Train to Copenhagen
Trip Start
Unknown
1
5
24
Trip End
Jun 20, 2006
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Copenhagen,
Denmark
Thursday, June 8, 2006
Two of my fellow passengers were going to the English hotel; so we shared a hackney coach together. Scarcely had we taken our seats before an official came up to the door, and demanded, in German, whether we had any food in our packages! One of my companions the said it was "all right", and ordered the driver to go on; and the official turned away with a brandish of an iron skewer he held in his hand, and with which he is empowered to probe any suspected package, for the purpose of testing, by smell, the presence of food; for, oddly enough, though Hamburg is a free port in other respects, it extracts a kind of octroi for eatables. The same arrangement is made at Paris; and both these cities is derive no inconsiderable part of the municipal revenue from this source.
To my great disappointment, I now discovered that the steamer advertised in Bradshaw as sailing from Kiel only ran in the summer. Finding from my kind host that the time was nearly up for the Norwegians steamers to begin their trips from Hamburg to Christiansand, I went in search of the broker who was agent for these boats, and with some difficulty found his office, when he informed me that it was much too early for them to begin. The broker, however, believed that I should find a steamer from Copenhagen, so I returned to the hotel, determined to lose no time in getting forward to the Danish capital.
The worthy landlord ordered up dinner instantly, procured change in Danish dollars for two of my sovereigns, and told me and must be at the Altona station by a quarter past six in the evening to go to Kiel, counted out my cab fare in schillings, and twisted it up in a bit of paper to save me further trouble.
Train to Copenhagen
About half-past five the cab arrived, and the waiter shouting "Kieler Bahnhof" to the driver, I was slowly conveyed to that destination. The brilliant gas-lit shops reminded me much of London; and after passing by a very large number of them, we came at last to a more open space, where there were parks and pleasure grounds, and an iron railing and gateway, dividing the free city of Hamburg from its Danish rival Altona - or, as the Hamburgers pun upon it, "Allzunah", (All too near), in allusion to its competition in trade, etc. At the "Kieler Bahnhof", or Kiel railway station, I opened the door myself, (for the driver was too lazy to get down), jumped to out on the pavement, and untwisted the screw of schillings, which I poured into the cab-man's hands as his sat on the box. He took some time to count them, as he would not come to the lamp-light, but at last he called out - "Das ist richtig", or something like it, and then leisurely wheeled off.I lugged my package into the station and asked for a ticket, speaking in broken Danish. This was handed me, and I was about to proceed to the platform, when an official called me back to go through the office of the customs. Here a gentlemanly man said something in German, which I did not understand, and I asked him to be so kind as to speak Danish. This he immediately did - politely requesting me to open my portmanteau. When it was laid on the bench before him, he took out all its contents, some of which moved his curiosity. 'Er de Normand?" he inquired.
Copenhagen lights
(Are you a Norwegian?) "nei, jeg er Engelsk!" (No, I am English.) Presently he unrolled a pair of trousers which had not too long not been long made: "Ere de gamle?" (Are they old?) he queried. I told him they had been used, which satisfied him. Had they not been so, I must have paid duty on them, albeit my own personal apparel.I next past into the waiting-room. A large company of people of all ranks of conditions were there; and the only thing they seem to have in common, was a love of tobacco, for they smoked unsparingly. I tried, after taking my seat in the train, to talk a little, but without success, as my fellow passengers were Low Germans - Schleswig-Holsteiners - many of whom spoke no Danish.
About ten o'clock we got to Kiel - since the subject of such hot contention between the Germans and ghe Danes. It is a grand old place, with the same multiplicity of windows noticeable in Hamburg, the same long narrow streets, the same towering houses on either side. I passed with a crowd of people from the train, and in the wake of the Post Office van, to the wharf, where one week later the Princess Alexandra landed on her way to England. The "Postdampskib", or mail-steamer is a beautiful and swift paddle ship, furnished with every luxury one could desire in travelling. I went into the saloon few moments, and took a survey of the passengers there. They were for the most part very "English looking", but there was one exception in the person of young man, with light hair and a small moustache.
On train to Copenhagen
He wore an enormous fur cloak and fur-lined boots, and I set him down as a German or a Russian, gradually inclining to the latter view - I could scarcely tell why.Whilst pulling off my great-coat, I noticed the young Russian fixing his eye on my dress, or rather on a portion of it. Presently he said, with some hesitation, but in very good English: "A-hem - a friend, I believe?" "Yes, I am," said I with some surprise. "So am I!" said the Russian. "My name is B_____, from Whitehaven." And he handed me his card, in confirmation of the fact. We got into conversation at once, and I found he was on his way to Jonkoping, in Sweden, to inspect some machinery. The cloak, which had given him such a Slavonic appearance, had been purchased the day previously in Hamburg; and to give some idea of the value of such articles I may mention that the first one shown to him by the furrier was priced at 700 thalers. This one he had was a really good one, but cost about nine or ten pounds.
At supper-table, my new companion was separated from me by an elderly gentlemen of very engaging appearance. We were obliged to talk to each other across him, which we did, of course, in English. Another gentleman of the table, a Dane, joined in the conversation, and he spoke of language well. He presently said: - "You are going to Norway, then, sir: how shall you get there?" Now I ought to have said: - "If I cannot get a steamer at Copenhagen, I must go through Sweden." But for the past day or two I had been rubbing up every available word in Swedish and Danish, and as my mind was running on this track I forgot myself for the moment, and said, instead of the reply I ought to have given: - "Igjennem Sverige" (through Sweden.) Hereupon the elderly gentleman next to me turned with a slight look of surprise, and said in the same tongue: - "And so you can talk Swedish, then?" I assured him I could not, but had only picked have a few sentences in it, and such as seemed indispensable to travel with. He immediately joined our conversation, in the purest English, save that once or twice he used a French phrase when it suited his meaning better. The Swedes are excellent linguists.
