EV7: Day 23, 24, 25: Malmö, Copenhagen to Mannheim

We had one full day for visiting Malmö. It’s a rather modern city, but we absolutely loved the cycling infrastructure here! There are so many dedicated bike lanes — it’s beautiful. And plenty of people make use of them. 😊

Of course, the same is true for Copenhagen, which is located right across the Öresund strait.

Originally our plan was to travel home from Copenhagen by train. There is an ICE to Hamburg, and then one from Hamburg to Mannheim. The website says that both of them carry bicycles. But when you try to book, you get an error message. When we called the hotline, we were told that a) it is not possible to make bicycle reservations on international trains, and b) the train from Hamburg to Mannheim doesn’t allow bicycles at all. 😑

So the next best option was to book a FlixBus coach going directly from Copenhagen to Mannheim. The pros were the cheap price, the direct connection and the proper bicycle carriers on the back of the coach. The big con was being stuck like a sardine in a can for almost 18 h.

We booked the bus leaving at 22:00, so we took the train across the Öresund Bridge (cycling is not allowed there) and had the whole Thursday to explore Copenhagen. We had been there for New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago, but it was beautiful to see the city in summer, too.

We had a luggage allowance of one suitcase and one item of hand luggage each. But as I only had the smaller bike panniers, we wrapped them together using cling film to form two pieces of luggage. When the bus came, however, nobody cared or checked how many pieces of luggage were booked. So that’s some trouble we could have saved ourselves. 😉

The bus ride was exhausting, but not too terrible. Fortunately we didn’t get stuck in a traffic jam, and in effect we were only 45 minutes late, because the drivers didn’t know the right route to the bus stops in Bremen and Dortmund.

Finally back home again. But for me it’s only a short stop before I embark on my next trip to Bucharest, Romania — while Dani has to go back to work.