Rail Wonks

A particular joy of my job is collaborating with people who really love their work. We employ 70 people at ETBD, and they amaze me with the passion they have for their niche in our travel-teaching machine. Russ goes to Asia to be sure work conditions are right for the people making our bags. Dave draws maps for our guidebooks, and in his free time, draws maps to people’s homes so everyone can get to the party. Laura is so excited about the new Central Europe Triangle railpass. And Julie won’t rest until the handouts for our next Turkey class are right up-to-date.

In Europe, I work with people who have that same passion. My guide friends can’t simply walk down the street — they have to explain to me why the plaster is being peeled away to show the old wattle-and-daub, or how the church spire is so low because the Soviets wouldn’t let it be higher than their war memorial. And Alan, who runs the EurAide desk at the Munich main train station (a great service to anyone traveling by rail), can’t wait to fill me in on the latest train news.

Alan is the ultimate rail wonk. For twenty years, I’ve dropped by when updating my Germany guidebook… and for twenty years, he’s been passionately helping travelers, one by one, catch the right train for the right price. It exasperates him that I just drop in unannounced, but that’s how I work in Europe. Last week I popped in, and there he was, patiently getting a Korean backpacker with a German railpass a ticket from the German-Czech border to Prague. He said, “Come back at noon, and I’ll take you to a great beer garden for lunch — one you can put in your book.” (We have an ongoing joke that he only takes me to his favorite places on the condition that I don’t tell anyone.)

At noon, we walk a few blocks to the Park Café beer garden. It’s so hot in Germany that literally no one is eating indoors. If your restaurant doesn’t have outdoor seating, you might as well not open up. The Park Café, with a sprawling beer garden and a little fake beach complete with sand and lounge chairs, is thriving. Alan calls it “Little Berlin,” as Berlin is really into fake beaches. (This is a big trend throughout Europe. Cities with no beaches — from Paris to Copenhagen to Vienna — now have sandy summer “beaches” dumptrucked in. These are a hit for Europeans city-bound in the heat of summer.)

I’m not a Radler (beer with 7-Up) type of guy, but this light refresher is the choice for both of us on this hot day. After we each guzzle about a third of our liter mugs and zip through a little small talk, Alan gets right down to his wonk-ish passion: rail news.

Pulling out a packet of questionable Eurailpasses, he tells me that the big news this year is how dishonest rail travelers may be the doom of traditional railpasses as we know them. Alan holds up one pass and says, “This is the pass of Mr. Chen. He came to me, I looked at his pass, and I knew it wasn’t his. I said, ‘You’re not Mr. Chen’…and he ran out of my office, leaving me with this doctored-up pass.”

Alan tells me that unscrupulous railpass-users — especially Australians and Asians — are erasing and re-writing the dates on their flexipasses in epidemic numbers. The European train officials are trying to counter this by requiring everyone to keep the pass in its original jacket and log each journey on the itinerary page attached. But no one obeys. Travelers in Germany know that cops here — shy about being considered “Gestapo-like” — are reluctant to enforce things too harshly. So in Germany, these new railpass regulations go completely unenforced.

Leaving Alan, I continue my research. My staff organizes and distills the mountain of feedback our readers send us, and I spend a lot of time running down places to eat and sleep that our travelers recommend. I eat dinner at a nondescript neighborhood bistro next to my hotel because someone reported that the food is great, and Youssef and Monika — who run the place — are charming. The place seems unexceptional. Skeptical, I give it a whirl…then the food comes. It’s delicious. Monika has such a pleasant way. When Youssef (the chef from Tunisia) finishes his last order, he sits down at my table and we get into a discussion. I’m loving the place — conviviality-plus. I surprise Monika and Youssef by calling them by name. They wonder how I knew. I tell them about my work, and how someone ate here and recommended them. I get out my pencil to write it up…until Monika says, “But we are closing in two months.” Heartbreak. (If you happen to be in Munich before the end of August, check out Das Kaffeehaus, near the train station at Pettenkoferstrasse 8.)

I’ve had people in the States ask me for reassurance that Europe won’t become Muslim in a generation (as some fear-mongers are saying). I say that’s nonsense, and don’t give it a second thought. But, while at Youssef and Monika’s restaurant, I see lots of extremely conservative Muslim women clad in black. I ask them about it. Youssef says Dubai and Yemen are on holiday, and people there love to vacation in Germany. Two moms — draped in black on this hot evening — drop into the restaurant. They’re making an ice-cream run with their kids. I start up a conversation with the 10-year-old boy and ask him, very clearly, “Do…you…speak…English?” He looks at me like I’m nuts and says, “Of course I do.”

Being on the road humbles me. It connects me with our world. It’s where I get my news. It makes me feel good about humankind.