When two worlds collide

I witnessed an interesting interaction on the bus yesterday which threw into stark contrast the different approaches to organising transport around the world.

Copenhagen, in line with most other sensible cities (and I deliberately exclude everywhere in the UK in that statement), operate a single ticketing system with tickets that are interchangeable between any form of transport in a set period of time after stamping. The system works on honesty as there are no barriers, the only difference to the system in say, Rome, is that when you board a bus you have to do so through the front doors to show your valid ticket to the driver.

I picked on Rome specifically, as it was two Italians who had the interaction with the driver (I’m assuming they were from Rome, they could have been from anywhere in Italy, but it’s only in Rome that I have seen similar disregard to signage)

On the rear and middle doors there is a no entry sign. It’s not a complex sign in Danish, it’s the international red circle with a short white line in the middle.

In Rome, no attention is paid to this and boarding takes place through any available door, in fact the only people who follow the signs appear to be tourists (after a couple of days in Rome I found even I had given up on bothering to queue up for the correct doors with the other tourists and was leaping on through any open door.)

However, this isn’t Rome and the bus driver was less than impressed with these random people ignoring a no entry sign. There were some words said in Danish, with no response. In the end the entire interaction was played out in English. It was almost like being on a bus in London when someone fare evading gets caught by the bus driver boarding by the back doors. The shrugs, the mangled used of the English language, and then the international signal for an unhappy driver, the engine being switched off.

At this point a helpful Dane who obviously spoke some Italian (so not satisfied with being fluent in both Danish and English they had obviously learn Italian as an extra!) let them know that they needed to get off the bus, and board properly.

Once they had done this, all was fine, but I suspect that when they get back to Rome it’s going to take them a little bit of time to get back into the swing of boarding through any door that’s open.

Ailment Spotting

A sister-thread to Wound Spotting, I’ve been in Copenhagen for two days and I can’t help but notice that an awfully large number of people appear to have colds.

Everywhere I’ve been there have been people sneezing, coughing, sniffing (and more unpleasantly snorting).

I checked, it wasn’t me, though will I be able to get to the end of my trip without catching Købenflu?

Just how many links do you need?

As I was walking through the city centre earlier today I noticed there was a bus stop for the airport express to Copenhagen Airport.

Normally this wouldn’t be a particularly odd thing, most airports have an express bus link.

It’s just with Copenhagen, it’s so well connected to the airport that does it really need this extra one.

To put it into context, Heathrow is the UK’s largest airport, and one of the most important airports in the world. Copenhagen is certainly the most important airport in Scandinavia, and certainly comes in the top 10 of major European airports.

Heathrow:

• Quarter hourly train service taking around 20 minutes at the cost of around £20


• Tube every 10 minutes or so, taking well over the hour, but only costing around the £6 mark


• Coaches pretty regular, taking well over the hour, but again costing only a couple of quid


• Buses, local buses from nearby train and tube stations, nearest advertised link is in Feltham taking 30 minutes and costing £1.20

Copenhagen:

• Train every 10 minutes, taking around 10 minutes, cost £4


• Metro every 4 minutes, taking less than 15 minutes, cost £4


• Bus every 4 minutes, taking less than 30 minutes, cost £4

Which brings me back to the question, why, on top of 6 trains, 15 metro’s and 15 busses an hour (and that’s only the buses from the city centre, not the local ones closer to the airport) would you need a coach service?

And then, in small writing, I discovered the real reason. And it’s an old favourite, it’s RyanAir.

The “Copenhagen” airport express is actually to take you over into Sweden to an airport on the outskirts of Malmo that RyanAir use as their “Copenhagen” base.

They used to actually call it Copenhagen, but then some busy-body in the EU decided that landing at an airport in another country which uses a different currency to the city your advertising you are flying to is a bit misleading and perhaps they should be a little more honest. Just who do these EU Bureaucrats think they are? Next they’ll be saying the plans to rename Birmingham as London-Birmingham International are not on!

Getting back to the rat race

It’s amazing how quickly you get out of the habit of certain things.

For the last couple of day’s I’ve been wandering round Tórshavn with the roads all closed off for the national day celebrations so haven’t even had to think about traffic.

On the few occasions I did come across traffic there were zebra crossings. In the whole of the Faroes (according to the tour guide on Tuesday) there are four sets of traffic lights. One set controlling access to a narrow crossing in the Northern islands and three sets in Tórshavn, and those were switched off today.

Thankfully, I did remember in time when I got to the first crossing in Copenhagen, but only just I was just about to walk out when I remembered about the little green man.