We arrived back in Copenhagen on Friday, June 6. We took the bus back to the city center and walked the few blocks to the Savoy Hotel where we spent one night. The staff was wonderful and upgraded us to a larger room because it was ready at 10 in the morning when we arrived! We dropped our bags then walked a bit around the city. I felt the beginning of a cold, so we went back and I slept most of the day away.
We had a funny experience when we went out to dinner.We decided to eat at a Turkish restaurant across the street from the hotel. We didn’t have any Danish Krone left, so we planned to pay with a credit card. We experienced having to put in a pin number with a credit card purchase before, but we now knew that they could override the system and put in a code for people without pins on their cards. Okay, so we have dinner and hand over the card and are told to put in our pin. We tell the owner, we have not pin. He tells us to put in the pin, we tell him to input the code to override the pin. He tells us he can’t do that, put in our pin. We try to explain that our cards do not have pins, to input the number manually, or override the pin. This went back and forth for several minutes. Finally, he said to go to the bank and come back tomorrow and pay him. I am sure he thought he would never see us again, but we left and went to an ATM and got cash, and went back immediately. He seemed truly surprised. The next day we walked and walked enjoying the sights of Copenhagen then went back to the same restaurant for lunch. We had $77 Krone left after purchasing our train tickets to the airport. We handed him all of our money and asked what we could get for it! We split a durum wrap, French fries and two drinks. The owner came and offered us a free cup of coffee, as well. We don’t drink coffee, but we all had a good laugh together.
We then headed off to the train station – and this is for you Wendy – there was a transportation strike! Lucky for us, the strike only meant that the trains were running every 20 minutes instead of every 10!! We had plenty of time to catch our flight to Frankfurt.
We had a funny experience when we went out to dinner.We decided to eat at a Turkish restaurant across the street from the hotel. We didn’t have any Danish Krone left, so we planned to pay with a credit card. We experienced having to put in a pin number with a credit card purchase before, but we now knew that they could override the system and put in a code for people without pins on their cards. Okay, so we have dinner and hand over the card and are told to put in our pin. We tell the owner, we have not pin. He tells us to put in the pin, we tell him to input the code to override the pin. He tells us he can’t do that, put in our pin. We try to explain that our cards do not have pins, to input the number manually, or override the pin. This went back and forth for several minutes. Finally, he said to go to the bank and come back tomorrow and pay him. I am sure he thought he would never see us again, but we left and went to an ATM and got cash, and went back immediately. He seemed truly surprised. The next day we walked and walked enjoying the sights of Copenhagen then went back to the same restaurant for lunch. We had $77 Krone left after purchasing our train tickets to the airport. We handed him all of our money and asked what we could get for it! We split a durum wrap, French fries and two drinks. The owner came and offered us a free cup of coffee, as well. We don’t drink coffee, but we all had a good laugh together.
We then headed off to the train station – and this is for you Wendy – there was a transportation strike! Lucky for us, the strike only meant that the trains were running every 20 minutes instead of every 10!! We had plenty of time to catch our flight to Frankfurt.
1 comment:
To us Americans it is totally strange. I am used to using my pin with a debit card and just signing with my credit card. What we found out in April is that in Europe it is different. Although I did bring my debit cart to get cash, fortunately, we also figured had recently got the pin code for our credit card just in case we needed to draw money on that.
Boy was that a good idea. We were able to just put in the pin and pay for things. In Germany and Sweden they didn't seem to have any problems if you didn't know your pin, You could sign. Never the problem you describe here.
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