Drive! Drive! Drive!

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Geo: 55.6763, 12.5681

I'm a little nervous about the ride today. With all the issues we have had getting from place to place, we have little room for error here. The car must be back by 4 pm, there's a lot of miles to cover in order to accomplish that and we've seen too many things go wrong to feel real confident about it all. They start serving breakfast here at 6 and we're there shortly after with the car already loaded. By 7am we are on the road. I'll feel better the closer we get to Copenhagen.

Highway E6 is a great road and within three hours we reach Gothenburg. No issues. In another hour we make our first stop for MacDonald's coffee, bathroom break and some gas. Back on the road, I drive continuously until we near Helsingborg where traffic comes to a stop. We have no idea the cause but we inch along for half an hour until we find the problem, a highway crew trimming weeds and we resume our speed of 110km/hr. I remember Helsingborg as this was where we took the ferry on our first travel day by car and the port we missed on the Zuiderdam. I particularly remember the ferry $60 fee. We cruise by Helsingborg with another hour or so to the bridge.

This time we're taking the Oresund Bridge, a structure comprised of a bridge, highway on land and tunnel crossing under the Baltic between Sweden and Denmark. It's been raining pretty hard for the last couple of hours and continues as we pull up to the Malmö toll plaza. Most of the booths are automatic but we find one that has a toll taker. I don't have much Swedish money but the toll taker accepts my MC. We converse a bit as he processes my payment and says, "You'll enjoy the bridge". I've never "enjoyed" a bridge but we'll try. I find crossing it just like crossing any other bridge, about 10 miles long. We're on what I would call a normal bridge over water for awhile, then on a roadway on the ground and finally down under the Baltic Sea through a tunnel. What's the big deal? We find out later.

Soon after exiting the bridge in Denmark, we enter the city of Copenhagen. Traffic isn't too bad and with only 2km to our hotel, I stop to fill the car with gas and clean up any garbage while organizing our stuff. Now we make the short run to the Hotel Nebo, an older hotel next to the Copenhagen HBF. There's no parking so I double park on the street and carry everything into the hotel lobby, dodging the traffic and bicycles. Mom takes care of the checking us in while I return the car to the agency. It's only 3 blocks away. Again, there's no place to park so I just pull it up on the sidewalk and go inside. I'm ready for the walk around and paperwork. The lady says, "Do you have the keys?" "Yes , I do" and hand them to her. OK. That's it? I filled the tank. No one cares? Just leave it on the sidewalk? "No problem. We'll email you if we have any issues", she answers. I'm not sure I like that. It sounds a little too easy to me. I take pictures of the car inside for my file and out and leave.

I walk back to the hotel and find Mom has moved all the luggage to our room. Great. This place is nothing fancy. Chosen for its proximity to the train station and not for its ambiance, it has a shower, TV and great WiFi. The street people outside are a little shady. One guy sits across the street on some steps, yelling and puking. A Chinese restaurant is located below the hotel and we eat dinner there, strictly out of convenience. Won ton soup and Szechwan chicken with tea is our choice. After, we run a scouting mission to the train station to identify how to enter with baggage, elevator location and the platform layout, just to keep the mystery out of tomorrow's train boarding and subsequent journey to Germany. Our train tickets are in hand, having been purchased online before I left home.

Back in the room, we watch TV and I make blog entries until 11pm. Then, lights out as we fall asleep to the sounds of the drunks and hookers living life just outside our windows.

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