Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
10. Copenhagen
I took a train to Copenhagen. I like travelling by train in Denmark because you are forever getting on
and off ferries. It takes longer, but it's more fun. I don't know how anyone could fail to experience that frisson
of excitement that comes with pulling up alongside a vast white ship that is about to sail away with you
aboard it. I grew up a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, so for me any sea voyage, however brief,
remains a novelty. But I noticed that even the Danes and Germans, for whom this must be routine, were
peering out of the windows with an air of expectancy as we reached the docks at Puttgarden and our train
was shunted onto the ferry, the
Karl Carstens.
Here's a tip for you if you ever travel on a Scandinavian ferry. Don't be the first off the train, because
everyone will follow you, trusting you to find the way into the main part of the ship. I was in a group of about
300 people following a flustered man in a grey trilby who led us on a two-mile hike around the cargo deck,
taking us up and down long avenues of railway carriages and huge canvas-sided trucks, casting irritated
glances back at us as if he wished we would just go away, but we knew that our only hope was to stick to
him like glue and, sure enough, he eventually found a red button on the wall, which when pressed opened a
secret hatch to the stairwell.
Overcome with new frissons of excitement, everyone clambered hurriedly up the metal stairs and made
straight for the buffet. You could tell the nationality of the people by what they went for. The Germans all had
plates piled high with meat and potatoes, the Danes had Carlsbergs and cream cakes, the Swedes one
piece of Ryvita with a little dead fish on it. The queues were too much for me, so I went up on the top deck
and stood out in the sunshine and gusty breeze as the boat cast off and, with a sound oddly like a washing
machine on its first cycle, headed across the twelve miles of white-capped water between northern
Germany and the Danish island of Lolland. There were about eight of us, all men, standing in the stiff
breeze, pretending we weren't perishing. Slowly Puttgarden receded behind us in a wake of foam and
before long Lolland appeared over the horizon and began to glide towards us, like a huge low-lying sea
monster.
You cannot beat sea travel, if you ask me, but there's not much of it left these days. Even now grand
plans are under way to run bridges or tunnels between all the main islands of Denmark and between
Copenhagen and Sweden, and even across this stretch of water between Puttgarden and Rdbyhavn, so
that people will be able to zip across it in ten minutes and scarcely notice that they have moved from one
country to another. This new European impulse to blur the boundaries between countries seems a mite
misguided to me.
At Rdbyhavn, our frissons spent, we all reboarded the train and rode listlessly through the rest of the
afternoon to Copenhagen. Denmark was much neater and emptier than northern Germany had been. There
were no factories as there had been in Germany and none of that farmyard clutter of abandoned tractors
and rusting implements that you see in Belgium and Holland. Big electricity-generating wind turbines, their
three-bladed fans spinning sluggishly, were dotted around the low hillsides and stood in ranks in the shallow
coastal bays. It was a pity, I thought with that kind of distant casualness that comes with looking at things that
are already sliding from view, that they hadn't made them more attractive - like scaled-up Dutch windmills
perhaps.
It seemed odd and sad that mankind could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with
structures that seemed made for it - little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills,
windingroads, hedgerows - and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countryside that wasn't
like a slap across the face. These days everything has at best a sleek utility, like the dully practical windmills
slipping past with the scenery outside my train window, or else it looks cheap and temporary, like the tin
sheds and concrete hangars that pass for superstores on the edge of every medium-sized town. We used
to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.
We reached Copenhagen's central station at a little after five, but the station tourist office was already
closed. Beside it stood a board with the names of thirty or so hotels and alongside each hotel was a small
red light to indicate whether it was full or not. About two-thirds of the lights were lit, but there was no map to
