Tag Archives: travel

Where would you like to fly to from Sonderborg?

This is a guest post by Iulian. When local Alsie Express made a one-off offer of a weekend to London him and his girlfriend were quick to buy tickets. And the trip got Iulian thinking…

In April this year, I was one of the happy customers of Alsie Express for the flight to London. I always thought they deserved more than my likes on facebook, so this article is going to praise them to the sky :).

But this company deserves it – they offered really good services again.
As usual, their airplanes have super huge leg room. They offered us a lot of on-board snacks, beverages and fruit. The boarding was fast. We had a lot of information even before we bought the ticket: where exactly we land (it was a charter airport terminal), what cabs can we take, what were the prices for the connections, and so on. It was excellent service all the way through. We landed on Luton charter area, at Harrods Aviation and the personnel there was really high class. We felt a bit bad because they were dressed in suits and we had jeans and t-shirts.
The schedule for the flight was very well thought out: leaving Friday around 16:00 and arriving around 18:00 on Sunday.

After this nice experience, I wanted to find out some insights of the company and I managed to talk with Peter Høgh, the CEO of Alsie Express. There were some rumours about the real reason for the flight and I was curious about it. He confirmed that the plane was booked for a charter flight and was flying anyway to this destination. He did not reveal any other explanations, saying just that “due to internal conditions” this is all the information he can give at the moment.

He also said that we should expect this happening again, when there will be destinations interesting for leisure. When I asked him if Alsie Express has any initiatives towards international routes, he replied that these are very interesting but for the moment they are focusing on turning the Sonderborg – Copenhagen project into a profitable one.

I asked Peter to tell me some insights that nobody knows yet, and he has revealed that they are considering some vacation destinations like “Beer Munich Festival” or one – two weeks to ski destinations in the winter season. One more thing is that they are working hard on software challenges to establish the partnership with SAS. The main thing about this partnership is that luggage will be transported on its own in the CPH airport, without your need to pick it up.

I then asked him, if he believes that is possible that 50 people could book the airplane for specific destination, for destinations similar to London, and he seemed open to the idea “depending on the destination and the aircraft schedule.” That gave me a spark in the eyes.

So, what do you say, readers? Can we gather 50 of you to travel somewhere ? 🙂 Or does it sound good only to me?

Let’s do something crazy, let’s book a plane, Sønderborg.

Come on, where would you like to go?

Please spend one minute to fill this survey if you just like the idea of flying somewhere else from Sønderborg. Your minute could influence the decisions in a company. Doesn’t this sound good already ?

Survey: Where would you like to fly from Sønderborg?

*Disclaimer: This article does not represent the company view in any way.

Getting around Sonderborg with public transport

Small town but two stations

Sønderborg is mainly located on the island of Als, but the train only goes to the Jutland side. So if you are arriving by train you are not getting dropped off in the center of town but by Alsion, the main campus area.

The train station is called typically called “Sønderborg St.” and the bus station “Sønderborg Bus Station”. They are 1,1km apart or a 20min walk.

Finding your connection

In order to plan your route from A to B I would suggest you use the website Rejseplanen if you know the address or names of your origin and destination.

Use Google Maps if you are more map oriented and want to see your options.

If you have a smartphone both Rejseplanen and Google Maps have good apps.

Town buses

There are five bus lines that loop within the city limit of Sonderborg. They all depart from the bus station in Sønderborg and make loops.

Local and Regional buses

There are about 30 bus routes that cover the municipality of Sonderborg. Most of them are local routes but there are also regional buses in the direction of Aabenraa-Toftlund-Ribe-Esbjerg and Aabenraa-Haderslev-Kolding-Vejle.

For the list of lines check Sydtrafik’s website. In order to find which route will take you to your destination check Rejseplanen or Google maps.

Night Buses

Fridays and Saturdays there are three night bus lines departing from Sonderborg in the direction of East (Nordborg-Kegnæs), West (Broager-Gråsten) and Aabenraa.

Trains

Trains arrive and departs on an hourly basis towards Copenhagen. The train stops in Gråsten-Kliplev-Tinglev-Rødekro-Vojens-etc. In order to go south you need to change train in either Tinglev or Rødekro.

Train tickets must be bought before you enter the train. There is no ticket office but a machine at the train station that takes cash and credit cards.

Bus tickets and prices

Prices are based on the number of zones you are travelling. To see what a trip will cost from A to B you can click on the Zones i Sydtrafik in the example below a trip from Sonderborg to Flensburg shows the that there are 7 zones and the price for adults (Voksen) is 70DKK. As of writing each zone costs 10DKK.

On the buses you can pay cash when you enter.

Another cheaper option for paying is Rejsekort which is a credit card size card you top up with credits and then use on most public transports in all of Denmark.

If you are staying long-term it makes good sense to get a personal Rejsekort once you have CPR number. If you are here on vacation it might not be worth it.

The card tourists can buy costs 80DKK and you need to top it up at least 170DKK. Read more here.

Sleep the way to your destination

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We have already written about travelling to and from Sonderborg, either within Denmark or abroad previously in this blog. However, one way of travelling that we hadn’t mentioned was travelling with sleeper trains.

We ‘discovered’ the night trains by accident while looking for saver tickets on the Deutsche Bahn website. The service, known as City Night Line, connects a number of European cities during the night: you go to sleep in one country, and arrive refreshed the next morning ready to discover your destination.

From Padborg or Flensburg you can get on a train straight to Prague, Basel or Amsterdam (with stops in other places including Berlin, Frankfurt, or Cologne). Having discovered this possibility we couldn’t pass it by, so we hopped on the train to Prague for an Easter break, leaving Padborg at around 22:00, and arriving in Prague the next day at around 9:30.

On the train there are a couple of sleeping options, from 4-6 person couchette compartments, to deluxe 2-person cabins. On this trip we tried the 4-person couchette compartment going there and an economy double cabin coming back. As would be expected, the double cabin was more comfortable than the shared couchette. However, since the other two people in the couchette compartment got off in Berlin, we had the cabin to ourselves for most of the trip.

So how was the experience?

This was my first time in a sleeper train. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I would actually get. However, although there is quite a lot of bumping around at certain stations as the trains are reconfigured (the train leaves Copenhagen with cars meant for Prague, Amsterdam and Basel), having around 11 hours on the train means that you can get ample sleep. Both of us are pretty heavy sleepers and both got decent sleep but people who sleep lighter might have trouble falling asleep. We would consider these trains another time if we are heading in one of the directions of City Night Line. Waking up to the views of the train running along the river Elbe was worth it just on its own!

Hej Sønderborg

Culture, food, events and life on Als, Denmark