Traveling from Copenhagen to Stockholm by Train

Unless you are from the northeastern part of the US, or any other part of the world really, traveling by train is somewhat of a novelty. I lived in Scotland when I was a kid, so I got used to the idea of going places on a train. But when we moved back to Texas, we went everywhere either in the car or a plane. ANYWAYS. My point is, traveling to different cities by train is pretty cool, so my friend and I (Sarah. I keep referring to her as “my friend” and her name is Sarah and here we are together in a terrible quality iPhone photo, on the train to Stockholm) decided to take a train from Copenhagen to Stockholm. It takes a lot longer than flying, but it is cheaper and way more scenic. We also decided to add a few hours in Malmö because, why not?

You can take either the Danish rail, DSB, or the Swedish rail, SJ, from Copenhagen Central Station to Malmö Central. Both take less than 45 minutes but DSB is a little cheaper so we chose to do that. We had trouble getting our cards to work in the ticket machines so we had one of the DSB people help us. She told us to do the Family ticket instead of the regular adult since it was two of us as it was a little bit cheaper at 144 DKK (~$22 USD) for both us.

You get to Sweden from Denmark via the Oresund Bridge, which only opened in 2000. Before that, you had to take a boat.

By the time we got to Malmö we only had three hours until our train left for Stockholm, so we couldn’t wander too far from the train station.

When you first walk out of the station it all seems very new and modern but walk just five minutes south, then you get to the Lilla Torg area which has a ton of restaurants and shops. It is also in Lilla Torg where I learned an important lesson. I had seen a photo on Instagram of a super cute street in this area, so I was under the impression all of this part of town looked like that. Well, while some of the buildings are well preserved from the 1500s, it is still a mix of apartment buildings and small houses. But I couldn’t get this image out of my mind, I had to find this street. And I proceeded to waste half our time in Malmö looking for this street, which I eventually did find. And it was cute. But was it 1.5 hours of looking cute? No. Sometimes you have to know when to just give it up and sit back and enjoy what is there.

After painstakingly searching around old town, we headed down the street to the Slottsträdgården. While much smaller than Copenhagen’s King’s Gardens, this park is still a nice place to check out. There is a casino right in the middle, a nice flower garden and cafe, and a windmill towards the back. If you walk around the garden and through the other side, you reach Malmö castle. In my opinion, the castle looks like a factory from the 1800s so I don’t really recommend spending your time there.

I also really wanted to walk up to the most iconic building in Malmö, the Turning Torso, to try and get some cool architecture photos, but it’s actually quite far form the train, at least a 30 minute walk each way. And there really isn’t much else by it, so I say skip it and take your photo from afar.

Now it was time to head back to the train station. We had left our bags in lockers at the station (70 SEK/$8 USD for 4 hours) so we picked those up and then hit up the shop for some sandwiches and snacks for the train. There is a grocery store as well as a newsstand kind of place you can get food for the road (er, rail).

Overall, going to Malmö was interesting enough but don’t feel like you have to make time for it if you are in Copenhagen. It did make for a nice afternoon stop on the way to Stockholm but I would say your time is best spent walking around the gardens and a bit around old town, then finding a patio in old town for some food, a drink and people watching.

The train from Malmö to Stockholm is about 4 hours long. We took the SJ train and we bought our tickets about a month before for 195 SEK (~$22 USD) each. Pro tip: If you do buy online ahead of time, save a photo of your ticket on your phone if you won’t have reliable phone service in Sweden, as the wifi at the Malmö station is garbage. The SJ train is quite a bit nicer than the DSB train and had good wifi on board.

We took the 4:04pm train and got into Stockholm a little after 8:30pm, which was perfect because it was still light outside. Our hostel was in Gamla Stan (old town) Stockholm, which was about a 15 minute walk from Stockholm Central Station. We could have taken the metro one stop, but we were planning on doing a 48-hour metro pass, and didn’t want to start it until the next day.

So, yes, you can easily fly from Copenhagen to Stockholm in less than 2 hours, but traveling by train allows you to see so much more and for way less money. If you have time time do it, I definitely recommend the train!