An international train is a border crossing on wheels. And this is even more the case for the intercity that commutes between Berlin and Amsterdam five times a day. The train doubles as a regular Intercity in the Netherlands and can therefore be entered without a reservation or surcharge. For example, commuters from Apeldoorn or Hengelo may have to squeeze past hordes of drinking backpackers at the end of their working day before finding a place to park themselves and their laptop. You can also easily meet a traveler during the morning rush hour who is trying to sleep off his haze after a few days in the World City.
Anyone who has enjoyed these pleasures for some time will see traces of decay everywhere. Compartments or carriages closed with ribbons, in which the air conditioning can no longer be turned on or the heating can no longer be turned off. A reservation system that leader nott more functions, causing the souls who did opt for a permanent seat to stagger through the aisles for minutes looking for a seat that they will never find. And the almost guaranteed disappointment of a socket (even in the Second Class!) that nevertheless does not produce any power.
Yet few Dutch rail experiences can match the sensation you get as a train commuter from the east of the country when you travel to and from work among world travelers. Part of the charm lies in the feeling that you are in violation.
Where else can you just board an international train without having secured a valid ticket months in advance? And it is also the potential transgression that beckons. The idea that you can just fall asleep and wake up in Bad Bentheim, Minden or Hannover. Or, if you push hard, Berlin itself. The promise of an unexpected city trip is immer für Sie da.
For this reporter, who lives on the railway line in Deventer, the mere sight of the train passing through his provincial town is reason to dream away. A form of Anerrecognition moreover, especially when Apeldoorn station was skipped for a while and Deventer was not.
But the ever-moving progress recently, as it happens, also found the Intercity Berlin – Amsterdam under its wheels. In exchange for just under half an hour of time savings – the locomotive change in Bad Bentheim was canceled in favor of a faster lease locomotive from NS – the BordBistro disappeared.
Despite all the lapse in decorum, the BordBistro a last bastion of railway civilization until the end of last year. The paper ornaments around the stand of your beer glass. The size of that, anyway, one Helles half a litre bitte. The microwave you can get a decent one in just a few minutes Curry with pommes could imagine, while the Veluwe passes you by. The temptation of Milchkaffee from real mugs, with – please – some Süssigkeiten there.
And all this in a decor of 90s Formica wooden furniture with frosted glass partitions.
The standing tables of this mobile Beer garden could give you the satisfied feeling on Friday afternoon that you had to miss the work drinks of your Amsterdam colleagues, but when the successor to this worn-out IC makes its appearance in the timetable next year, everything will certainly be more luxurious. But who the BordBistro like the one who has plowed through Germany and the Netherlands for decades, who knows: Everything is good, everything is good.
#Memoriam #Bordbistro
