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There and Back Again
Jun. 23rd, 2011 08:02 pmI travelled all the way to Stockholm by train and back, and on the whole the train services were on time.
I started on Monday 13th by taking the Eurostar to Brussels and then the Thalys (the Belgian high speed train) to Cologne. I reckoned this was about the furthest along my route I could go in a day if I left home at a reasonable time in the morning and got to my destination in time for dinner. I arrived in Cologne just after seven in the evening.
The next day, I took the train to Hamburg, a German city I'd never visited. The journey takes about four hours, so I was there by mid afternoon.
Thursday morning, I was off again, and here my troubles started. I was booked on a train to Copenhagen which was due to leave Hamburg 09:28. It left about fifteen minutes late. This train takes the boat part of the way. At Puttgarden in Germany, the train runs onto a boat and all the passengers have to get off and wander around the boat. The boat then goes to Denmark, all the passengers get back on, and the train goes on its way again. By the time we got to Puttgarden, the train was half an hour late. As I had a 27 minute window in Copenhagen for my train to Stockholm I was starting to get worried.
As it happened, the train made up time going through Denmark and I had ten minutes to spare at Copenhagen station, and that station is not large. It was then that I discovered I was travelling first class for this part of the journey. Indeed, there was so little activity in the compartment, and as the train left ten minutes late, I worried I'd got on part of the train taken out of service. Turns out that most of the passengers get on in Malmo.
Then the return. The train from Stockholm left on time yesterday morning. I wondered why the on-train announcements kept on referring to the philosopher Schopenhauer. I finally realised that Copenhagen is pronounced in Swedish as schopen-harm.
A couple of oddities about stations. Stockholm Central station does not appear to have a platform 9. I saw signs to platforms 1-8 and 11-18, and platform 10 was where my train left, right next to the central concourse. But I never found platform 9.
In Copenhagen, from the central concourse, there are steps down to paired platforms from 1 to 14, but also a sign saying that access to platform 26 is from the end of platforms 5 and 6. It says it is 300m away, a fifteen minute walk, which seems excessively slow walking to me.
Anyway, the sleeper from Copenhagen to Cologne left on time last night. I appeared to have the compartment to myself and the attendant put the bed down just after ten. Eleven o'clock, I turned in.
Between one and two there was a knock on the door and the attendant told me there was another person joining the compartment, so he had to put the bunk bed down. After that, I drifted off to sleep.
About 5:30, I woke up needing the loo. As I was supposed to get a wake-up call about that time, I decided to get dressed. But when I went out into the corridor, the train was stationary in a station. I saw the attendant and asked him where we were. Hannover, he said. I guessed what had happened, and he confirmed we were now running three hours late. We had to follow the sleeper from Moscow, and that was late. We were due in Cologne at 6:14, and my connection to Brussels was at 08:44. I knew I was going to miss that. (Last time I caught this sleeper, three years ago, I was two hours late into Cologne for the same reason.)
I went back to the compartment to get some more sleep, but at six there was a knock on the door. Now the train was being diverted and was no longer going to call at Cologne, but there was an ICE from Berlin due in at 06:21, and my ticket would be valid. I quickly assembled my stuff and I even got my complimentary breakfast as I was leaving the train.
The early morning ICE was very comfortable and almost empty. Usually, the ICE is packed. But it didn't get to Cologne till 09:32, long after my connection to Brussels had left. I got to the Reisezentrum and managed to get my ticket transferred to the 11:43. Fortunately, I had had difficulty booking an early Eurostar and would have had a four hour stopover in Brussels if I'd made the connection. Now I would have an hour.
Curiously, this train was an ICE, not a Thalys, and in an endeavour to find a seat, I tried the front carriage, which has a quiet zone right behind the driver. There was an empty seat and room for my luggage. As the door to the driver's cab is transparent, you get a great view out the front of the train, and can watch the driver at work. An ICE cab seems to have a lever and lots of computer screens, exactly what a 21st century train cab should be like. (At one point the co-driver seemed to be photographing the driver. I don't know why.)
