The cost of The Bridge between two nations | Hacker News Reader

The cost of The Bridge between two nations

bbc.com

46 pointsatomical28 comments

The Oresund Bridge is really rather marvellous, it adorns the coastline from every beach in Malmo and it's generally a pleasure to use (when the wind isn't so strong that the trains are cancelled.)

It is rather expensive to go via car (50eur) but the trains are reasonably priced (10eur), and it's extremely common for people in (even in my company) to commute from Denmark to Sweden.

I can't imagine how many people from Sweden go to Denmark each day as the wages are higher.

I don't think it would be nearly as nice to live here without the bridge, since you can be in CPH Central from my apartment in under 40 minutes, and to the airport in roughly half of that.

It doesn't just connect the two nations, it connects this region of Sweden to the rest of the world too.

> It doesn't just connect the two nations, it connects this region of Sweden to the rest of the world too.

Indeed - I discovered Malmö when they hosted the Eurovision song contest in 2013, and after flying into CPH airport from Australia, the Oresund was my first experience of Sweden. It feels like such a significant symbol of Malmö life that I'm surprised they didn't sell tourist collectibles of the Oresund when I was there (much like the Harbour Bridge is a symbol of Sydney, and you can buy little metal Harbour Bridges in every tourist store there).

The Australians I travelled with to Malmö in 2013 & 2014 still talk about it fondly, especially Max Burger & also Emporia. I need to find a profitable/business excuse to travel back to Malmö again sometime soon.

just FYI: Øresund/Öresund is the name of the strait between Denmark and Sweden. You should probably tack on "bridge" to make it clear you're talking about the bridge specifically :)

Ahh yes, thank you! Every time I post in a thread about Malmö & Copenhagen I learn something.

Last time I tried talking about the TV show The Bridge using its original name (Bron/Brøn, I hope I got it right this time!), but I think I used an umlaut instead for the Danish spelling, and apparently that means something different...

The article mentions steep discounts for frequent travelers (commuters). Do you know how cheap it gets? Is there a monthly pass or something?

You can find the pricing information on https://www.oresundsbron.com/en/prices , but the TL;DR for cars:

No Pass:

  - 52€ at toll station

  - 47€ online

With Pass (additional 42€ annual fee):

  - 23€

  - 14€ on return if within 6hrs, between 5PM to 12AM M-F, on weekends, or during holidays.

  - 5€ for trips #17-50 within the month

So yes, steep discounts for frequent travelers.

Edit: Formatting

I find the headline and intermediate headers of this article weirdly disconnected in tone from the rest of the content. They all seem to question whether or not the bridge is a net positive, yet the rest of the article is basically everyone saying the bridge is fantastic (and speaking as someone who studied IxD in Malmö but regularly met up with people from CIID in Copenhagen, it really is great!). But it fits with the UK's own weird "tsundere" attitude to connecting with mainland Europe I guess.

The "travel time by transport type" on the diagram is rather misleading.

The journey time by train from city centre to city centre is around 35-40 minutes, but that's compared to a journey time by car of 10 minutes — just the time to cross the tunnel+bridge.

The equivalent car journey is around an hour, assuming no traffic.

That's rather misleading as well: if you're taking a train you need extra time to get to the station and wait for a train. If you're taking your car you just get in it and drive.

There's no real right answer since the start and end destination matters. The parent was just stating that it's misleading, which it is, but every case would be misleading unless specifically stating a start and end point or the discrepancy in analysis.

This reminds me of commuting on a poor bus route. Arrive 10 minutes early because you have to be on it - wait 10 minutes after it's due because it's always late.

The trains in Sweden and Denmark are generally much more reliable.

For example, in this case the trains run every 20 minutes anyway. If you're familiar with which platform the train leaves from (it's always the same one) then arriving just a couple of minutes before departure time isn't a problem.

I wonder how easy it is to work in Denmark or Sweden (and particularly Malmö and Copenhagen) without being too proficient in the local language. Would it be possible to live in Copenhagen, say, for a couple of years and get by primarily in English, until you can learn Danish well enough? What about Malmö?

The Swedes and Danes I have met all had excellent English so I suppose it should be possible. But the real question is: Why would you spend years somewhere without learning the local language? Your life will always be limited and learning a language is not that hard.

In my case, because it's too easy to speak English all the time.

By policy and practicality, we speak English at work, including at lunchtime. My group of friends includes several people who aren't learning sufficient Danish (e.g. only here for a PhD and that takes all their spare energy).

That means I don't hear much Danish, and don't have so much opportunity to practise. The language is unusually difficult to pronounce, so although my reading/writing improves, I'm rarely understood if I speak.

But you did say "years" — after years, most people do speak some Danish. The motivation is different depending on having a Danish partner, children, a well-paid technical job, security of residence (e.g. being from the EU vs elsewhere), and future career plans.

why learn a new language that you are going to forget in a year after moving out of the country? If you only spend a couple of years in the country I don't see the point. I worked in many European countries as a software engineer: France, Germany, Italy. Forgot everything about those languages. Now I'm in Singapore for 3 years, I don't even bother.

You will forever be a complete stranger if you don't even try to learn the local language. If you live in Singapore learning Malay is recommended it is an very easy and forgiving language. Being one of the most spoken languages in the region I think there are over 100 million speakers of different variants, and probably a lot more that can communicate with it.

