Although my trip started in Copenhagen, which as you may know is in Denmark, we also spent a little time in Sweden, specifically the bulk of one day.

I’d like to tell you about that day.

The other couple we were traveling with had arrived in Copenhagen the day before this big Sweden trip, and we didn’t see them actually that first day, but we had plans to go to Sweden together.

And then they needed a slower start to their morning.

We, you know, Freedmen’s go hard.

So the plan was Lauren and I were going to travel to Malmö, Sweden first, and they would meet us there a little bit later in the day.

So we hop on the train and we go to Malmö.

And to do that, I looked up what app to use to buy train tickets.

We bought the all-day train pass because we knew we were going to be traveling from Malmö to Lund in Sweden.

And when we got to the train station, we were a little bit confused.

And I did take some photos and send them to ChatGPT, and I’m like, where do I go?

And it was like, you are looking at buses.

You want to go to the trains.

Find that sign.

So then I did, and it helped us read that sign too.

I was honestly quite grateful and pleased that I could take a photo and it could tell me what to do.

And that it was correct.

Interestingly, on the train, no one at any point looked at the phones to see that we had purchased tickets, and we didn’t use our phones to board, and nobody ever checked our passports, which was exciting.

So we get to Malmö.

We have some fun there.

We meet up with our friends.

We tour a castle.

We see some art.

We look at stuff.

We might have gotten a meal, I can’t remember.

And then it’s time to get on another train to Lund.

And once again on that train, nobody ever checked our tickets.

And we get to Lund, and we had a wonderful time there.

Really, really fun exploring the city.

And when we’re ready to start going back, I open up the app again for the tickets to confirm that I know what I’m doing.

And I notice that the app says I have a notification, which surprised me.

But I checked the notification.

It’s like, hey, just so you know, nobody can take a train from Lund back to Copenhagen because of the fact that we have closed the one bridge that takes you from Malmö to Copenhagen for planned track repairs, scheduled track repairs.

And I read this aloud to my travel mates.

And they’re all like, well, this guy just told us this is the right train to get on to go back, so let’s not worry about it.

So we don’t worry about it.

Luckily, Lauren worried about it.

And when the announcement started happening, she listened to them and noted that the conductor was saying, hey, this is going to be the last stop because, you know, we shut down that bridge.

So you’re going to have to switch to buses to get to Copenhagen.

OK.

So we get off the train since that was the last stop and we follow the crowds of people to these long lines to get on buses.

Now, this was not an issue of not speaking Swedish or Danish, although that was also an issue.

This was an issue of nobody had any information.

So there was many confused people, some of whom spoke the right languages and some of whom, like us, did not.

But we eventually get routed onto the right bus, which took us right where we wanted to go, the airport.

No, that’s not where we wanted to go, but it is where it took us.

So we’re there at the Copenhagen airport and they simply let us off the bus.

And they don’t say, here’s what to do now to get to your destination of the Copenhagen train station downtown Copenhagen.

Copenhagen.

So we try various things.

We walk one way and that’s not it.

Then I see some other bus drivers letting people off for the same process and we ask them and they give us some directions that were helpful.

And so we follow those directions and they are telling us we should take the metro.

And I’m a little bit frustrated because I’m like, hey, I don’t want to pay for the metro.

I pay for these train tickets.

So we decided we weren’t going to buy metro tickets.

We were just going to get on the metro, given that nobody had checked our tickets all day.

That was the right call.

I believe they wouldn’t have checked our tickets anyway because at that point the metro knew that things were insane from the train shutdown, but fine.

So we hop on the metro and it was funny because I had the instructions, once again, from my good friend the robot telling me how to navigate this metro and how many stops it would be until we were going to get off.

And Lauren was instead looking at a metro map on her phone and was delighted every time that the map on her phone matched the reality of where this subway train was going.

So we’re progressing and we get there and we get to our destination, which is the main Copenhagen train station, and that’s very close to our hotel.

We even made our dinner reservation on time.

Wonderful.

And all I kept thinking about was how great it is to travel with people you enjoy traveling with and who you can travel with.

But the reality is, you know, some people I think would get incredibly frustrated with this travel difficulty because it was hard and it was stressful, but we also found it funny and amusing.

But I know I have some friends who’d be like, hey, you know what?

Screw this.

They’ve left us off their own place.

Let’s just take an Uber back, whatever the cost.

And I had some people who I think would just been angry or scared or really frustrated.

And we instead were mostly just amused by the whole thing, especially because we did it and because we got to the dinner on time.

Also, my friend John really thinks it’s funny that Malmo sounds a lot like Malmac, the planet where Alf is from.

Anyway, that’s all I got.

Happy Tuesday. Lex.