northward bound... we had two shows in Scandanavia, and one day off to get from Belgium to as-close-as-possible-to-Copenhagen. it was to be a 13 hour day of train rides, but because of the train connection in Hamburg, it was only an 10 hour day.

Bert drove us to the train in the morning, and we got into Brussels and transferred to the ICE to Cologne. we had a two hour stop-over in kolsch country, and were hoping my friend Martin could join us for lunch. alas he was in meetings all day. so we wandered past the Dom, ogling its flying buttresses and intricate carvings. we found our way to the Fruh, where my friend Carly had taken us the year before. we got our few rounds of the kolsch beer, in 0.2L glasses, and had our token local sausages. back to the train with a nice mid-afternoon buzz, we were disappointed (but not really surprised) to find out our train was half hour late. this was even more distressing to us, because this train had to make it to Hamburg where we were supposed to have 40 minutes between connections. no chance though - we got later as we went. and to add more pleasure to the afternoon, the air conditioning the old IC train was broken, and so we had a private sauna for the 5 hour ride. we managed though, napping and working as much as we could while enjoying the scenery.

in Hamburg, our next train had already left. this is a regular occurrence there, so they were ready for it. the train company promptly booked us a hotel across the street since we wouldn’t be able to get to our hotel in Kolding, Denmark until 2am because of the missed connection.

we took it in stride and enjoyed the night there, and getting some work done at the hotel.