Train — Jim Winslett

Rob and I have never really made a big deal out of our anniversary. It’s just another day, albeit with a traditional significance.

So having our anniversary be mostly a gruelling travel day wasn’t a big deal - but ‘gruelling’ is the key word.

Our last night in Stockholm treated us to a spectacular showing of the super moon over the city, which we could see really well from our room.

Reminder: you can click any image and see the full picture on your screen at once, without scrolling

During the night, I realized that this allergy crap I’ve been dealing with is probably a cold instead. I came to this conclusion after breaking a fever last night and soaking my half of the bed in sweat. It was so bad, I had to get the bath towel and put it down on the mattress.

I woke up feeling much better, but tired.
After brekkie, we gathered up our stuff and walked across the sidewalk to the train station. Couldn’t have been handier!

We checked the departure board and found our track and we headed down to wait for the train.

The train itself was just fine. We booked business class - which on a train doesn’t mean that much - and so we had a bit of extra legroom. Getting all our luggage on/off was a real treat, though!

The ride was originally going to go all the way to Copenhagen, but a few days ago, the train company stopped doing that. Instead, it got as far as Malmö (Sweden) and then we had to change to a regional train for the last 30 minutes.

That leg involved going over the famous Øresund bridge/tunnel that connects Sweden to Denmark.
You know what’s strange, though? At no point on our journey - on either train - did anyone ask to see if we had tickets. Ever.

Most of it is above the water, but the last part had to go underwater because it would interfere with the airspace of Copenhagen Airport.

Was pretty fun. Gotta admit, though, that schlepping all that luggage onto/off of trains, dragging it through crowded train stations, and such, plus nearly 6 hours of travel time while still fighting a bad cold really had us wiped out.

Then it got fun.

We had to get ourselves and our luggage from the train station to the hotel. Google said 10 minutes. Google doesn’t take into account multiple heavy suitcases, lots of pedestrians, and cobblestone streets.

By the time we got to the hotel, we could barely move, we were so exhausted.

The hotel was built in 1901 and was originally a public bath house. Fun! As is to be expected with such a property, the rooms are very small and there’s no AC.

Did I mention it was 29 degrees today? (85F)

The good news is that it has a soaker tub - which is absolutely getting used tomorrow

And even one of those fancy Japanese toilets with all the sprayers for your bum.

After deciding that trying to unpack was futile (another tiny room with no storage!), we sat for a bit until we had a little bit of energy, then Rob suggested we head over to Tivoli Gardens.

The reasoning was this: the weather forecast for the rest of our stay is RAIN. Walking around gardens in the rain can be enjoyable, but it’s not the best for your first impression of a place. Rob’s never been to Tivoli.

Also: many of the rides won’t run in the rain. So even though we were dead-tired, off we went to Tivoli (luckily, just about 500m from the hotel.)

I went to snap a picture of Tivoli’s entrance with my camera (up until then, everything was snapped on the phone since I packed my camera for easier toting) and I still had the settings for the moon over Stockholm… it made an absolutely gorgeous messed-up picture, which I love.

Might need to have that one framed.
Here’s the ‘correct’ version after I fixed the camera settings.

Full disclosure: our experience at Tivoli was a mixed bag. On the one hand, we were dead-tired. Walking around a park in that state is going to colour your views of the place for sure. Secondly, it was OMG HOT. My watch said 29 degrees, but with the crowds and Tivoli being surrounded by city buildings, there is no breeze to be had. On top of that, the beautiful and lush gardens…. Weren’t. The poor flowers desperately needed some rain and it showed.

That’s the bad part. The good part was I was introducing Rob to one of my all-time favourite places in the world, and on our anniversary. That was a really good feeling.

We walked around a bit and perused restaurant menus to see where we might want to eat later.

…and since this IS an amusement park, there are some rides as well.

There is a new kiddie coaster since I was here last, built in the same spot as the old one. I passed by it the first time because the lineup was probably 40 minutes and I figured it would be shorter after dinner, when the kiddos were all at home getting ready for school tomorrow.

There’s also a new powered ’coaster’ - which I won’t add to my list, since it’s powered throughout the ride and therefore doesn’t ‘coast’ - and I was looking forward to this one.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The entrance stairs were blocked with this:

Perhaps it will be open before we leave Copenhagen, but that blockade looks like it’s meant to be there for awhile.

Wandering around a bit more, we got to the claustrophobic section of the park, where all the dark rides and fun houses and such are.

And around the corner from there, my favourite coaster of all time: Rutschebanen (Danish for ‘roller coaster’)

On my visit in 2018, Rutschebanen was my 850th coaster.

That picture was taken inside the mountain on the storage track where the trains get worked on. The seat looks strange because that’s where the brakeman sits.

I should explain.

Rutschebanen is old. More than 100 yrs old, actually (circa 1914) and it doesn’t have those wheels that ride underneath the rails to hold it on the hills. So there’s a brakeman on each train who controls the speed of the ride.

Ask any of the brakemen and they’ll tell you they have the best job in the world. The lead guy has been at it for 20 years.

I wrote a whole article about this coaster on my website - if you want to learn more about the history of it (it involves a big FU to the Nazis) and why it’s my all-time favourite coaster, head over here: https://www.ellocoaster.com/rutschebanen

I had told my favourite brakeman that we were coming, but he was working the queue line today rather than driving the coaster. Got a selfie with him anyway.

Then when the train came in, Kurt (in the pic above) tells Norman, the brakeman on my train, “Jim rides twice.”

That was awesome news, as the lineup was around 20 minutes long. Took my first ride, everyone got off, I moved to the back seat. The train rolls forward, more people get on and off we go.
After the second ride, Norman says, “Kurt thought you were coming next week”. I said we had our signals crossed and we were here this week. Then I mentioned that it was my favourite coaster…. Out of more than 900.

He said, “what? Hang on say that again.” He pulled out his phone and launched video and pointed it at me and asked me how many coasters I’ve ridden and then which is my favourite. Then he said, “sit down, you get to go again.”
So I got three rides and only had to wait in the queue once.

It’s all about who you know, amirite?

FYI, Norman is the only brakeman who completes the entire circuit standing up. (The others are too tall!)

We found a restaurant and sat down to a dinner of overcooked fish-n-chips and a decent Zinfandel.

I’ll say one thing: Tivoli’s restaurant game is a shadow of what it was in 2018. All the restaurants here are privately owned and I’m wondering if covid killed a few of the nicer ones. It’s a shame, really, because I was looking forward to discovering more of the eateries this week - but we had a hard time finding anything that wasn’t burgers, schnitzel, or fried fish. Even the awesome place I had planned to go tonight with the massive rack of ribs and the killer cabernet has become a burger joint. Le sigh.

After dinner, I picked up the new kiddie coaster, Kamelen (‘Camel’)

And my hunch about the queue being shorter after dinner paid off - I just walked right up to it and didn’t have to wait at all!

That puts me at 903 different coasters. Woot!
One more spin around the park and the red looping coaster still had a hour queue, so I skipped it. I’ve been on it before and it’s not a fave. Certainly not worth an hour queue!

It takes pretty pictures, though.

We got Rob a tub of popcorn and I took one more spin on Rutschebanen, then we left to drag our tired butts back to the hotel.

But… there’s a Lego store right at the Tivoli entrance!

They even had a minifigure creator - where you can design the look of a minifigure - and it was our anniversary, so I got two of them and made one of each of us.

They had limited faces and such, which is why Rob looks kinda like a member of the Village People. I drew a moose on the back of my shirt and Rob has Lego Store Tivoli on his.