Rail route of the month: the gentle beauty of a ride from Hamburg into Denmark
21.07.2023 - 11:31
/ theguardian.com
What makes a fine rail journey? We all have our own ideas on this, but I find it’s best not to dash and to retain an element of spontaneity, taking the chance to stop off here and there along the way. So, last month I ended up taking three days for a train journey of only 200 miles.
It’s possible to travel from Hamburg to Esbjerg by train in four to five hours with a single change of train at Niebüll, a small town in northern Germany just short of the Danish border. Yet, with fine early summer weather, this was a chance to dawdle. Except for short electrified stretches at either end – for the first 40 miles out of Hamburg and then again on the final few miles into Esbjerg – the route relies on diesel trains and for much of the way has all the character of a lightly used secondary railway. The appeal of the journey is in the delicate beauty of the flatlands and the fine small towns along the way.
The slow train to Niebüll starts at Altona station in Hamburg. It’s an unloved terminus, now scheduled for redevelopment as part of a major urban renewal scheme. Rattling through Hamburg’s northern suburbs, we quickly gain open country with rich pastureland and bright yellow fields of oilseed rape. There’s plenty of water, too, a reminder that this area was drained by Dutch settlers in the high middle ages. This railway from Hamburg to the Danish border is called the Marschbahn (Marsh Railway).
We stop at country stations with tangles of early summer vegetation tumbling over the platforms. Crossing the River Stör at Itzehoe, we loop west over the Wilster marshes, gradually climbing on to a high embankment that affords views over the two-dimensional-looking Holstein landscapes. For the traveller unaware of what lies ahead, this skyward trajectory is one of the great enigmas of European rail travel. The great rise in elevation is necessitated by the railway crossing of the Kiel canal, which carries seagoing ships with high masts. This is as close as you’ll get to flying on a train, and it’s interesting to gaze down to the ferry shuttling cars over the canal far below.
Now, we are in Holstein cattle country, with riotous displays of gorse by the railway line, occasional windmills and wonderful lines of poplars. The sun comes out as we slip over the reed-fringed River Eider and, for the first time since leaving Hamburg, a station stop is announced bilingually, first in German and then in Frisian. “Friedrichstadt, Fräärstää.”
I love linguistic diversity and take it as an omen that this small town by the Eider might warrant a visit. Ambling by drainage ditches and over a canal bridge, I walk into Friedrichstadt’s compact town centre, which seems like the most amiable spot on Earth.
At first sight, this is a fragment