Hej! After a painless, nonstop flight from Dulles to Copenhagen, I arrived at the Copenhagen Marriott just in time for some breakfast before heading out for the day. On the agenda: a quick tour de Skåne, or the southern part of, Sweden for lunch and fika with family. So after flying in that morning, I took the train from Copenhagen H over the Öresund bridge to head north to Halmstad. After our rendezvous in Halmstad we drove back, taking the Scandic Line ferry from Helsingborg back to Denmark and then continuing into Copenhagen.
Before 2000, the only option to cross from Sweden to Denmark was the ferry. Now, a significant amount of that traffic has been diverted to the Öresund bridge. Both options are great- the bridge is one of a kind and makes for an easy commute through both the train and driving, and with the ferry you just park, go up to the waiting area and enjoy a pølse or räckmacka (really mixing Danish and Swedish here) while your car gets driven to the other country. You even get to shop tax free in the meantime, with 10 minutes of one country’s waters for tobacco purchases and 10 minutes of the other country’s territorial waters for alcohol. It’s an interesting system.
A couple of quick tips:
-the ticket automats for the Swedish, Danish, and trans-Öresund trains can be confusing, even in your native language, and if not confusing, they are stubborn, aka repeatedly telling you that no ticket is available for that route while the next automat works no problem. Know this going in and keep trying if you’re buying a ticket!
-keep an eye out for the windmills in the middle of the sea between Denmark and Sweden. Not only are both the bridge and the windmills relatively new, but there’s truly a forest of them between the two countries.
-if you take the ferry route (and have a car), you head from or to Helsingborg on the Swedish coast and Helsingør on the Danish coast and see Hamlet’s castle at Kronberg on the way.
-see the beautiful seaside towns like Båstad
-watch out for the Hallandsås, or the ridge of elevation that starts and ends steeply along the southwestern coast
-it takes about 2h 20min to get from Copenhagen H to Halmstad C, bit longer going the same distance by car and ferry
-no passport or customs or any other check but a ticket check is needed
-feel free to mix Swedish and Danish indiscriminately. If both parties are fluent in their respective languages, and have some sense of the other, you’ll get your meaning across just fine
Photo: my photography, Nyhavn, today, Nikon D3200
anchored & adrift 