First ride is an electric accordion bus. This is a standard one, but the town has even bought so called superbusses, which have two "accordions", not just one. This is part of an ongoing transformation of traffic: Electric busses, Bikes, less cars, more trees. I love it.

A week ago, the town has introduced a new line network. This is the first time we ride with the completely new line 9, which will take us to the central station.

2/n

Now on to the Öresundstrain, which will take us in 34 minutes to Copenhagen central station. These go every 15 minutes, making Malmö sort of a suburb of Copenhagen. They are not 100% reliable, unfortunately, so on such trips, we go early and then have breakfast in Copenhagen.

3/n

This train goes over the Öresund bridge, which just filled 25 years! It's a smashing success and has completely transformed the region, causing Scania to now be a part of the Greater Copenhagen Area.

The cars go on the top lane, whereas the train is on the lower lane. That means unfortunately that the view is not so great, but let's not complain.

After the bridge, the train goes into a tunnel starting on the artificial island Pepparholm, where we pass Copenhagen airport (and don't get out!).

Now on to breakfast at Copenhagen Central station!

4/n

On to the train from Copenhagen to Hamburg. This connects Scandinavia to the rest of Europe and it is run jointly by DB and DSB. It is also notoriously unreliable and it is rare that one arrives in Hamburg on time. Indeed, already wagon 8 is locked and travelers on that one are relegated to a replacement bus.

The 4.5 hours trip is slow. Also, the wagons being used are old and not very comfortable. Today, we have old german InterCity wagons, I guess from the 90s. Often, the wifi is turned off once on enters Germany.

But better times are ahead: Denmark is building a tunnel that will shorten the trip by two hours, a game changer for Scandinavia! The construction is currently on time, and due to finish 2029. So yay Denmark!

Both the german and the swedish government behave quite ignorant of this, and the followup construction in both countries is at best in a planning stage.

Nevertheless, good times ahead for train travel in northern Europe!

5/n

After lots of fields and meadows, there's a real highlight on the trip, namely the Rendsburg High Bridge over the Kiel canal, both built during imperial times more than a 100 years ago. The track follows a circular pattern with modest slope up and down.

6/n

We did arrive in Hamburg on time, yay!

Hamburg has a DB Lounge, which is nice since it's a crowded station. Access has become more restrictive, but after a short discussion, they accepted our 1st class Interrail tickets with a Bahn Bonus Silver card.

It's unfortunate that you can't buy a day pass for these using Bahn Bonus points anymore.

Anyhow, off on the last leg for today, 4 hours to Cologne in a nice quiet and comfortable ICE.

7/n

And we made it to Cologne with 5 minutes delay. All in all, a nice, stress-free trip with fully electric modes of transport.

I slept, read, ate, chatted, and read lots of interesting information about international rail from you fedihomeys. Love it.

8/n

Our next train to Brusseles is cancelled. At the travel center, a friendly DB guy tells us to talk to Eurostar personnel, which will be there waiting for their train on the platform in a while.

So now we have breakfast at our hotel around the corner. We'll see.

The plan was Cologne-Brussels-London-Glasgow.

9/n

On a Eurostar to Paris on our way to Bruxelles, just an hour later. This train requires a reservation, which we do not have. When the train arrived, a crowd surrounds the train chief, as we were instructed to do. He waves everybody with a Eurostar reservation for bruxelles-london on the train.

Now, we only have 20 minutes for that connection instead of 80, and they say they close the gate 30 minutes in advance. So we'll see.

But now off to Belgium!

10/n

And for the bridge people among us: The train station in Cologne is next to the cathedral and thus the Rhine. To enter, we had to cross the Hohenzollern bridge, which, as the name suggests, was built during imperial times.

This is so, because the cathedral is of course on the western side of the Rhine, the side of the roman empire, so to say. The eastern side was hostile territory. This led to the unorthodox situation that what is now Cologne was part of three different states during the middle ages. Bonus points if you know which ones.

11/n

Arrived in Bruxelles on time and they even kept the boarding (with airport like security that cost us a knife) for the eurostar to London open. This is actually because of delayed passengers from Amsterdam and we will start with 20 minutes delay. Good for us and as @fluffcthulhu would put it: We are now in the train that goes under the sea.

We will now drive to France, where we will enter the 50 km Channel Tunnel to Folkestone, UK. From there, on to St. Pancras Station in London. The whole trip should take 2 hours, but we will change the timezone, so we gain an hour.

12/n

We have #Interrail tickets, and therefore, the whole possibly missing a connection to a train by a different provider is not a ticket issue, which is great.

However, reservations are extra and also mandatory on eurostar trains.

For this one, it was a whooping 38 Euros. However, a lunch is included, which was quite a nice surprise.

13/n

Arrived with 25 min delay at beautiful st. Pancras station. Will we find a stuffed monk?

The train to Glasgow departs from Euston station, which we walk to in 10 minutes.

We've missed our connection, and the next train goes an hour later. Now we have to fix a new reservation.

14/n

So we now depart from Euston an hour later than originally planned and got new reservations free of charge.

Except that luck has really run out.

Due to a damage to the powerlines north of Preston, the train ends there, and the we should take local trains to Carlisle, then Glasgow, which would take 2:40h longer.

But our train here in Euston has a failure and after having boarded it, we now need to get off again, waiting for a replacement.

15/n

Anyhow, the answer to the Cologne question is:

Free City of Cologne
Archbishopric of Cologne (until it lost a war to the city, at least)
Duchy of Berg

16/n

We did get a new train rather quickly and departed with only 30 minutes delay. After a medical emergency on board and a longer stop with staff running around and inspecting the tracks from outside for obstacles, we arrive at lovely Preston station with 90 minutes delay.

Now off on the next local train to Carlisle.

Unfortunately, the power problems are north of Carlisle and due to a fallen tree somewhere, and we are told that there will be no trains into Scotland today, and no replacement buses.

17/n

This is the train that got us to Carlisle. Again, another operator, not Avanti west coast. The train waits 20 minutes at the platform until it finally starts, but then it is very smooth.

Indeed, there are no replacement buses to get us to Glasgow. But there are Taxis instead!

This is a bit of a bummer, honestly, since the carfree holiday is now officially over.

The thought of paying for a hotel out of our own pocket crosses my mind, but I discard it.

We will be almost five hours late on arrival.

On another note, I can recommend the first murderbot novella, I am intrigued what comes next.

18/n