“Oh Praha, I forgot all about you! Berlin to Praha, perhaps. But then, Budapest, we’ll be ever so close and I have this ‘feeling’ in the deeper, whispering regions of my gut that I’ll be a sucker for your refreshing eastern flair. And then comes that damn sexy beast of a Croatian coast which by then, will have me so off-track that I wonder, Praha and co, if we should meet later on when I don’t have to rush off to those western friends of yours too quickly. So, you know, we can hang.”
This has been my muted dialog for the last hour or so as I sit backwards on an InterCity train from Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Hbf, my Eurail map sprawled over my lap like a stiffened, large-sized serviette, and KrismeldasTotallyEpicItinerary.xlsx open before me, the cursor tapping its feet as it awaits my next order from this week’s international buffet.
Here lies the beauty of choosing to travel Europe by train.
Admittedly, there is that unavoidable pre-transit chaos: waking up to mind-jogging vodka breath and a frantic packing session to make checkout time, running from symbol to screen then finally to information aka ‘I know you tried but yes, you are definitely still a tourist’ desk, that crazy platform-hopping game, squeezing through ‘elbow pinball machine’ aisles and then finally releasing oneself of that merciless baggage to melt into one’s temporary haven of respite.
But it’s from this point on where there’s no denying the pleasure that is being swept from plot to plot across lush, cattle-ridden pastures whilst trying to pick what country you sort of feel like next.
Meanwhile, in the same way I sometimes pass St Peters station back at home and only realise once I hit Sydenham, I believe I’m suddenly in Germany. Guten tag! Yep, this is all still such a trip.
