20-22.5.2016 Stevns Klint -> Copenhagen

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

The final tour day. After packing my stuff and setting off I soon arrived in Køge, from where the route heads further inland for a while before returning to the coast. This is clearly Copenhagen Suburbia already, I got the feeling I was riding through one village after another without any space between those villages.

I met a nice German on a recumbent bike shortly after Køge and we decided to tackle the journey into Copenhagen together.

Especially the last few kilometres into Copenhagen were not like expected. We were on a brilliantly surfaced bike path, had a canal running next to us and trees and dikes as sound barriers against the nearby main roads.

All this made for a lovely arrival in Copenhagen, which ended with a drive through Copenhagen’s new, trendy and very creatively designed houses in the south quarter of the city.

Finally then, we reached the city hall and took some arrival pictures before parting way.

Proud and exhausted!

In front of the Tivoli 

The 80km ride had went by in a breeze and I was pretty proud to have arrived in Copenhagen by bike.

Now I had tried to find a place to sleep on the bike-community website “Warmshowers”, but hadn’t had any luck. So I stood at the city hall plaza, leeching onto the free Wi-Fi and tried to book a room in a hostel for the coming two nights. With horror I discovered that the weekend I had arrived on was also the date of the Copenhagen Marathon, so the hostels were full to the brim. I just about managed to find a room, just to learn it had been booked in the time it took me to bike to the hostel. The next hostel was only down the road and luckily had a bed for me, but not before deducting over 140€ for 2 nights from my credit card. And no, that wasn’t a lovely single bedroom with a lot of space, instead it was a 10-person dorm room filled to the last bed. I was really shocked by the prices in Copenhagen, as I spent more money there on a bed, then on the complete 8 day journey before, including food and transport.

Nevertheless I tried to enjoy Copenhagen in the following 36 hours I had there. I visited the botanical garden, the free art museum, the hippie-autonomous part of town called Christiania and walked up and down the city and went on a free walking tour. I have no idea how people can afford to live there, as every glance onto the menu hanging outside of the promenade restaurants sent a shiver down my spine and made me run to the nearest supermarket to buy a boring, but affordable supper or lunch.

Art museum

Perfectly describing the cost of living in this city.

Polar bear couldn’t afford the rent anymore

On the 22^nd of May I boarded a Flixbus (a German bus logistics firm that has expanded quite a bit into Scandinavia) after securing my bike at the back and sat on the top deck, watching nearly my complete tour of the previous 8 days fly by in slightly under 8 hours. With the bus driver putting his foot down we even managed to board the ferry 2hrs earlier than planned and therefor arrived 2hrs earlier in Berlin.

Heading back to Germany