COLUMNISTS I wish every working day could be as perfect as last Tuesday. Faced with the task of having to travel across half of Scandinavia by land in under 12 hours, I was more than a little tempted to stay under the duvet at Stockholm's Hotel Esplanade when the wake-up call came at 6.45am. I couldn't quite face the gridlock of shuffling commuters at the city's central station, the dull-looking trains, missed connections spent on lonely country platforms and arriving in Copenhagen long after the city had gone to sleep. You might be asking why I didn't fly, but the tricky location demanded rail travel and the uncivilised departure time.
Dragging myself to the shower, things took a turn for the better when I opened my suitcase and realised that this was my first official business trip incorporating my new, slimmed-down packing regime. Gaby (my trusty assistant) has been following my decade-long quest for the perfect bag and has taken some delight in seeing how I'll cope with my mini-compact duffel bag from Porter.
When I spotted it in the Aoyama branch back in August, I decided it was going to be my 48-hour bag for jaunts to Zürich, Milan and New York. After a few test trials in September, I set myself the challenge of travelling exclusively with the 50cm long, 20cm wide and 30cm high bag, no matter how long the trip.
This, of course, prompted a total packing rethink, including the downsizing of my toiletry kit. A good edit was long overdue anyway, and I managed to strip the contents down to anti-perspirant, hair wax, face oil, nail clippers, three types of essential drugs (nausea, muscle ache and sleeping pills) and a new addition - shower gel. I've always relied on whatever soap was on offer in the hotel and concluded that I was losing valuable minutes picking cling film off bars of Bulgari soap, confusing shower gels with moisturisers and hair conditioners with bubble bath. Transferring Sea Breeze's "super cool" body soap into a small pump dispenser seemed a bit fiddly at the time, but it shaved a good three minutes off my morning regime and sent me to the cab feeling tingly in all the right places.
In the taxi to the train station the streets of the city were virtually traffic-free, so my travelling companions and I arrived at the station with enough time to arm ourselves with a few coffees. While the wait was a bit on the long side for three cappuccinos, the barista had packed them with such care that I was tempted to tell him he might want to start consulting for some of the bigger, more obvious chains. Cups were neatly stacked, little stickers were put over lids to avoid spills and the bags were already filled with stir sticks and assorted sweeteners.
We slalomed our way through the station to the first class SJ (Swedish rail) X2000 carriage, which didn't look like much on the outside and was equally bland on the inside. After organising ourselves in our private compartment with a stack of reading material, I went to shut the lid on my laptop and, by chance, noticed a web page had popped up on my screen. I assumed I was in range of some the station's wi-fi network, so I took the opportunity to check the headlines on the BBC's website.
For the next four hours I managed to have a more productive morning than most full days in the office. I dealt with clients in America, Christmas house-rentals in Sydney, wrote part of this column and researched an upcoming trip to Turkey. I didn't even open any of the magazines I'd bought.
In between, I watched the Swedish countryside whip past, and managed to spot three elk and polish off most of the breakfast tray that was put in front of me. By the time we arrived in Älmhult, I was having trouble leaving the comfort of the carriage and wishing I could be whisked all the way to London with full wireless connection and chairside service.
Two hours later, meetings complete, I was back on the same line but this time it was a slower, Danish regional train that didn't have quite the same technical capabilities. That said, every seat did have a strategically positioned power outlet to feed thirsty electronic devices and there seemed to be an unspoken, quite refreshing code in the carriage that phone conversations were to be taken to the spaces between carriages.
Pulling into Copenhagen 14 hours later, I was contemplating a dinner of Danish polser (hot dogs) at a street kiosk but was really in the market for a club sandwich and a glass or two of sauvignon blanc. Spying a newish-looking café called Quote, appropriately attached to the editorial offices of the Jyllands Posten newspaper, I tried my luck. Settling down with the latest issue of my new favourite Danish mag, Cover, the restaurant delivered with a slightly funkier take on a club than I'm used to, a good West Australian sauvignon blanc and an attentive team of handsome Danes.
There was nothing overly remarkable about Tuesday October 16 other than the fact that every consumer experience exceeded expectations - unfortunately an all-too-rare occurrence.
