After all the advise I shared in How to get the train from Lyon to Geneva, we keep writing about crossing more European borders by land, this time we want to focus on the special link than bonds Copenhagen with the Swedish city Mälmo. I did the journey from Copenhagen to Mälmo by train in May 2009. Despite the fact that Copenhagen is located between the islands of Zealand and Amager, it is possible to get by train to other European cities such as Berlin or Stockholm. Thanks to the construction of Oresund bridge named after the Oresund strait that is just located there between Sweden and Denmark.
Sund in Danish means strait and the name Oresund sounds a bit redundant. Until 2000 if you wanted to travel between Malmö and Copenhagen, you had to take a ferry. Not only trains cross the bridge, you can drive through it paying a toll. The bridge is part of the European Motorway E-20. The bridge is 7km long but the distance between Malmö and Copenagen is 16km. Because the economic costs and the closeness to Copenhagen airport, it wasn’t possible to build a 16km bridge. To solve this problem, a tunnel was built and a small artificial island was made to finish the connection. The island was named Peberholm (pepper Small Island) to differentiate it from the near island of Saltholm (salt Small Island). As a curiosity part of the materials used for the construction were made in Cadiz, Spain.
The journey by train from Copenhagen to Malmö only takes 35 minutes. The only intermediate stop between the two cities is Copenhagen Airport. Because of this, flying to the capital of Denmark is a good option to get the south of Sweden. The complete journey runs from Helsingor in north Zealand and stops in Humlebaek, home the Louisiana Museum and Malmö Central Station. From there you can take different trains to reach other Swedish cities.
The service is operated by the Danish rail company Danske Statsbaner (DSB) and the Swedish Statens Järnvägar (SJ). The website of Danish rail company lets you check train timetables and a journey planner in its English version. But the Swedish company website offers a complete English version, plus Swedish and Danish versions also allow you to buy tickets.
Trains run every 20 minutes, so there’s no need to buy the ticket online in advance. You can purchase directly from the automatic tickets dispensers at Copenhagen central station. You can use the machines easily because you can choose among English and several languages to buy your ticket.
The cheapest ticket cost 82 Danish crowns or 107 Swedish crowns. If you check the exchange rates and the rail websites, could be a bit cheaper buying the ticket in Danish crowns. Please note that the CPH card are not valid in this trains.
Being honest the journey is not impressive despite of a tunnel and a bridge crossing the sea. I didn’t remember any strange feeling during the train ride. In fact it’s a very good way to get Malmö instead of flying directly to its airport or make a day trip form Copenhagen and vice versa.
[pw_map address=”Malmö, Sweden” width=”500px” height=”400px”]This is a traslated and adapted English versión of the post “Como llegar de Malmö a Copenhague en tren” You can read the original post in Spanish here.
Thanks to Ricardo Ramirez from Barcelonando for helping us with the traslation.