Hamburg To Hirtshals

I woke up an hour early.  Decent sleep, mostly due to the quiet of the room

I kitted up the bike and wrestled it down the four sets of stairs to the ground floor.  As I was donning gear outside a grizzled cop across the street stared at me, then began ambling across to talk to me, then apparently changed his mind and turned around and went back to his police van.  I couldn’t read his intent, but perhaps he saw my own body language and realized he was making me nervous, and would just make me more nervous if he started asking me questions.

It was so early that the city felt empty. Most of the stores were still closed. I meandered my way towards the train station and stopped at a random bakery for coffee and a bunch of breakfast snacks.

I had this feeling like I couldn’t quite relax until I knew exactly where the train was, so I packed the snacks onto the bike. The big screen at the station showed the same platform as yesterday. I took the elevator down and located one of the little screens, and saw this:

Two interesting things here. First, the train in front of me would split in half when it left, with one half going to Flensburg and the other going to Kiel. Good to know; it would suck to get on the wrong half!

And second, the train in front of me was going to the place I wanted, but leaving in a few minutes instead of an hour. I decided to just board the earlier train instead of standing around.  If the conductor called me on it, I’d just pretend to be an ignorant tourist!