No, that's right- I'd definitely try to learn the language (and I hope I'd make it eventually). I'm just wondering if it's possible to move there before I'm fluent in Danish, or Swedish.

To clarify, I moved in the UK 13 years ago when my English was still pretty bad and I had a lot of trouble for the first couple of years. It didn't help that British people don't speak other languages and are very proud about their accents -which I love, btw, but they make it real hard for people with only a serviceable level of international English to get by, over here.

So I wanted to know if I'd have the same problem in Denmark or Sweden. From the rest of the thread, it sounds that, no, I'll be fine with English for a couple of years until I'm proficient in the local language. That should be all I need :)

I guess I'm uniquely poised to answer this. I worked in the region for an extended time as a foreigner and never had to learn Danish or Swedish. Everyone speaks English. I tried to learn a little Danish and Swedish but by the time I left I was definitely not even at a conversational level (only from lack of effort, I think Swedish specifically is rather easy to learn if you know English, I could read Swedish pretty well by the time I left because there's so many cognates between the two languages).

It does depend on your line of work to some extent. If you want to work for an agency of either of the two governments, for example, you often have to know the local language since you're dealing with older folk from outside the major metropolitan areas that don't necessarily know English.

Basically if your job isn't customer facing you can easily get by both living and working on only English. Culturally it is a little harder to break in and make friends if you only know English, however if you work in an international office, especially one where both Danes and Swedes work and people are forced to speak English it does make it a lot easier to build up a friend circle. Copenhagen also has a pretty decent expat community.

Feel free to reply and I can answer more questions if you are interested.

All good advice, except you're not at all unique.

I meet plenty of software developers, scientists and engineers in Copenhagen who don't speak Danish. (I'm one of them.) Those living in Malmö have an easier time, so they're more likely to speak Swedish.

...written while waiting for the Øresund train from Nørreport. Malmö has the better concert tonight :)

Thanks, that's great to know and pretty much what I was hoping to hear. Obviously, if I was to move there and stay for a while I'd make a serious effort to learn the language and I hope that I'd be able to get by in social situations in a couple of years- it's the work environment I was mostly worried about.

It does look like Danish people at least speak English like a second native language. I didn't know the Swedish also do so.

For the record, I'm an EU citizen living in the UK and my question is in the context of trying to figure out where to go if Brexit forces me to leave.

I live in Malmo (and, we're hiring: https://www.massive.se/career/)

My companies lingua franca is English, we have a _lot_ of diversity wrt nationality in the studio by itself and we're all getting on fine.

Nearly everyone in Malmo speaks English, often better than me despite me being natively English. (I have not encountered anyone, even old people who do not speak English, but I dont want to claim that everyone speaks English)

The only issue is things like tax documents or legal documents, they are all obviously in Swedish.

This causes a situation where it's actually difficult to learn the language because everyone speaks English so well, and humans are quite lazy. So you never get your language skills to the level where you can start properly reading complex documents.

If the Swedes were more like the french and strongly defending their use of Swedish language it would be harder initially for sure, but better in the long run. Similarly if the documents were English it would be equally good. (selfishly)

Nice, thanks for the heads up and the info. Yeah, I've heard about how hard it is to learn Danish for that reason. Sounds like a friendly place :)

Yes, it is certainly possible.

Everybody speaks English quite well. Many almost fluently. Often high-tech work-places will switch to English if there are foreigners around. My ex-girlfriend and a large number of her friends managed to live and work in Copenhagen and other parts of Denmark for many years without using Danish much, if at all. I often meet restaurant waiters that speak English because they cannot speak Danish.

I also think there is a rule at the University of Copenhagen, that if just one foreign student attends a course, it will be held in English.

You can definitely live and work here for years, possibly decades, without learning Danish.

It is actually quite difficult for foreigners to learn Danish, not just because it is a difficult language, but also because Danes generally automatically switch to English (to help).

Yes, I've heard about that :)

I would hope to be able to learn Danish eventually, or Swedish if I moved to Sweden (which I would prooobably prefer, though I'm not sure; being on either side of the bridge would be the best of both worlds, surely).

Thanks for the feedback. I'd probably be looking at a university position at the time I'll be considering a move (a couple of years). To be honest, I'd be really hard pressed to teach or talk about research in anything but English, even my native Greek- I've done all my studies in the UK and I can't even think about computer stuff in an other language. So it's great to hear lectures can be delivered in English.

Probably depends on the kind of work you do. When I did my masters in Interaction Design in Malmö, I was offered a job before I even graduated, and I still don't speak Swedish.

And many of the people I studied with (international students) stayed, and I'm not even sure how many of them actually have picked up Swedish yet.

Very easy - and quite common - if you're working as a software developer. In my team about 1/4 are foreigners. Same ratio at my last job. People that stay for more than a few years do tend to learn fluent Danish, although in my experience native English speakers often code-switch between English and Danish since we're all billingual in those languages anyway.

I moved to Malmö from the UK. My attitude is that I don’t want to be the ‘ignorant foreigner’ so I’ve been doing evening classes and am conversational in Swedish now. I really didn’t need it for my career though: my office language is English and I’m yet to meet someone that couldn’t get by in at least school level english.

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