Summer travel log, part 4: There and back again.
Continuing from part 3, we arrived safely to the train station merely 2 minutes behind schedule — impressive after a 6 hour train journey!
Forgive the reflections and behold Amsterdam Centraal!
We found our way to the metro and I was both impressed and overwhelmed by the intricacies of how it works. In short: Before you enter or exit any public transport, you need to scan your tickets. For the metro there are gates that prevents entering the entire area unless the proper ticket, travel card, or QR code is scanned. On one hand, it’s efficient in ensuring that everyone taking the metro has a valid ticket, but it’s assuming that everyone has their own ticket.
Setting up the GVB app was fine enough, until I tried to create my account, at which point I was critically hit by a wall of Dutch in an email. I understand the majority of Dutch contextually — at least written, but for someone visiting that doesn’t speak the language I can see that as a challenge. It contrasts the main app which has localizations (to English at least). I managed to set up my app, buy one-off tickets, and scan them one at a time while the family was passing through the gate one at a time.
We found our way to our hotel: The Arcade. They have a concept of video games and gaming, which hit well with the kids. Each room has a setup consisting of a retro console, and ours being a larger room had a Nintendo Gamecube, a PlayStation, and an Xbox One. We could rent various games for the consoles from the reception. We ended up renting Super Mario Sunshine and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
So many games to play, so little time. (This is also the story of my Steam library.)
The first evening we met up with our two good friends, Lisa and Morten. We took a stroll through the nearby Sarphatipark before heading towards the dinner reservation of the evening at Vegan Junk Food Bar. It’s refreshing to have choices on the menu! We all went for a Galaxy Lemonade and a variation of starters to share: Nacho Nacho, Onion Ringz, Crunchy Mac & Cheeze Betterballs, and Crunchy Pnut Thai Chik’n Betterballs. My favorites were the Onion Ringz and the Crunchy Mac & Cheeze Betterballs, but the “cheese” sauce for the nachos was incredibly good.
We then chose our mains. I went classic with VJFB Cruelty Free, while my partner couldn’t decide between the burger patty and the Fly Wingz and went for the VFJB Notorious (I got to try!), and finally the kids chose the VJFB Double Cheezy Smash. The teenager has historically not been a big fan of vegan burgers, but this one was approved.
After we were happily content, we went for a stroll through the city, although the majority was closed at the hour. We found an Italian ice cream place that had vegan options. I chose a cone with dark chocolate and hazelnut, and my partner went for hazelnut and pistachio. The hazelnut was superb! After the ice cream we returned to our hotel and planned to meet up again the next day. On the way back, we observed this scooter cat. It was also there the next two days. This is its spot.
Scooter cat does what it does best: Being a cat on a scooter.
The next day we needed to sleep in. The 6 hour train journey had depleted the energy levels more than we realized. We met up at 10:00 by the Scandinavian Embassy, a coffee and pastry shop. We got a proper good cup of coffee and vegan pastry. I went for a potato mash bun (can’t say that it’s Scandinavian from the part of Scandinavia I am from, but had to try it), whereas my partner went for the cardamom bun.
Afterwards we went for a canal cruise. It was a nice and affordable way to see a lot of the city from a different angle. The boat had a roof and tables with plenty of windows to peek from. It took around an hour to complete. After the cruise we went for lunch at Bakers and Roasters, where we got the Vegan Brekkie.
Although clouded, the temperature was perfect for tourism.
The rest of the day consisted of more sight-seeing, walking through expensive shopping streets, peeking past the closing party for Amsterdam Pride on the Dam Square, and finally headed back towards our hotel. We wanted to explore the hotel’s arcade room available for playing coinlessly on old arcades. There were retro games, fighting games, shooting games, racing games, and dancing games. There was even a PC with pre-installed games. I played through an isometric beat-em-up of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on an arcade machine, but the big success with the kids was VS Sega Rally Championship 1995 with a steering wheel and pedals.
There, I beat it!
After cooling down from the day, we went for dinner at Takumi Ramen. Both me and my partner went for the spicy vegan miso ramen, which in my opinion had a good balance of its spiciness. We split and got back to the hotel at around 21:30 and got to pack down the larger things prior to the morning of travel.
This was my second time to Amsterdam, and it’s always been a great stay. Chiefly due to the amazingly generous hospitality from Lisa and Morten, who went above and beyond to make sure we had a good time throughout the city. If you read this, please know that you have a special place in our hearts and are among the people we care the most for in the world. Big hugs!
The long journey home
The next day started at 07:30. Our train left at 10:09 and the extra buffer gave us the chance to stock up on food for the journey. The first leg was a 2.5 hour journey to Duisburg, where we had 1 hour 20 minutes before the next train left. We spent this time checking the various stores, trying to communicate in German, and to breathe fresh air before a 3.5 hour train ride to Hamburg. This went chiefly uneventful, and we arrived on time.
