tracks are under the road bride, so you don’t actually see the bride itself when crossing, apart from a few girders holding it up. As the bridge only has a slight curve you don’t see the bridge when going round the curve on the train. Oh well at least I know I’ve crossed it and been to Sweden.

Uber is not an option either, as its been shut down in Denmark, but not quite sure if Uber will work across an international border like this even if it was open, and I’d still be up for the tolls.

Both Sweden and Denmark are in the Schengen area, so in theory you should be able to cross between the two countries without your passport, but given the 2016 refugee crisis and controversy in Europe, the Schengen zone was suspended for some time on this particular crossing and there were spot immigration controls, so there is no way I’d risk crossing this border without my passport on hand. Probably not something I’d ever do anyway (cross any international border without it), but certainly more conscious of the requirement to keep it with me on this one. The killer point though is that when you buy your ticket, no one tells you to take your passport, you just hop on the train like its any other metro service.

Luckily I’d researched this before and had the presence of mind to remember to come back to the hotel to get my passport. On the train just after crossing into Sweden, border control did go through the train and asked to see my passport. One the question of “how long are you intending to stay in Sweden” my answer of “10 minutes” received a bit of a chuckle, however she did check I had a return ticket to Australia, and a valid Schengen stamp in my passport. The immigration crisis in Europe is real, and its constantly mentioned by people.

To Sweden and back costs about A$35. There is an automated machine for “tickets to Sweden” but I couldn’t work out how to buy a return ticket. Luckily there was a Danish Transport person at the machines helping people buy tickets. Once I got to Sweden, I bought a cold drink from the supermarket, walked outside the station to snap a few pictures “I’ve Been to Sweden Too !” and then caught the next train back to Denmark. (no passport checks heading back the other way)

Tickets and Ticket Machine in Copenhagen

Waiting for the train

Unfortunately you don’t see much from the train itself.

ABBA land approaching….

A few photos from Malmo below. I think this is the record shortest time I’ve ever spent in a country. The cool ice coffee was much appreciated on this hot day. Apparently this is the hottest and driest summer in Denmark since they have been keeping records (about 174 years). As Mike mentioned on the bike tour, the climate in Copenhagen is terrible, Danes have waited 174 years for a summer like this. Too me, being Australian from Sydney it feels totally normal, if we didn’t get a majority of summers days like this people would be ranting. Of course the news from home today is that pipes are freezing over. This is the Winter Sydney has never had before…

Malmo in 10 Minutes..