Copenhagen, Denmark.
07:00, after a restful 8 hours in a train.
Everyone look happy, we’re here!
I SAID LOOK HAPPY
What they were really feeling.
This is where I should mention I’m still amazingly full of energy and am practically jumping up and down out of joy.
Continuing the trend of taking transportation+ accommodation trips, Brian and I took it upon ourselves to find and book the train from Stockholm->Copenhagen that was an overnight trip. Rick Steves claimed it existed, but we weren’t so sure.
This train seemed to be some mystical creation that didn’t actually exist on any site. After fighting the Swedish train website for hours and clicking different things in a manner in which we still don’t fully remember, we finally found this train of lore and booked it, jokingly making references to the fact that it may all be made up and we just handed the company cash for no particular reason. While booking, it claimed that we had something called “couchettes,” which seemed to be what we were looking for. There weren’t any options to downgrade or upgrade our seats, and since the name of the seats matched our expectations of a cheap sleeper car, it all seemed okay.
That is, until I actually looked at the receipt. In Europe. It said “chairs+table.” This might have thrown up danger signs, but I didn’t fret too much. The couchette myth seemed too prevalent. Come 2200, we went to Stockholm Central and printed our tickets before going to the spar that held our awaiting chariot. We checked in and started walking past car after car of sleepers.
It’s at this point where I should point out the collective mental state of our travelling group. Brian was beginning to get what would be an extremely high fever, and his energy level was slumping fast. Tracey had the misfortune of sleeping in the bunk below me the night before, and as it was a squeaky IKEA bed, my constant tossing and turning meant she was up most of the night and somewhat pissed at me. Oury, well, Oury was just looking for a bed to sleep in. I was pretty full of energy, and was planning on spending most of the time on the train planning our Copenhagen adventures.
We come to our car. Which looks different then the rest. It’s a little more dilapidated than the others, and as we enter the main aisle, there comes the sinking feeling that we may not be in a car like the others. There were no sleepers here, only chairs. Red chairs. Dirty red chairs from the early 1990s. And an interior that could have come out of the Soviet Union. As we approached our assigned seats, I felt the red hot glares of death upon me.
I make some sort of explanation about how it said couchette, and there were no upgrade options. This did little to placate Tracey, who was leading the charge of hate at this point, with Oury right behind her.
Less than amused.
Brian is pleased. For these were cheap tickets.
Oury immediately falls asleep.
I spent most of the night planning while everyone else had fitful and wholly unsatisfying sleeping experiences.
Brian and I, fighting the inevitable battle towards illness, were popping cough drops like they were candy, and tried to remain nonplussed at the situation which we now found ourselves in: a good night’s sleep which we all needed was no longer an option, only the train awaited, and our transfer at 6:00am.
When travelling “Hardtke Class”–which often resembles “Rick Steves Class”–we’re always looking for the best deals to save time and money. Part of this strategy is to book overnight travel arrangements so you pay for travel and accommodation combined, which is often cheaper. Following this strategy, we booked us a 4-person cabin on the Silja Serenade, a cruiseferry that travels overnight between Helsinki and Stockholm. Brian had billed this as the “booze cruise,” but I wasn’t so sure about that. Yes, it did contain the mythological theory of tax-free hard alcohol, but we were travelling on a weekday. With the duty restrictions for arriving with liquor, I didn’t really think people would pay the fare, mostly because they would probably break even at best.
A ferry like ours.
Regardless, we went to the terminal with high hopes and quickly boarded the Serenade. These were some of the first ships that featured an internal promenade that is common in cruise ships these days, and it was a weird mixture of restaurants that seemed to be “fake” pubs and the large duty-free store that opened promptly when we departed. We got a cabin overlooking this promenade on a friend’s recommendation, and everyone else started taking a nap the minute we left, despite my announced plan of going above deck to watch the star fortress and Helsinki pass us by on the way to the Baltic. It was, of course, pouring on the upper deck, but viewing the fortifications from a higher viewpoint (and the viewpoint of a ship that could easily be shelled!) was a fairly cool experience. I went back to the cabin and fought the slow internet connection for the next hour or so before giving up and did some light dozing while waiting for them to wake up. I’m pretty sure the internet was a single satlink of dubious quality, but WHATEVER.
Island in the harbor, as viewed from the ferry.
View of the promenade.
Finally, after about ever, they woke up to the door knocking. We all promptly went to the tax-free store and spent far too much time picking out what finally resulted in a milky mango-like liquor and some lingonberry vodka. We went to the protected middle section of the upper deck and started sampling these fares and hanging out. After some card games and planning for tomorrow, a few of us went back to the cabin to go to bed.
Hanging out on the upper deck.
Not so. An hour later, a very tired and hastily dressed-to-party Nikky found himself sitting next to similarly deposed Stephanie while the others went to the 14th level, and the “Club New York” to dance.
This club was a weird mixture of American brands such as TGI Friday’s and European techno music. There were the stereotypical girls with short dresses wearing angel wings who were dancing just about as poorly as possible. There was this mid-30s woman who was very clearly hitting on a hipster-looking dude who wasn’t really having any of her, but she kept dragging him to dance. Hilarity ensued. It almost seemed that business people took this ferry to go to meetings and offices, and during the night took advantage of the club and cheap booze to just party it out in the middle of the week. Weird.
Inside the cabin.
Anyway, the rest of the evening was uneventful and we woke up in a new time zone and stood on the front deck as we went through the archipelago to enter Stockholm.
Hello Stockholm!