As the last leg of the day was a 5 hour ride from Hamburg to Copenhagen, we wanted to get proper food prior to leaving the city. We found Vincent Vegan which serves exclusively vegan alternatives. We went for the Beyond Vincent Double Stack, and the kids went for the Cheesy One. I tried their Cajun seasoned fries. They were too spicy for my partner, but I liked them. The others went for the normal crispy fries.
The train ride to Copenhagen was supposed to be full from the booking charts, but that turned out not to be the case for our 6-person compartment. Our co-traveler was a woman from Italy — At least that’s what I think based on the language I identified on her iPad’s lock screen. We didn’t speak a lot with her, and she was shy when we did speak with her.
A view over the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal in Österrönfeld, Germany.
In Padborg, the border police stopped to check our passports. I sat next to the entrance of our compartment, and saw that the police was spending time with each other compartment. When we showed our passports, he merely glanced at us and said “It’s OK”, before moving on. This turned out to be a trend. The rest of the journey went steadily, and we arrived in Copenhagen at midnight.
The hotel was around 5 minutes to walk from the central station. When we arrived there, we were puzzled to try entering it. After 3-4 minutes a night receptionist arrived and let us in. The hotel was about what we expected and we let the kids have the proper beds.
Next morning we started the day at 08:30 with breakfast. It was honestly a poor excuse for a breakfast. My partner made an oatmeal with peanut butter and rice milk, and I got a coffee. I didn’t expect my mind to be culinarily blown, but vegan peanut butter and rice milk were the only two things that were vegan. Nothing was otherwise marked. We’ll skip on ordering breakfast at this hotel next time.
We took it easy until we had to get out at 11, and then walked around the central station to Tivoli’s entrance. As expected on a warm summer’s day, it was a long line. I was happy not to queue up with the others. Instead we returned to the train station and explored the DSB lounge which we gained access to as a benefit in our interrail tickets.
The Öresundståg-train left at 12:30 and was still following first-come, first-serve for reserved seats. As we wanted to sit together, we let the kids go onto the train first while we had the suitcases. This proved to be a good idea, as the train was extra full due to other trains getting canceled. It was OK out from Copenhagen, but when we picked up more people at the airport and in Malmö, it became crowded, even in the first class.
In Malmö we once again had our passports checked, and as in Denmark, the Swedish police quickly approved of our passports after spending a lot of time with other travelers. I don’t know if that’s due to our Norwegian passports, or if we were just looking family-traveling enough that they didn’t want to bother.
At one point the teenager had to go to the bathroom, and a woman came challenging to ask for the seat which had both the teenager’s laptop, hoodie, snacks, and other belongings in it. We said that the seat was unavailable, as the teenager was at the bathroom. 2 minutes later the woman returned, this time more instigating, saying: “Where are they? I can’t see them!”, to which my partner calmly replied “he’s at the toilet”, but the woman didn’t want any of it and kept reiterating and prying multiple times over, getting more and more rude and inquisitive. Finally I raised my voice and said firmly “TOILET!”, at which point she backed off.
The woman was insufferable, and asked others to give up the seats for them in both English and Swedish. To one person she said that she had broken her foot and couldn’t walk. To another she said she had back problems. To a third she claimed she had a disease of sorts. All the time in an arrogant, entitled, and narcissistic tone. Prior to approaching us the second time, I had observed her running around in the train trying to get a spot. At one point she got a seat when someone left. While I understand that people get upset for not getting the seat they want or feel they should have, I have no sympathy for elevating yourself above others.
The westrogothic lion greets us traveling in to Gothenburg from the south.
In Gothenburg we went for burritos at TomToms. Their vegan burritos were great and filling. The burrito place was a 10 minute walk from the central station and thus calm compared to the stress of the trains. After the burritos, we bought Magnum’s Blueberry Cookie ice cream to cool down with.
The train from Gothenburg to Ski left 18:08 and the journey was uneventful. I am always surprised of how unstable the phone connectivity is between Trollhättan and Halden.
We arrived in Ski at 21:40 and had to wait a few minutes to get onto the bus home. Full of energy and excitement to be sleeping in our own beds tonight we ran up the hills to the house. There’s something to the expression “There’s no place like home”.
The rest of the vacation went by to recuperate, unpack, and to land after the journey. I have used my friend’s tool, Trainlog, to create a map of the journey. The tool says that we traveled 5318 kilometers and spent over 2 days and 8 hours in trains. 15 days of travel, 8 countries, 10+ cities, and a lot of fun!