Day 55: 12(ish) Hours, 5 Trains, and a Bus Later…

It was a TRAVEL day today…

To our credit, we knew it would be a little involved today. It’s hard to believe that, just this morning, we were in Malmö, and now (finally) we’re back in Hattingen!

We got ourselves together a little early today so we could catch breakfast at the hotel around 8:30, as opposed to 9. We wanted to give ourselves time to eat at a leisurely pace, as opposed to scarfing things down. We weren’t far from the central station, and there are a number of buses we could have grabbed, as well as a series of regional trains leaving from Malmö fairly regularly.

Because we were a little early, we caught a bus just after 9 to the central station and then a train around 9:30 that took us from Malmö back to Copenhagen. *Note: Our travel plan today was *almost* destination-for-destination our week-plus adventure in reverse.* In Copenhagen, we were to catch our first long-haul train that was going to take us to Hamburg. The train was on time, but, unfortunately, neither the air-conditioning nor the outlets worked. The train staff recognized this fairly early into the journey but could not do anything for a bit, so we made about half the journey sweating our butts off until we stopped at a very small station and switched trains.

Honestly, the replacement train wasn’t much better. We still sweat our butts off, but if you sat at the right angle, you could kind of feel the air. Once in Hamburg, we (thankfully) didn’t have to go very far to catch our next train. We arrived at Platform 11 and had to depart from Platform 14. That train was running a little behind, but it was meant to be the final long-haul of this return trip, though a shorter ride than the previous one (Copenhagen to Hamburg was about 5 hours, this one was a bit more than 4). This ride would put us in Essen, where we could grab an S-Bahn back to Hattingen.

It was pretty uneventful getting into Essen and getting to the S-Bahn. Unfortunately, for us, the easy part of the trek turned into a little bit of a mess right towards the final stages as the S-Bahn stopped one stop short of where we planned to disembark so that it could turn around. That meant we had to figure out the final 2ish miles of travel. Fortunately, there was a bus that picked up right from the station that has a stop across the street from Alina and Peter’s backyard. The caveat we had to deal with there was that the S-Bahn kicked us off about 20 minutes before the bus was going to be there, so we had to stand around for a little bit. Nevertheless, we made it back in one piece: tired, sweaty, but glad to be back :) We caught up with Alina and Peter briefly before turning in. Tomorrow, we have a few “housekeeping” items to deal with as we contend with the thought of going home in a week…

​Next to no photos today, but enjoy nevertheless!