Denmark to Germany, the land portion begins

We got off the ship on Saturday morning, and took a bus to Kobenhavn Central train station.  We had decided to travel light, so we checked our big bags. Central Station is an old brick building, a classic.

main floor inside Central Station

aboard the train  

The train went south, along the coast.  The countryside was beautiful.  Rolling hills, lots of farms.  We crossed several bridges, onto different islands.

And then we got to the end of the train tracks, and they put the entire train (4 cars) onto a ferry.  All the passengers had to get off the train and board the ferry.

the process begins

pulling in along side the big rigs

squeezing between the train and the ferry wall

We made the crossing in about 45 minutes.  We encountered traffic bound for the Kiel Canal or out into the North Sea and saw one lone sailboat.

leaving Denmark

About 5 minutes before docking they announced "all passengers return to the train" and we were the first "vehicle" off the ferry.

moving alongside the big rigs

we emerge

got the green light to go south

the German coastline

We continued south through Lubeck and into Hamburg.

That's where our real adventure began.  We were trying to find what track our Bremen train was on and nothing was on the board.  We finally talked to a DB representative, who said all trains to Bremen had been cancelled.  There had been a storm that hit the Bremen area pretty hard.  We got instructions how to reach another station where we could take a bus.

We got down to Hamburg Harburg in the pouring rain and none of the station personnel could tell us anything except "wait."  We finally got a DB information counter person who could answer our question -- if we went to Bremen, could we continue on to Amsterdam in the morning?  He actually called Bremen and got the bad news, no trains in or out.  While we had him, we asked if there was any other way to get to Amsterdam.  He said we could go to Hannover, and then, in the morning, get to Amsterdam.  So that's what we did.  We managed, thanks to the WiFi on the DB trains, to get a hotel in Hannover not too far from the train station.

The next morning at breakfast we saw an interesting picture on the front page of the paper.  At first glance it was a car going down a road next to three trees.  When you really looked at it, though, it was from a helicopter looking down.  The trees were on their sides, root balls sticking up in the air.  It said it all.  One major wind storm.

The other paper showed the chaos that had happened in the region -- the headline was something like Stress Nacht for DB.  (Deutsch Bahn, the German rail system)