Zumi's Blog

Welcome back to my travel log ;)

Day 3: Hamburg and Train to Copenhagen

Having stayed up until 3am writing the last part, I had a good late sleep, taking off at around 10. As it was not the best weather, we decided to just walk around until we got to a food place this time. During this walk, I did the usual: took some photos of the every day streets and places. As always, I don't try to find the best angles or scenery, just what a common pedestrian may see from a morning walk to work. That said, I must say it was pretty enjoyable.

We ended up getting some food at a native-looking Gasthaus. My friend and I was looking forward to trying Hamburg's traditional Labskaus, but we made a mistake reading the menu and thought they had a meat version of it (lol). In the end, I took it anyway, while my friend got something else. We were in the end pleasantly surprised that there was (a lot of) fish on the plate. Good dish, I must say. I liked the pickled beetroots too, despite the vegetable not being my favorite.

In the afternoon, the weather wasn't so great, so we decided to just stay in a café. With some drinks ordered, we passed the time, until our next trains onward to Copenhagen at around 5.40pm. I didn't pass on one last chance to get another Bratwurst, unfortunately I was too eager to munch the whole thing and didn't take any photos ;)

Train to Copenhagen

The “standard” way to go from Hamburg to Copenhagen is by an ICE directly connecting the two cities. But, being the broke student I am, we opted for a triplet of trains instead: a Deutsche Bahn train from Hamburg dropping us off at the border down of Flensburg; followed by two DSV (Denmark national train) trains towards Fredericia and Copenhagen respectively.

Nothing spectacular about this trip: the DB train was about 10 minutes late, but as all connections were ~25 minutes apart (a concsiderate decision from DSV, I assume!), there was no trouble. We arrived at Copenhagen at the exact expected arrival time, which was a bit over midnight.

My first impression of Denmark, which already started in Fredericia...

Everything, including toilets, are spotlessly clean! And...

7-Elevens?!

Copenhagen, first impressions

The main station gave me a Montreal station vibe, with a twist of red-and-white (and a lot of 7-Elevens)!

Our ho(s)tel is about three metro stations from Copenhagen main station, and so we found ourselves there in a few minutes. One note about the station: you can walk from the tracks to the underground metro passage, but the station signs insists on you getting out of the main station and head into the Metro tracks after crossing a road. Strange decision to be sure, but it could be a time-saving measure, as I expect it would take a bit less time than crossing the tunnels.

The metro was clean and spacious.

... and so are the streets. Look at that And there is a lot of 7-elevens.

We checked in quite late, but the reception was expecting us – and checking in can be done automatically, so there was no hassle. We got a small and cozy room, time to sleep!

Day 4: Copenhagen @ Christmas Eve

We woke up around the not-so-early 9am. It has crossed our minds that stores will close early on this day, so we were prepared. There is a Netto right close to our place, so we went there looking for some food and drinks.

Potatoes-in-a-jar

We walked down the main streets of Copenhagen, just acknowledging that museums are expected to be closed for both the 24th and 25th. I wanted a coffee (as a caffeine-holic), so we were walking towards some of the nearest cafés according to Google Maps. I was treated with a cozy atmosphere and lots of space on every street. This is a pedestrian haven, that's for sure.

Looking around, we found a lot of Japanese tourists coming to Copenhagen. We decided to also follow the Japanese tradition, and spent our first Danish lunch... in KFC ;)

Afterwards, more walking around. We visited the Kastellet and the streets surrounding, peeking at all 7-elevens we crossed along the route. Feeling slightly hungry, we ook an S-Bahn back to the main station, and turned our way back to the shopping street...

Extra photo dump

That Dinner Story

As you could've guessed from your own experience, most places close early on Christmas Eve. Including restaurants. This leaves a problem for tourists: what do we have for dinner? The answer is: restaurants run by foreigners themselves. Across the shopping street, we found the following options: – Mr. Pho, a Vietnamese-style restaurant serving Vietnamese popular dishes as the name suggests. Reviews do say they are run by Chinese residents though, and so our pride does not let us come in. – Burger King, I mean, yeah. – Wok Box, serving Chinese noodle soups and such. Was promising until we peeked inside and saw people slurping disgusting looking noodle for ~$20. – The two Shawarma places. – Instant Ramen from 7-Eleven.

I think we ended up pondering this question for hours, walking back and forth on the street (and between it and our hotel) about a dozen times before finally committing on one of the Shawarma places. And this is the result:

And it turned out, as always, ramen is better than anything.

And that's the end of the 4th day...