Lucy and I have just begun our first Interrail trip. We flew out from Gatwick to Copenhagen yesterday following a less than perfect night’s sleep on the terminal floor. Perhaps bringing sleeping bags (for a hostel trip) would have been worth it after all.

The man at the tourist information desk spoke impeccable English with a curious hint of a Birmingham accent. He told us that the street we were staying on, Struenseegade (stroont-see-girder) is named after a German doctor who was beheaded for getting a little bit too close to the queen. We withdrew the grand sum of 300 Danish kroner, thinking this would be more than enough for the time we were going to spend in Copenhagen. This turned out to be a little optimistic as we eventually spent 2500.

We had lunch in a cafe laconically named ‘ñ’. It is a vegetarian place and we both had a bedazzling varied Brunch with freshly squeezed orange juice (the Danes don’t seem to drink any other type). It came in at a pretty reasonable price and their wifi worked well, unlike the hostel’s.

Later we went to the Tivoli amusement park, this had a lot of rides ranging from rollercoasters to Hans Christian Andersen moving exhibitions. My favourite was the ‘Daemon’, a very red rollercoaster with loops and corkscrews. We also went on several rides involving spinning around and water which were naturally enjoyable. The most adrenaline fuelled ride we went on was a vertical drop which first moved very, very high with enthusiastic steam noises. From the top we could see a long way around us, accompanied by the musings of a man wondering why he had gone on the ride. Shortly afterwards, we fell fast enough to cause significant g-force and a lot of screaming from Lucy.

We also noticed that bicycles are incredibly popular in the entirely flat Copenhagen. Perhaps due to this, the Danish are almost all very slim and attractive, with the (unusual for England) combination of blue eyes and dark hair. Copenhagen is a very peaceful city, with comparatively few cars to anywhere in the UK. We are now aboard an ICE (InterCity Express) train to Hamburg, which drove onto a ferry and provided a nice break as we had to go above decks. We spent the train journey talking to friendly Germans, which made it go very quickly. We now look forward to finding a hostel which we know only the name of, having deigned to not bother printing out the reservation slip.

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