social distancing in Copenhagen
Was half thinking about calling this photo "Planes, trains and automobiles" after the John Candy and Steve Martin film. Let me explain why.....
My wife was in England having flown out from Copenhagen. For those that know her she can be known to fall over easily due to almost non-existent ligaments in her ankles. Well her right one now has ligaments from her right knee but it's soon time for her to be operated again for her left ankle. Suffice to say whilst in England visiting my family her ankle gave way and she fell over spraining her left foot and knee in the process. There was no way she would have been able to drag suitcases, rucksacks and duty free on the train over to Sweden, change at Malmö and carry on up to our house. So I decided to drive down and meet her at the airport. I also decided it would be nice to wander around Copenhagen for a few hours, soaking in the sights and trying to improve my limited street photography skills.
I woke up at 5am, heading out 45 minutes later for the four hours drive to Malmö, parked my car and caught the train over to Copenhagen. It was so hot that day, not weather to have jeans on but as my two pair of shorts I own have baggy, shallow pockets I didn't want to lose my wallet, phone or car keys to gravity or worse quick fingers. So jeans it was. I headed down to the iconic tourist site of Nyhavn. Along the way I snapped this couple. Really happy with how it turned out, if I'm honest. Anyway as it was so hot I decided enough was enough and retreated back to the airport for some much needed air conditioning, hydration and waited for my wife. Her flight landed 10 minutes early and that was the start of our troubles....
Her flight from Gatwick took 1 hour 25 minutes. It took 1 hour 15 minutes for her, and her fellow travellers, luggage to come to the baggage reclaim hall. Very frustrating as it was only their flight that Copenhagen airport had problems with. Oh well. When she finally came out we walked to the platform, having just missed the previous train by a few minutes. No worries the next train was due soon in..... But it didn't come. We waited patiently for news and after a while a lady announced on the loud speakers that there was a power failure on the line between the airport and Copenhagen center. She'd come back with more information soon. Which she didn't, only "reappearing" now and then to announce to the every increasing size of travellers the same news of a power failure. After two hours of waiting I started to see the quite sizeable crowd starting to thin out. Curious I went and looked at the monitor that shows the times of trains. Everything was cancelled over to Sweden for the coming two hours. It actually turned out to be three but we didn't know that then. Urgh. Time to catch a taxi.
When I found out where the Swedish taxis went from I went back down to the platform to help my wife, who being very kind hearted was helping a dear old Swedish lady in her 70s called Anna-Karin. We asked her if she wanted to share a taxi with us over to Malmö which she readily agreed to. To get from the platform and up to the taxi rank you need to take one of those angled moving walkways. Unfortunately Anna-Karin stumbled whilst trying to get on it, falling over her suitcase. I quickly hit the emergency stop button, explained to a grumpy man why I had done it and helped my wife who was helping this dear old lady up. We eventually got to the taxi rank where Ali, our chauffeur, unleashed his inner-F1 driver on the Öresund bridge. I've only crossed that bridge before on the train, never in a car, so was quite looking forward to the experience. Sadly I didn't have much time to enjoy the views as we topped out at 145km/h thanks to Ali's rather heavy right foot.
When we were dropped off at the carpark where our car was located we asked Anna-Karin (who has lived most of her adult life in Milan, Italy and was just back for a few months whilst her apartment block was renovated) if she'd like to travel with us as her home town of Varberg was on the way to our place. Again she readily agreed at which point I told her she shouldn't be so trusting strangers at her age. She said she trusted us as we walked into a totally dark underground carpark to find our car had gone!
Well gone and gone but it wasn't where I had thought I had parked it. Dumbfounded I spluttered out "but I parked it here!" and apologised to Anna-Karin and repeatedly tried to reassure her that we hadn't led her into a (now lit) underground torture chamber. Petra whipped out her phone, looked at the app for the car which stated the car was right where we stood but it wasn't there. It was then that I remembered I had parked on the first level underground and not the second which was where we stood. Phew.... Car found.
As we left Malmö we got to know Anna-Karin over a shared bag of gummy bears. Turns out she had been to my work place (a conference center) at the start of the 1960s and really loved it there. Soon it started to rain. And boy did it rain. And thunder. The thunder storm stayed in front of us for the two hour drive (which turned into 2 hours 30 minutes due to the heavy rain) to Varberg. Some of the lightning had all three of us going "ooh" and "ahh". In fact it was probably the second best lightning storm I've seen with lightning streaking through clouds before diverting down in a forked approach to the ground. Truly amazing. We dropped Anna-Karin off, said our goodbyes and continued to drive up to Gothenburg, through it and finally to our home. I finally crawled into bed at 2am, having been awake 21 hours, of which nine were spent driving. What a day. Only got four hours sleep as the car was due into it's M.O.T. at 7am so was pretty much zombified for the rest of the working day. So yeah, planes, trains and automobiles...... If you've gotten this far, thanks for sticking with me lol!
social distancing in Copenhagen
Was half thinking about calling this photo "Planes, trains and automobiles" after the John Candy and Steve Martin film. Let me explain why.....
