Monday April 28 2008

The scramble! Waking from the briefest of sleeps, I began gathering up my things. The traveller's first reaction upon arrival at his destination is usually to make himself at home - shoes off, coat up, phone plugged in to recharge. If you count the phone charger and European adaptor, that's already six items the traveller has removed from the safety of his luggage or his person and strewn at various points across his temporary home. Add a couple of nights to the equation and this haphazard distribution of possessions will have affected at least one half of everything he owns. Toothbrush in the bathroom, towel on the radiator, books on the table, DS plugged into the only free wall socket in some hitherto undiscovered segment of the kitchen and recently washed pants and socks manically affixed to anything which generates heat, including the homeowner. This situation is fine if the traveller is never planning to leave. On the morning of his departure, however, it swiftly morphs into a crisis.

At least I didn't have to worry about forgetting my wallet, which two days previously had made a successful bid for freedom in the centre of Lund, stealthily flinging itself from my inside coat pocket complete with my credit card, debit card and 50 Euros. This could have been terrible, leaving me stranded without cash for the remainder of the holiday. Fortunately I had loads of money. Due to my organisational skills being greater than those of Brodos - that is, greater than zero - I had booked all the plane and train tickets on my credit card, with him handing me a bundle of Euros worth about £550 when we met at Stansted. What neither of us had realised is that only two of our six destinations, Finland and Italy, accepted Euros. Combined with the€ 300 or so I had taken myself, this resulted in me lugging around a wad of hard cash heavy enough to kill a rat. On the plus side, this meant that losing my credit cards was barely a flesh wound. On the downside, it made me a very appealing target for opportunistic murder.

One thing we made sure not to forget was chocolate and Schapps, provided by Morani and Maddok as a gift from our Swedish hosts to our Serbian hosts. We stowed this away in the depths of our luggage and, with my remaining Swedish cash tucked into a second-hand wallet donated by Aakarp, we heaved ourselves to the station.

Waiting for the train made for an odd emotional mix - morose because we were leaving, excited because we were heading into the unknown and bored because we were waiting for a train. Given how tired we were, it was a miracle any feelings managed to break through at all.

The train arrived and we said goodbye to Aakarp. She looked sad. I think she wished she was coming with us. The first leg of the trip took us over the huge Öresund Bridge at Malmö, into Denmark. Given that neither of us had been to Denmark before, we figured that our 30 minute stop at Copenhagen's train station meant we could tick the country off the list. We discovered on arrival that the Danes have holes in the middle of their money, which strikes me as unnecessary. I guess it means you could keep all your coins on a string if you wanted to. Other than that, we squeezed as much learning and exploration into our half hour visit as we could, which essentially amounted to walking from one platform, buying some tickets and then walking to another platform.

I'm not sure if we got a flavour of absolutely everything that the country has to offer, but from my brief stay, I'm confident in saying that Denmark's culture is primarily based around trains.

Next week: A big black button by a ferry door causes panic. Does it open the door or pull out the plug?

Read from the start:
A Geek Adventure

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