With a Danish train ticket, can you pause for a few hours when changing trains?

Question

Looking at the train times for a Danish rail journey tomorrow, it looks like we're going to have to change trains somewhere no matter what we do. There are no Orange tickets left (restricted to specific trains), just the Standard ones. We're pondering getting a slightly earlier train, and seeing a bit of the city we'll be changing trains in, if that's allowed.

While changing trains in Denmark, on a through Standard ticket, is it permitted to leave the station and go look around the city for a few hours, before continuing on? Or would our ticket cease to be valid if we didn't take the first sensible connection?

Answer 1

You did not specify the exact ticket type that you have, but it sounds like you have the "DSB Standard Ticket". In that case, the answer is yes, you're allowed to explore the city and take another train.

DSB description of the standard ticket mentions:

Billetten kan bruges til en hvilken som helst afgang på den pågældende dag til den valgte strækning

It means that the ticket is valid for any departure on the ticket's validity date, in the chosen direction.

There's some additional information further, though:

Når du rejser med en Standardbillet, kan du selv vælge, hvilken afgang på dagen der passer dig bedst. Vil du være sikker på en siddeplads, så køb en Pladsbillet til en bestemt afgang. Særligt omkring ferie og højtider er der mange passagerer i toget, og du kan derfor kun være sikker på at komme til at sidde ned, når du har Pladsbillet.

It says that, to reserve a seat, you buy a Pladsbillet (Ticket with place reservation), and those are for a specific departure, which makes sense - you'd get a seat reserved on one train, not all trains of that day. This should not be necessary for most of the year.

So unless you see a specific seat on your ticket (and a specific departure time), you can choose your own departure time.

As an additional note, should you have any questions during your journey, all rail company employees at stations or onboard the trains speak English.

Answer 2

This depends slightly on where you're going.

If your entire journey is within one of the regional tariff areas, you will be traveling on a local ticket, which generally come with a maximal duration measured in hours, and is issued with a timestamp.

On the other hand, if you're crossing tariff area boundaries (such as if your itinerary crosses either of the Great Belt or the Small Belt), then you'll be traveling on DSB tariff -- and if you have a paper ticket, it will be stamped mechanically in by the staff of the first train to check it, with a stamp that contains the date and train number, but not the current time. The staff of the next train will not generally go around remembering when which train numbers on other routes go, so they have no way to know whether you went for a walk while changing trains. When they see an already-stamped ticket for a journey that their own train could not have been the first train on, the most they can easily check is that the date is right.

Answer 3

There is not exit control nor barriers on the Danish stations, so you can walk out when you want and in for the next leg of the journey.