OTR

Bike path between Copenhagen and Gedser, Denmark.

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Today was the first real leg of the trip by bike, from Copenhagen to Gedser, at the southern tip of Denmark, and due north of Rostock, Germany. It was sunny and hot (25 degrees C is hot for an Alaskan) for most of the day. I originally thought it would be about a day and a half ride to Gedser, but since Denmark is relatively flat, I was able to ride the whole way today. As I was approaching Gedser dark rain clouds developed in the direction I had to go. When I was within 7 kilometers of Gedser the rain came down quick and hard. The road ran through wheat fields and there was no shelter except for a clump of trees about a kilometer away, so I pedaled like crazy to get into the shelter of the trees to wait out the sudden downpour. After waiting 30 minutes there was no let up, so I gave up waiting, put on the raingear, and continued on for the final 7 kilometers.

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Have you ever seen a Mercedes-Benz taxi cab in the U.S.? Most likely, not. But they seemed to be fairly common in Denmark.

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A typical Danish thatch-roofed house.

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I thought Gedser was going to be a fairly substantial town, since it’s a jumping off point for the ferry route to Germany. So I was really surprised to find that there are very few businesses, and everything except the one hotel in town was closed. Since there wasn’t a campground nearby, and because I wasn’t too crazy about setting up a rogue camp in some farmer’s field in the rain, I opted for a room in the hotel. So I had good accommodations for the night, was able to shower and do laundry, but unfortunately the one grocery store in town was closed. The only food I had was three plums that I bought along the way. So that was dinner. But on the bright side, the hotel manager told me that the ferry from Gedser to Rostock has a huge, free breakfast buffet. So I’m really looking forward to breakfast in the morning.

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This is one of the blades of a wind-power generator, with my bike shown for scale. These things are huge - about 2 meters in diameter and about 50 meters long.

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I have to say that Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have a superb cycling infrastructure. Nearly everywhere, there are designated bike lanes and trails. In the towns, bike lanes are to the right of the traffic lanes, and are often physically separated from the traffic by a curb. And then to the right of the bike lanes are the sidewalks, which are in turn separated from the bike lane by another curb. Signaled intersections have designated lanes for cyclists, and motorists respect the bike lanes and yield to bikers. Very nice. And a note about the traffic lights in Denmark – the cycle is from green directly to red. Then from red it goes to a one second yellow light followed by green. Completely opposite our lights in the States. Then there are the numerous roundabouts. Between Copenhagen and Gedser, I think there were actually more roundabouts than signaled intersections. And each roundabout had a designated bike lane which made it very simple and safe to get around it. Makes me wonder when we’ll wake up in the U.S. and adopt this efficient method of getting traffic through intersections. The Europeans are way ahead of us in this regard.

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Interesting things to see in southern Denmark.

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Tomorrow morning I’ll board a ferry for the two hour trip across a narrow section of the Baltic Sea to Germany.

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Tiger statue in the square at the Oslo train station, with my bike for scale.

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I got up at 5:00 am this morning in order to catch the morning train from Oslo to Copenhagen, which was actually a three-stage trip. The first train was from Oslo to 70 km north of Goteborg, Sweden. Due to track construction, they had to unload everyone – probably 500 people – from the train and bus us all to the Goteborg train station where we boarded a second train for the final leg to Copenhagen. After unloading my 66 pounds of bike and gear from the train, I had to get from the track level up to the street. There were two options – stairs and an elevator. I opted for the elevator and when the doors opened I was greeted by two guys sitting on the floor with drugs and syringes scattered around them. I asked, “Going up?” (kind of a metaphorical question now that I think about it) and they said something about making themselves feel better. But they didn’t mind when I wheeled my bike into the elevator and pushed the “up” button. Interesting.

The trains here are amazing – they’re everywhere, and they’re fast. The two I was on were the high-speed tilting-body type. The cars of the train would automatically tilt, or lean into the curve, like when riding a bike and you lean over when rounding a corner. I had my GPS going the entire trip and the maximum speed reached was 127 miles per hour! Sure didn’t seem that fast, until we’d get to an area where the highway paralleled the train tracks. It was just amazing to be on a train, blowing past all the cars and trucks on the highway. And as high-speed trains go, these aren’t even anywhere near the fastest – the fastest can easily top 250 mph.

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The business end of the high-speed train from Oslo to Copenhagen. This train hit a top speed of 204 kilometers per hour (127 miles per hour)!

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Portland, Oregon likes to boast that it’s the most bike-friendly city in the U.S., but it’s nothing compared to Copenhagen. There are bikes everywhere here – I’ve never seen so many people riding bikes. There seemed to be almost as many bikes as cars. There are designated bike lanes on all the roads, so it’s easy to get where you need to go. It seems the biggest danger is not the cars, but the faster cyclists that are always on your tail and whipping around you with inches to spare. It kind of reminded me of a NASCAR race, with everyone all bunched up at the intersections waiting for the light to change, and then jockeying for a more advantageous position in the lineup before reaching the next intersection. Wild times, for sure.

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A sea of bikes in Copenhagen. I've never seen so many bikes in one place at one time.

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A typical bike lane in Copenhagen. The road is on the left, the bike lane in the middle, and the pedestrian sidewalk is on the right. This system works very well to physically separate cars from bikes from pedestrians.

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Intersection in Copenhagen. The bike lane is designated by the blue paint on the pavement. This keeps bikes in view of vehicles, but safely to the right of them, and at the same time out of the pedestrian crosswalk. A very nice system. The U.S. could learn a lot from the Euporeans with respect to bicycle infrastructure in the cities.

On the schedule for tomorrow – from Copenhagen to points south.