The Dane told me he was sorry I had chosen the winter for my journey, for the feared the greater part of it would have to be by land; and it would be a very costly one. "I have myself been in Sweden and Norway, too," said he, "and it cost me nearly two dollars a mile to travel there; for you to have to send on Forbud, if your in a hurry, to get the horses ready; if you don't do so they will keep you waiting for hours at some of the stations."
This was sufficiently discouraging for me - for I knew that I had hundreds of miles to travel, and that two dollars of 4s 6d each made 9s per mile. Putting this fact alongside another, namely, that I had only about twenty English sovereigns left, the conclusion was a painful one - that I might be almost sure of breaking down on the way, for want of money. However it was too late to go back; if it came to the worst I could write home and say I was out of cash, and my friends there must help me out of the scrape.
.........
About half-past ten we are arrived at Copenhagen. The terminus was a large unfinished wooden building of very comfortless appearance, and in front of it stood a number of porters with brass badges on their caps, to carry passengers' luggage. There were also some hackney coaches, and my Swedish friend asked me to accompany him in one of these to the hotel de l'Europe, where he usually stayed when on a visit to Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is a solid, grand - looking city. Many of the buildings are of granite, and the pavements are of the same stone. The houses seemed to me less foreign in appearance than those of Hamburg or Kiel, and many of the shops had quite a familiar look. A military band marched past us on our way through the city; but the performers were decidedly small men, and rather strikingly contrasted with some of the Holsteiners I had seen the day before. Still there is a fiery energy about the Danes which one does not find so marked in many other people. They have scarcely forgotten the old grievance, against England, of the bombardment of their Capital and the destruction of their fleet by Nelson; but we may hope the marriage of the Princess with our prospective King will cancel the gloomy past.
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I decided to put Hamburg behind me as quickly as possible the next morning, and took a taxi down to the main railway station where I discovered there was a through-train to Copenhagen in an hour's time. I looked for a route via Kiel, but there is none now. I suppose that since Kiel was (then) in Denmark, it made sense to travel that way.
There are more and more wind-farms as one progresses north through Germany, but nothing like the density one sees in Denmark. This might have to do with Denmark's flatness, though. Someone told me that the highest point in Denmark is only 60 metres... Perhaps this also explains the forest of flag-poles. The further north one travels, the more houses there are with flags flying in the garden. In Sweden and Norway, the flags are more like "pennants" - long thin things, such as you'd expect to see at the stern of a 16th-century galleon.
Reading that "Princess Alexandra" (later English Queen Alexandra) was passing through on her way to wedding next week enabled me to date JB's journey fairly accurately. She married the future King Edward on 10th March 1863.
The train is driven straight onto the ferry at Padburg, and we all got out and enjoyed the warm sunshine and milling seagulls for the short trip over to Zealand. I met with a couple of United Statesian couples on the train, and discovered they were all bound for a world Rotary conference in Copenhagen. One of them snapped me sitting in the train....
We got to Copenhagen and after a few anxious moments - the tourist office was closed and the first three hotels I phoned were full - I managed to get a room for the night, and I dumped my stuff and went walking around to explore.
I was last in Copenhagen in 1964, after taking my first-ever flight. An SAS Caravelle if I recall. My brother and I flew out to meet our parents who'd driven there after ferry-ing across to Ejsberg. We came straight from breaking up from school for the Easter holidays. I can't remember what we did in Copenhagen other than visiting the Carlsberg brewery. We then drove back to Antwerp. On the way my father met a man in a bar in southern Denmark and arranged for me to do an "exchange" with his nephew. Which happened, and I'd almost forgotten about him but a couple of weeks ago I googled his name and HE came out the top ten hits! Lives near Geneva, married to a Psychotherapist, five children. So some things in common! I'm going to visit him the next time I'm near Gevena.
Anyhow, back to this trip, I found Copenhagen rather bland. The buildings and streets are big and impressive; there isn't much traffic, and there's a big car and public-transport culture. The railway stations are named North-Port, East-Port, and Central showing a distinct lack of imagination. I sat down in a restaurant and then stood up and walked away after 15 minutes of being ignored/not served. Almost all the hotels I've stayed in have had wi-fi internet, but they charged for it. It's not that I DISLIKED the experience, it's just that I didn't find anything to particularly commend the stay....
In mugging up about JB's comments about Nelson and the bombardment, I discovered that there are TWO Battles of Copenhagen in the English History books.
The first Battle in 1801 was a naval engagement off Copenhagen in which Nelson played a big part (and Captain Bligh of "Mutiny" fame played a smaller one). This ended up with Nelson threatening to bombard the City (but not doing so).
In the second Battle six years later, the English had surrounded Copenhagen and demanded a surrender. This was all to deny the Danish fleet to Napoleon. The Danes refused to capitulate, so the City was bombarded.
5,000 rounds were fired on the first night,
but then only 2,000 rounds the second night as the English were horrified at the damage they'd caused the first night.
The Danes didn't give in so in frustration 7,000 rounds were sent into the City on the third night
and that did the trick. 30% of the City was destroyed in the three nights.
So the current "Battle" score is 2-0 to England.
