A Rotten Trip to Copenhagen

 May 21-22, 2022

Travel to Copenhagen

 Because of a large credit on United from a COVID-cancelled Portugal trip (which had to be used or lost) the only airline we could use to go to Copenhagen was Lufthansa through Frankfurt.  Although United is a partner with SAS, their nonstops to Copenhagen from the States are not codeshares, and thus not eligible for booking on United.  It didn’t go well.  Rochester-Dulles on United was fine.  Lufthansa is the rare airline still flying 747s, and Dulles-Frankfurt was on a 747-8, an absolutely enormous airplane.  This becomes relevant later in this process.

 We took off two hours late, guaranteeing that we would miss our connection in Frankfurt to Copenhagen.  It seems Frankfurt is a very busy airport, and it clearly doesn’t have enough terminal space.  There are airplanes parked all over the place with stairs up to them, and that’s what our 747 did.  We parked on an apron by the Lufthansa cargo terminal, but there were stairs there which were brought to the plane.  Unfortunately, there were no busses to take us to the terminal, so we sat for about 20 minutes until the first bus came.  One bus for 364 passengers.  Slowly, more buses came.  Ultimately, we got to the terminal, and found the Lufthansa service desk.

 Chaos.  There were six windows and five agents, and a line of dozens.  Passengers were angry, agents were grumpy, and, tired and frustrated, we were grumpy too.  When I finally got to an agent (Joyce was sitting) I was told they have multiple flights to Copenhagen but they’re all full.  So I just stood there and looked at the agent.  Finally, he said he would look at SAS, and he found a 3:30 PM flight which had just two seats.  He took them grudgingly (I guess Lufthansa will have to pay SAS) and gave me boarding passes.  So instead of a mid-morning flight, we went mid-afternoon.

But SAS was great.  It was only an hour and ten minutes, but they fed us a lovely meal:

  

North Germany was interesting to look at.  I think the farmland is different from the US farmland, in that there don’t seem to be farmhouses!  There are vast plots of farmland, and multiple small villages and as best as I could determine, the farm families live in the villages:

  

Denmark is composed of one large peninsula going north from Germany and multiple islands, east of the mainland.  Copenhagen is on a large island.  As we crossed the North Sea and came on the first of the islands, it was easy to see how low they are and how a rising sea level will be problematic:

  

We came to the large island of Zealand, which contains Copenhagen, and the coast seemed to be made of white cliffs.  There were vast yellow fields which we both think were canola flowers.  

But we’re there now, checked into our hotel, and ready for a good sleep.  Godnat!