Copenhagen Travel Forum

I'm flying to Copenhagen in September and want to visit friends in Flensburg for a few days before returning to Copenhagen. It looks like I will need to change trains somewhere between the two cities, the web sites will not let me book this route. Can anyone tell me about the trains or other transportation from Copenhagen to Flensburg?

The fact that you will need to change trains several times is not a reason not to take the train. Don't worry about that. You just buy the ticket at the station before you board.

You do not need to book your tickets via a website at all, and not all tickets for all routes are offdered online.

You may well be able to buy a through ticket from the station in Copenhagen. If not, you just do as stated above.

http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/englisch/international_guests.shtml

will give you times and details of trains throughout Europe. Put 'Koebenhavn' in the search box, not 'Copenhagen'.

Journey time is around 4 hours and includes 2 changes. The first part of the journey is on the reservation-only ICE. You can buy tickets for this up to a few minutes before departure if there is availability, but you might like to buy them from the station a day or so in advance.

ICE is not "reservation only". You can take an ICE provided you have a ticket valid for the route and the ICE surcharge.

Sorry for the confusion.....the ICE trains bahn.de listed when I was checking the route were reservation-only. I did not mean to imply all ICE trains were reservation-only.

Looking at www.bahn.de it appears that it is the Danish IC that you have to reserve, not the German ICE you change to at Fredericia...

you need to change in fredericia.
that town is located in western denmark, not too far from the german border.
the train station there is quite small and it´s very hard to get lost there.

As said before: You can do this route with one or two changes, Danish IC (or Lyntog) from Copenhagen to Fredericia and German ICE from Fredericia to Flensburg, or the other option: Danish IC to Fredericia, then local train to Padborg, and then another local train to Flensburg. You can buy a train ticket before leaving Copenhagen central station at the international ticket window, which is open every day, only from 9.30 to 18.00. None of these trains require reservation, but it is possible to reserve a seat on the IC, LYN and ICE trains, not on the regional trains. There are around 8 connections per day. There are no long distance buses doing this route, to my knowledge.