Sushi in Malmo

Day three was the first day of any real problems in my journey.

I got to Hamburg station about 20 minutes early for my train but it was already on the platform ready for boarding. Turned out the train was crowded and there was an argument going on behind me over two groups who both seemed to have reservations for the same seats. When the ticket inspectors came round, it transpired that one group had a reservation from Hamburg to Oldenburg and the other from Puttgarden onwards. Puttgarden is the next station after Oldednburg and the last stop before crossing over to Denmark and you need a reservation to cross the border, which may have been why their reservation started there, but doesn't explain why they got on the train in Hamburg.

In Puttgarden, the train is put onto a ferry to cross over into Denmark and that is where the problems started. The ferry coming from Denmark had been delayed and we sat in the station for over an hour waiting for it. You have to get off the train whilst the ferry is underway, presumably to encourage you to use the shops and restaurants.

When we got back on the train and onto Danish soil, the train waited again, this time whilst passport checks were done. A guy near me, as soon as passport checks were announced, dashed to the toilet, which I thought was suspicious. Also, I thought, surely the Danish police are wise to that trick. Indeed they were. They opened the toilet and escorted him off the train into a building near the tracks.

The result of all this was that the train got into Copenhagen 90 minutes late. I was supposed to have an hour to wait for my connection to Stockholm, so I'd missed that. Passengers for Stockholm were advised to take the first available train to Malmo and get new tickets there.

There was a train to Malmo being held on the next platform over - still had to go up into the concourse and down to catch it, and it departed just as I reached the platform. The next one was 15 minutes later.

In Malmo, there were two separate ticket offices and I picked the wrong one first. At the second they gave me a reservation on the next train to Stockholm, but I'd just missed one and had nearly a two-hour wait for the next one. Also, they couldn't give me a through reservation, but two separate reservations in different carriages. For the first 90 minutes of the journey, I'd be travelling first class.

There's a food court in Malmo station and I found a sushi bar. I pulled a 100 krone note out of my wallet, one of three I'd found from a previous visit to Sweden. Turned out it was an old note, now withdrawn. I paid by card and then found an ATM after I'd eaten.

The journey up to Stockholm was four and half hours but uneventful. At one point there was a heavy storm, and I was suddenly reminded of the storm movement from the 3rd Symphony of the Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg.

Anyway, the train finally got into Stockholm about 20 minutes before midnight. Fortunately, my hotel was literally right next to the station and I was in my room before midnight.

Before going to bed, I looked out of the window to see what the view was like. Turns out this is a central atrium building, and the view is looking out over the hotel restaurant.

Lots of Abba

Two nights in the same hotel. This is a day of staying in one place.

I did walk over to the ferry terminal to check out things for tomorrow. Although it says it is near an underground station, I did think I may have problems getting to it that way, remembering it from the trip to Mariehamn two years ago.

The direct route is to cross the railway line over a footbridge, which I could manage. The bridge has high sides I could cross without problem. But the other side of the line, the bridge has just railings at the side to get to the terminal, and that bridge is too narrow for me to manage. I need to be at least three metres from an edge like that before my feet actually let me walk, so a bridge has to be at least six metres wide for me to cross. This bridge seems to be about three metres wide and I don't want to chance it. The alternative is to walk a long distance along the road parallel to the railway to a road crossing I can do, and then walk all the way back again. And even then, it's a long walk from the railway line to the terminal. I think I'll be taking a taxi tomorrow.

Incidentally, it's a completely new terminal to the one I used two years ago.

Turns out that it's Gay Pride day in Stockholm, and the route I took back into the centre of the city was the route of the parade. Very colourful and very loud, with lots of Abba. I'm not sure if that's because it's Sweden or because it's gay, or a combination of both.

After seeing parades of gay firemen, gay police and gay soldiers, I couldn't help thinking of the Village People. But there were also gay bakers and even gay skate-boarders. I think there were gay Star Wars fans as well.

I couldn't spend time in Stockholm without having some Swedish meatballs. I remembered a place I had them the first time I was here in 2011, and when I spent a night here after Archipelacon two years ago, I went there again, so I went back this evening. The place is still there and I am nicely full.