18th august, day 7 - Copenhagen -> Hamburg

Time to leave Copenhagen behind! Such a warm and welcoming city with an awesome cycling culture. Definitely coming back. Well, can’t avoid it, the quickest route from Finland to Central Europe goes through Copenhagen :)

Pre-train brunch at cafe Kaffestuen highly recommended at Happy Cow. And it certainly didn’t disappoint, not just pretty but extremely tasty and filling too. And vegan of course.

Train (not the one in the picture) to Hamburg was on time and everything basically worked as it should. But it was also full and even with some AC extremely hot and sticky with the 28C weather. I had lots of time to hit myself on the head about failing to buy a little portable fan before leaving. I did have a look in Copenhagen but the only ones I could quickly find were at Flying Tiger, so err nope.

Met a friend at Hamburg train station with plan for food and beers. Weirdly, Hamburg as a proclaimed cycling city actually doesn’t seem to have all that many options for bike sharing. My friend didn’t really know why, possibly the city bikes have chased the competition out? Having a city bike system without competition is all good if the bikes are well maintained, the pricing is affordable and the system is easy to use.

Out of those 3, only the pricing was true for me. Registering to the Stadtrad biking system via their web page went fine up until phone verification was needed. The SMS never arrived. There is no retry button. Another well done IT job. The account section has no way to re-trigger phone verification. The app doesn’t do any better. Trying to reserve a bike returns a mysterious “server error”.

I call their support and listen to endless amounts of German bot voice, expecting some English language instructions on what to do anytime now. It never arrives. After all, this is only the support number for the city bikes marketed for tourists as the best way to get around the city. Apparently only German tourists are actually welcome.

My friend calls support and has better luck actually speaking German. The support person is completely mystified. They give us a code to type into the app, but can’t say where the code should go in the app. We thank them and go through every single part of the app. The only place to type in a code (which may or may not be the right place) throws the mysterious server error.

We look at other options. There are none. Apparently bike sharing by other companies in Hamburg just doesn’t exist currently. Which is a bit of a bummer trying to get around when the Stadtrad system gives you the middle finger in German.

I accept that my 5€ initial yearly fee for the biking system has been lost and my friend created an account on their phone number. This works for tonight but doesn’t allow me to use the bikes the next two days I am here. The first bike I try has issues with the gears and makes a scary squeaking noise while pedalling, so we switch to another bike at the next rental station. The next bike is in good condition and actually nice to ride. These have 7 gears and you can actually get to a nice speed with them. Finally we make it to beer and food \o/

Cycling in Hamburg immediately strikes me as much more chaotic, compared to Copenhagen, but also in some ways to Helsinki. The cycling paths seem to be very narrow and often going in the middle of the pavement, making pedestrians constantly be in the way and in danger. Car traffic is high and fast, and in some situations the road seems to be the only place to bike. My friend tells me of constant dangerous situations with cars cutting him off during his daily commutes around the city. He always wears a camera which has once managed to get him justice when a car bumped into him, and the recording had the licence plate of the car. Cycling definitely seems very popular here though just by the number of bikes around.

Vegan burger with cauliflower “wings” at Brewdog was good. The apparently famous ÜberQuell brewery pizzas need to be tried another time, they were full and could only give us beer. To the hotel just in time for midnight check-in, into a hot room with barely working AC.

Forgot to record days cycling, approx 3km in Copenhagen and ̃12km in Hamburg.

Total kilometres travel approx: 1420km

#travel #travelbyland #jasontravels #copenhagen #hamburg #cycling #stadtrad