I rarely go anywhere outside Copenhagen by train, but because I am attending a course Monday to Friday at Aalborg University, I went to Aalborg by train today. I had decided not to take my car for once, since Copenhagen-Aalborg is a very long trip to drive, and in the train I would have the possibility of doing something (like reading or correcting my boyfriend’s thesis). I have never been a fan of the Danish public transport system, but I thought it would probably be fine for this kind of trip… I was SO wrong!
Since I have never taken the train to Jutland before, I arrived at Copenhagen Central Station some time in advance, so I could find my train. Only with a slight bit of confusion, I found the correct train, and even my reserved seat. Then I heard from the other passengers that two of the train carts, where people had reserved seats, were missing on the train. This means that there were a lot of people who thought they had reserved a seat, but now had to stand (this train is mainly used for trips of several hours). Additionally the train left Copenhagen 20 minutes late. After a few stations, people were standing or sitting on the floor next to the seats in the carts, because the train was so packed.
Then at Fyn we repeatedly stopped and waited because of THIS:
Construction work on the tracks…. So, someone came to Fyn and started doing construction work on the tracks BY SURPRISE. There is NO way DSB could have taken this into account in the train schedule planning… Right… Okay, so they also said they had signal error problems on top of the construction work. DSB really uses this “signal error” A LOT for their reasons for delays.
Parts of the train were supposed to go to a different part of Jutland, but because of the delay this was cancelled. I was quite surprised that all the important information in the speakers was given ONLY in Danish. Had I not understood Danish, I would have had a real problem.
Not surprisingly, the train also ended up not going further than Aarhus because of the delay. They just changed the monitors to Aarhus, and didn’t say anything until just before the station (“Toget kører ikke videre”).
Aarhus is still 1½ hours away from Aalborg by train, and I waited 20 minutes in Aarhus for a new train.
Then this train also had a hold up at Langå station for 15 minutes. At this point I was VERY tired – both physically and of DSB >:(.
In the end I was “only” 1 hour late, all though it felt like a lot more, and I arrived in Aalborg at 23:30 with a total trip length of 6.5 hours. I am so glad the hotel was only 5 minutes walk from the station, and that I could buy a sandwich in the reception (I hadn’t eaten since lunch). Never has a plain boring sandwich and a faxe kondi tasted that good.
All that said, I was lucky I didn’t have some specific time I had to be somewhere. I can also get a new free ticket… but I think I will go by car/ferry next time.
