Public buses in Copenhagen, Denmark
Created | Updated May 23, 2003
Public buses in Copenhagen, Denmark, are yellow. They might remind you of Vogan spaceships. Consider the thesis that they actually are Vogan spaceships?
You enter through the front door. If you want to bring a bicycle or a baby carriage, use the middle door to get the entity in, and then go up front - it is allowed to say "Sorry" and "Please" a lot, doing that - and then pay for bringing it along. If you have a 10 punch rebate card, you punch it at the little machine, mounted on the bar in the middle of the front door, to pay for your own trip as well. A 10 punch rebate card usually contains 10 punches.
When wanting to buy such a 10 punch rebate card, your suspicion that you're actually getting into a Vogan spaceship, and not a public bus, might increase, as the driver flatly refuses to sell you one. Don't panic - you have to buy them beforehand, at kiosks, supermarkets, train stations and the like. Go for a bus ticket. The driver is actually only doing his job, and will not read you poetry.
When taking a public bus, be advised that driving a public bus seems to require an intimate knowledge of Vogan thinking: There are actually people killed and maimed every year, when their clothes get caught in a closing bus door, and they get dragged along, sometimes ending up under a wheel, which is not a cool thing. The mirrors mounted on both sides of the buses are there to trick you into a false sense of security, and because the law requires buses to have mirrors mounted on both sides. Feel free to consider which reason is considered most important.
Hard acceleration and braking is the general rule for drivers of public buses in Copenhagen, so make sure you hang onto something - preferably something firm that doesn't go "let go of me!", or something of that nature, continuously.
When wanting to get off, use one of the red buttons mounted on bars down through the bus, marked "stop". But don't expect the driver to actually stop at the bus stop, where you want to get off. That would make bus traveling much too easy and dull, so consider the argument that the bus driver is actually doing you a favor, ignoring your pressing a stop button?
Oh - and if a bus is headed your way, and you're standing in a bus lane: Panic!
