Deutsche
Bahn (DB) German Railways offer BahnCards - a range of reduced price
cards giving substantial discounts on travel. One of the side
benefits of buying a card is that you are offered a cheap trip to a
specific destination from time to time. Recently we were offered a
trip to Copenhagen and decided since this is
probably the most cyclist-friendly city in the world, it would
be a good place to exercise our Bromptons. In addition because we
would be travelling on ICEs, we could check out the ease of travel
with a folding bicycle on German high speed trains.
We
took the midmorning ICE from Mannheim to Hamburg via Hanover which
takes about four and a half hours to reach Hamburg. We had two seats
in the middle of the open plan section of the first or second
generation stock which was ideal, near to the luggage stand and with
room between the seats to slip in a Brompton. We had 50 minutes or so
to change trains in Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, but were rather surprised
to see a very short ICE-TD with just four carriages arrive to take us
to Copenhagen. Normally ICEs are nine or ten carriages long. However
anything longer than four carriages would not fit on the ferry. Again
the train was full, but there was room enough between seats to store
the bikes. If we had needed we could stored them on luggage racks in
the middle of the train.
The
run from Hamburg to the German ferry port at Puttgarden is pleasant
enough through Holstein. Passengers must leave the train once it
arrives on the ship. The trip on ship was not so exciting. It was a
pitch black November night and so we did not see anything. The ship's
journey takes 45 minutes which is just enough time to eat a
moderately expensive snack, or hit the duty free shop to buy
chocolate, beer and spirits. Our Danish train conductor announced
that due to urgent bridge repairs that we would transfer to a bus to
Copenhagen in Nykobing. This went well and there was no problem
popping the bikes and our bags in the lockers under the bus.
We
arrived at the central station Københavns Hovedbanegård at
about 20:30 on cold windy pitch night. The cycling facilities in
Copenhagen are mind boggling, e.g. wide physically separate cycleways
and green wave traffic lights for cyclists. We suspect that any
British, American or even German cyclist cycling around Copenhagen
would think they had popped their clogs and gone to heaven. However
we are from the North of England, so any chance to complain should be taken: There
are no town plans on display in the station and thus no cycle routes
on display. We needed to go the south of the city to the Amager Youth
Hostel. Fortunately drawing on many years of carrying out research
for our cycle touring guide books, we had a city plan tucked in the
back of a guide book and had googled and printed out the approach to
the Youth Hostel. We peered out of various entrances, managed to
orientate ourselves with the help of the lights of the Tivoli
pleasure gardens and studied our maps. We worked out our route and
moved out. It was Saturday night. Road traffic was fairly heavy.
There are few signposts for cyclists, but we had no trouble getting
out of the centre and across the Langebro bridge over the harbour
canal. We turned off into a area of tenements still on a cycle track
and then got lost. In the ensuing efforts to find our way we lost the
guide book, but not the map. Finally we found our way past the
university campus to the hostel.
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