So I made it to Brussels in plenty of time for the Eurostar and got home on time.
I started on Monday 13th by taking the Eurostar to Brussels and then the Thalys (the Belgian high speed train) to Cologne. I reckoned this was about the furthest along my route I could go in a day if I left home at a reasonable time in the morning and got to my destination in time for dinner. I arrived in Cologne just after seven in the evening.
The next day, I took the train to Hamburg, a German city I'd never visited. The journey takes about four hours, so I was there by mid afternoon.
Thursday morning, I was off again, and here my troubles started. I was booked on a train to Copenhagen which was due to leave Hamburg 09:28. It left about fifteen minutes late. This train takes the boat part of the way. At Puttgarden in Germany, the train runs onto a boat and all the passengers have to get off and wander around the boat. The boat then goes to Denmark, all the passengers get back on, and the train goes on its way again. By the time we got to Puttgarden, the train was half an hour late. As I had a 27 minute window in Copenhagen for my train to Stockholm I was starting to get worried.
As it happened, the train made up time going through Denmark and I had ten minutes to spare at Copenhagen station, and that station is not large. It was then that I discovered I was travelling first class for this part of the journey. Indeed, there was so little activity in the compartment, and as the train left ten minutes late, I worried I'd got on part of the train taken out of service. Turns out that most of the passengers get on in Malmo.
Then the return. The train from Stockholm left on time yesterday morning. I wondered why the on-train announcements kept on referring to the philosopher Schopenhauer. I finally realised that Copenhagen is pronounced in Swedish as schopen-harm.
A couple of oddities about stations. Stockholm Central station does not appear to have a platform 9. I saw signs to platforms 1-8 and 11-18, and platform 10 was where my train left, right next to the central concourse. But I never found platform 9.
In Copenhagen, from the central concourse, there are steps down to paired platforms from 1 to 14, but also a sign saying that access to platform 26 is from the end of platforms 5 and 6. It says it is 300m away, a fifteen minute walk, which seems excessively slow walking to me.
Anyway, the sleeper from Copenhagen to Cologne left on time last night. I appeared to have the compartment to myself and the attendant put the bed down just after ten. Eleven o'clock, I turned in.
Between one and two there was a knock on the door and the attendant told me there was another person joining the compartment, so he had to put the bunk bed down. After that, I drifted off to sleep.
About 5:30, I woke up needing the loo. As I was supposed to get a wake-up call about that time, I decided to get dressed. But when I went out into the corridor, the train was stationary in a station. I saw the attendant and asked him where we were. Hannover, he said. I guessed what had happened, and he confirmed we were now running three hours late. We had to follow the sleeper from Moscow, and that was late. We were due in Cologne at 6:14, and my connection to Brussels was at 08:44. I knew I was going to miss that. (Last time I caught this sleeper, three years ago, I was two hours late into Cologne for the same reason.)
I went back to the compartment to get some more sleep, but at six there was a knock on the door. Now the train was being diverted and was no longer going to call at Cologne, but there was an ICE from Berlin due in at 06:21, and my ticket would be valid. I quickly assembled my stuff and I even got my complimentary breakfast as I was leaving the train.
The early morning ICE was very comfortable and almost empty. Usually, the ICE is packed. But it didn't get to Cologne till 09:32, long after my connection to Brussels had left. I got to the Reisezentrum and managed to get my ticket transferred to the 11:43. Fortunately, I had had difficulty booking an early Eurostar and would have had a four hour stopover in Brussels if I'd made the connection. Now I would have an hour.
Curiously, this train was an ICE, not a Thalys, and in an endeavour to find a seat, I tried the front carriage, which has a quiet zone right behind the driver. There was an empty seat and room for my luggage. As the door to the driver's cab is transparent, you get a great view out the front of the train, and can watch the driver at work. An ICE cab seems to have a lever and lots of computer screens, exactly what a 21st century train cab should be like. (At one point the co-driver seemed to be photographing the driver. I don't know why.)
So I made it to Brussels in plenty of time for the Eurostar and got home on time.