My wife was in England having flown out from Copenhagen. For those that know her she can be known to fall over easily due to almost non-existent ligaments in her ankles. Well her right one now has ligaments from her right knee but it's soon time for her to be operated again for her left ankle. Suffice to say whilst in England visiting my family her ankle gave way and she fell over spraining her left foot and knee in the process. There was no way she would have been able to drag suitcases, rucksacks and duty free on the train over to Sweden, change at Malmö and carry on up to our house. So I decided to drive down and meet her at the airport. I also decided it would be nice to wander around Copenhagen for a few hours, soaking in the sights and trying to improve my limited street photography skills.
I woke up at 5am, heading out 45 minutes later for the four hours drive to Malmö, parked my car and caught the train over to Copenhagen. It was so hot that day, not weather to have jeans on but as my two pair of shorts I own have baggy, shallow pockets I didn't want to lose my wallet, phone or car keys to gravity or worse quick fingers. So jeans it was. I headed down to the iconic tourist site of Nyhavn. Along the way I snapped this couple. Really happy with how it turned out, if I'm honest. Anyway as it was so hot I decided enough was enough and retreated back to the airport for some much needed air conditioning, hydration and waited for my wife. Her flight landed 10 minutes early and that was the start of our troubles....
Her flight from Gatwick took 1 hour 25 minutes. It took 1 hour 15 minutes for her, and her fellow travellers, luggage to come to the baggage reclaim hall. Very frustrating as it was only their flight that Copenhagen airport had problems with. Oh well. When she finally came out we walked to the platform, having just missed the previous train by a few minutes. No worries the next train was due soon in..... But it didn't come. We waited patiently for news and after a while a lady announced on the loud speakers that there was a power failure on the line between the airport and Copenhagen center. She'd come back with more information soon. Which she didn't, only "reappearing" now and then to announce to the every increasing size of travellers the same news of a power failure. After two hours of waiting I started to see the quite sizeable crowd starting to thin out. Curious I went and looked at the monitor that shows the times of trains. Everything was cancelled over to Sweden for the coming two hours. It actually turned out to be three but we didn't know that then. Urgh. Time to catch a taxi.
When I found out where the Swedish taxis went from I went back down to the platform to help my wife, who being very kind hearted was helping a dear old Swedish lady in her 70s called Anna-Karin. We asked her if she wanted to share a taxi with us over to Malmö which she readily agreed to. To get from the platform and up to the taxi rank you need to take one of those angled moving walkways. Unfortunately Anna-Karin stumbled whilst trying to get on it, falling over her suitcase. I quickly hit the emergency stop button, explained to a grumpy man why I had done it and helped my wife who was helping this dear old lady up. We eventually got to the taxi rank where Ali, our chauffeur, unleashed his inner-F1 driver on the Öresund bridge. I've only crossed that bridge before on the train, never in a car, so was quite looking forward to the experience. Sadly I didn't have much time to enjoy the views as we topped out at 145km/h thanks to Ali's rather heavy right foot.
When we were dropped off at the carpark where our car was located we asked Anna-Karin (who has lived most of her adult life in Milan, Italy and was just back for a few months whilst her apartment block was renovated) if she'd like to travel with us as her home town of Varberg was on the way to our place. Again she readily agreed at which point I told her she shouldn't be so trusting strangers at her age. She said she trusted us as we walked into a totally dark underground carpark to find our car had gone!
Well gone and gone but it wasn't where I had thought I had parked it. Dumbfounded I spluttered out "but I parked it here!" and apologised to Anna-Karin and repeatedly tried to reassure her that we hadn't led her into a (now lit) underground torture chamber. Petra whipped out her phone, looked at the app for the car which stated the car was right where we stood but it wasn't there. It was then that I remembered I had parked on the first level underground and not the second which was where we stood. Phew.... Car found.
As we left Malmö we got to know Anna-Karin over a shared bag of gummy bears. Turns out she had been to my work place (a conference center) at the start of the 1960s and really loved it there. Soon it started to rain. And boy did it rain. And thunder. The thunder storm stayed in front of us for the two hour drive (which turned into 2 hours 30 minutes due to the heavy rain) to Varberg. Some of the lightning had all three of us going "ooh" and "ahh". In fact it was probably the second best lightning storm I've seen with lightning streaking through clouds before diverting down in a forked approach to the ground. Truly amazing. We dropped Anna-Karin off, said our goodbyes and continued to drive up to Gothenburg, through it and finally to our home. I finally crawled into bed at 2am, having been awake 21 hours, of which nine were spent driving. What a day. Only got four hours sleep as the car was due into it's M.O.T. at 7am so was pretty much zombified for the rest of the working day. So yeah, planes, trains and automobiles...... If you've gotten this far, thanks for sticking with me lol!