Ducking Through Scandinavia

Amelie and I went to the DBS train ticket office and asked the agent for two tickets to Kongens Nytorv. The agent handed us a little slip of a receipt that only had a price and time stamp on it and assured us that it would cover all the modes of transportation we needed to take to get to where we wanted to go. We found the track at which our train was supposed to arrive. When a train eased into the station, we approached the conductor to confirm the destination of the train and the validity of our ticket:

“Can we use this ticket for this train to get to Kongens Nytorv?”
[Shrugs his shoulders.]
“I am not sure. Go ask that man.”

We looked way down the track to see a ticket-checker standing near the train. By the time we reached him, the doors had closed and the train pulled out. Turns out we could have taken that train. No matter. There was another one coming in 20 minutes. So we waited. And waited. And suddenly the screen that we had our eyes glued to changed. A Danish woman came up to Amelie and asked what was going on. Amelie explained that she didn’t speak Danish, so the woman repeated her question in English. They looked up at the screen and then:

“Well, I think the train is delayed and is coming on another track,” said Amelie.
“What?” asked the woman.
“Doesn’t spor mean track?”
“Yes.”
“And does forsinket mean delayed?”
“Yes.”
“And does ændre mean changed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, doesn’t that mean that the train is delayed and the track has changed?”
“Yes.”

While Amelie conducted an impromptu lesson in teaching the Danes Danish, some young gypsy woman tried to enlist my help in carrying her luggage onto the next train. She had one little rollaway and one mammoth-sized, hardback suitcase. She indicated that I should lug the gargantuan monstrosity even though I had two bags of my own. I suggested she take the larger of the two and I’d help her with the smaller. After I helped the woman onto her train (with nary a “tak” in return) and Amelie helped the Danette translate the announcements, we ran from Spor 2 to Spor 1 only to find out that our train had disappeared completely from the screen. Apparently, it was canceled and the next train was going to arrive on Spor 2. Back over the bridge, fuming and hungry and tired, we finally boarded a train that looked right, transferred to a driver-less subway car swarming with some unruly Danish children, and finally arrived at Kongens Nytorv, the biggest city square in Copenhagen.

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