Berlin to Copenhagen

Friday Lunchtime Lolland Island, Denmark

I am well in time to catch my train from Berlin to Hamburg. The taxi driver seems to be having a race against his early morning colleagues while simultaneously bidding for his next job via a computerised gadget on his dashboard.
Berlin Central Station continues to impress me, this time with a luggage trolley that has a zigzag device on its’ frame which allows it to be taken on an escalator. The designers at the new Hauptbahnhof have really thought about the pain of travelling with luggage and it´s the easiest door to train transfer I have ever done. My main bag is showing some wear and tear, mainly from the excesses of dragging it over cobblestones in Prague to evade rogue taxi drivers and I am slightly concerned that it will disintegrate before I return home. I wish the same fate on the rogue taxi!
On that score, I have been told that my ‘News of the World’ type photographs of the bad man and his car have been passed to Prague Town Hall and I look forward to hearing some news.
I find it odd that be-suited German business men are arriving to board the first-class train to Hamburg juggling McDonald’s takeaway coffee and Egg McMuffins, along with their FT Deutschland and their laptops. Clearly they have no class, especially as there is a restaurant car on the train.
The ICE, Inter City Express, of German Railways is a very classy bit of rolling stock, by far the best-equipped train I have been on since leaving Spain. It´s beautifully fitted out with leather seats, glass and wood panelling and shiny chrome fittings, very stylish indeed.
The change of trains in Hamburg is easily achieved using a luggage trolley and a couple of lifts although the platform is packed with blue-shirted and rather muddy Swedish scouts heading home after a water jamboree.
The guard on the train to Copenhagen, another stylish ICE, is more involved with customer care than the collection of tickets. He distributes newspapers, vouchers for coffees and a snack in the bistro, refreshing towelettes plus little packets of ‘Knusperkugeln’. These turn out to be rather like Maltesers. He tells me that the ICE has a maximum speed of 230 Km per hour, around 150 MPH, good by British standards.
I am as excited as a schoolboy today because, for the first time in my life, I am to go on to a ferry on a train. It is of course an entirely routine affair, but, in the UK, the channel tunnel deprives us of the experience.
It’s a somewhat surreal sitting in your luxurious train while it boards the ferry, with juggernauts moving either side of you.
We are not allowed ‘for safety reasons’ to stay in the train during the 45 minute journey, so I enjoy a peaceful and excellent luncheon in the Scandlines’ a la carte restaurant, a most useful travel tip taught to me by a Norwich solicitor friend. Not one Swedish scout to be seen!
With no passport control or customs to endure, we have crossed the Baltic Sea to Denmark where I’ll have a very quick tour of Copenhagen this afternoon before heading westwards to Kolding in the morning.
I also have a dinner appointment with a lovely Danish family who rented my apartment in Spain earlier in the year and who are keen to entertain me.
I wonder if the children would like some Knusperkugeln?

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