I found this, from September 2024 in a dusty corner of my Notes app and thought I’d better publish it.
Sitting beneath the enormous blue PHILIPS sign on platform 8 at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, not too long now to wait, I hope, for the night train to Stockholm. I’ve been here before, along these tracks, following these long lines north, but not for some time, and each time different.
The first time, whacking through weeds in another time entirely, aiming for Oslo when this whole no-flying idea first started gaining some traction as an idea. Dispatched by my then-boss with a not entirely serious suggestion. I went for it and booked, in a very old-fashioned way, a sleeper from Brussels to Hamburg from where I’d make my way on by day trains, arriving the following evening in Norway’s capital. Except I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. The old DB CityNightLine train basically failed on leaving Paris, arriving hours late into Brussels, enough for an acquaintance with the same idea to be scared off, back onto planes. I stuck with it, and had a journey of memorable torment. First my couchette was locked from the inside and the other chap had no wish to let me in. Then that train gave up somewhere around Dortmund. The latter stages involved an unscheduled night in Gothenburg that I managed to reach by some miracle in time to find a hotel that was still open, and then took an early morning train on to Oslo arriving around 15 hours late. I think that was when I started drinking coffee, having slunk in desperation into a waterside Hamburg cafe I’ve never quite been able to pinpoint again.
The next time here was on the way home from Denmark, a visit to Aalborg on the first post-Covid trip, to Anders’ conference. An emotional journey. Gazing at the lines south through Jutland I stopped over in Ribe, then crossed the border for Hamburg and flew home. Germany was still in the grip of masking mania, strange and paranoid and gone, probably forever. Only a year later, this time with my family, sprinting to Hamburg from London in a day and then spending two lovely nights here exploring, fantastic hot days around the city, sticky evenings in a hotel separated from Lake Alster by a four-lane road (bad booking).
And then, again, with the journey becoming a habit, sent by work, partially sending myself, on an early version of the same night train I rode on this trip, a journey initially cancelled altogether, and then reinstated through begging a work favour getting a better compartment than I would have got anyway. That night, pre-departure around Altona station has become something of a myth in itself, the perfect beer, late-summer sunshine, the rolling north into the sleepy silence of the border, and waking up to bright, cold sunshine in what was most definitely a different country.
Which brings me to today, a day of a 5am start, a 6am queue and a 7am departure from London. I’d become concerned that this journey would be impacted by delays at German borders and in Germany, and I was proved wrong on the first count, but right on the second. And as the delay started at the border I am going to declare myself technically correct on both. Things were pretty rosy up to Aachen, rolling smoothly along through the Ardennes, followed by the kind of ominous halt that makes someone like me with 20 minutes to change trains very twitchy. I continued to twitch approaching Cologne, where another pair of stops were thrown in for good measure, meaning my onward train wasn’t even shown as an available connection. As it was going to Berlin, requiring a change in Hannover and I could see a direct service 20 mins behind I ran half-heartedly for it, but didn’t force myself through closing doors, instead getting my ticket stamped as being valid for the next service. This one, despite leaving late, pootled along very happily. One lovely aspect of the journey to Hamburg is the growing feeling of leaving densely populated towns behind for farmland interspersed with increasingly broad rivers as you get further north. It doesn’t feel like there is very much between Munster and Bremen and Bremen and Hamburg, just time and space to sit and think, or not think, or nod off for a bit. The train emptied around me. It was very relaxing.
And then it was a shock to arrive into the business of Hamburg, where everyone’s clearly been hiding all this time. In fact, it set off an odd but strong sense of panic, which unsettled me walking from the station. It’s not a bad bet that I need food, drink or to stand still when that happens, so I tried all three, bringing unexpectedly a very large schnitzel into my life at the point it was most urgent. Recovering enough to pace round some more, I explored the elegant streets of the Harvesthude area, where I was invited to join in a social event for strangers in a craft beer bar (no thank you) and walked along the lake, and back through the city to this bench on platform 8 where the gently delayed trains are, to no-ones surprise, rolled in slowly.
One train to rule them all entered Hamburg HBF exactly when it should and left exactly when it should, and that happily was my train, bound for Stockholm. An inexplicable party of Church of England clerics crowded into my carriage, but melted away behind the doors of the night compartments. I was settling in to mine without time to fret about punctuality when we pulled smoothly out, heading north. The elan – not often a word associated with night services – with which we headed towards Flensburg and the Danish border banished any thoughts of lateness. Inevitably this lasted as far as the next frontier, where we ground to a halt for a slow loco change, elongated by indecision about whether we were having passports checked or not. It was past 1am by the time we left Padborg, and I finally fell asleep, waking at 5 with the noise of travelling through the tunnel section of the Oresund crossing smashing through the open window. I’m not complaining, I left the window open, I liked it. The criss-cross girders of the bridge itself emerged through the dark and I dozed off again, missing what must have been some more shunting slowdowns as, when I woke up, we were running 90 minutes down. This meant a cross between a relaxed morning and a growing sense of irritation, which wound itself up into something of a cycle. The latter stages of the journey involved pulling in to a succession of identical-looking southern Swedish towns and served as a reminder of the size of the country. We barely nibbled at it, and yet it felt like forever until we arrived in Stockholm.
The Swedish capital is something of an enigma to me. Its sprawling layout across islands and mainland means I’ve struggled to make sense of it, though I’ve been fascinated by it for years. On this visit I bumped into the stone lions that reminded me of my first visit in 1997, so long ago in so many ways. The sense of the old city sitting under a tangle of railway lines and main roads was still there, though this time thanks to the bad habit of e-scooter rental I became better acquainted with car-free routes, many of them hugging the waterfront alongside walking and running paths. It felt civilised and very modern and not for the first time on this trip I wondered why things were so different at home. We’re just not that good at things like this. There’s no end of lovely country lanes to cycle along, but on a bike you share the road, and that’s your lot.
At the end of one of these journeys, after work was done, was the swimming area at Horsnbergs Strandpark, which looked like one of the closes places to the city to get in the water. After a long time without a shower I was keen to do just that, and swam in what I thought was still quite warm water into the evening sun, hazily but not quite emerging through cloud but still doing enough to set a glow on the water. I saw another head bobbing along just before I got in, butt that person didn’t appear again, so it was just me, enjoying the moment in a slightly self-conscious way.
From there it went something like: back into town, quick dinner, exhausted, fell asleep so early I missed notice my flight home had been delayed, arrived five hours early at the airport, did a load of work, and flew home. Flying is boring, trains are interesting, and Europe is wonderful fun to explore, re-explore and then think about where to go next.
Tom Hall: travel, London, other things 