Jet trails scar the pale sky above. It’s before dawn and we’re onboard a train making our way towards Copenhagen from Amsterdam. It wasn’t as difficult to get out of bed at 5.30am as I thought I might be. There’s a certain child-like excitement about travelling to a new country. It’s not something I think that I’ll ever become immune to.
The train slowly rolls out of central Amsterdam before speeding through sleepy suburbia and into the countryside. Fog hangs low in the fields. Thatched barns sit adjacent large-scale modern sheds. Cows chew their cud ignoring our passing train. Alas, I spy no windmills to complete my pre-imagined Dutch scene.
A uniformed conductor checks our tickets and slowly the cabin fills up with other passengers. Space is silently and politely negotiated. That’s something that I’ve noticed a lot during our four days in Amsterdam. Physical space is shared by many people and somehow it seems to work. On the street, cars, bikes and pedestrians weave their way through each other without much fuss or horn usage.
Our Inter-City train winds east and before long we cross into Germany. Here, we wait for an engine change. Three young German policemen patrol the corridor and I sit up straighter in my chair.
Early Autumn sun streams in through the large window, warming up our cabin. A few high clouds break up the blue sky. Before long, we continue on through the German countryside which looks much the same as Dutch countryside only without the expectation of windmills.
The first of our two transfers occurs at Onsabruck. The train pulls in at platform 11 and we have to hustle for our connection to Hamburg. A small tribe of passengers hurry along the platform and up the stairs to platform three. We are snug again onboard while the train barrels alternatively past industrial sections and fields which lie bare, their soil turned over ready for a winter planting.
A second conductor checks our tickets and this time she offers coffee. It’s definitely time for coffee. ‘Coffee with milk’ is generally an understood English phrase throughout the different countries we’ve visited, much more so than café latte or flat white which can produce quizzical looks. A reduced expectation of the quality of coffee on our behalf has also been helpful. After said hot beverage and a couple of podcast episodes, Hamburg arrives. More accurately, we arrive in Hamburg.
We quickly gather our possessions and disembark the train. It’s almost lunchtime by now so we seek out a bar near the station for something to eat and a drink.
I say bar but they’re more than café/restaurant than bar to me. There doesn’t seem to be an Australian equivalent. Often open from morning til night, they serve coffee as well as draught beer and all sorts of drinks in between. You can go for just a drink or a three-course meal with casual table service and find people from all demographics seated side by side. I’m not sure what to call it, a brasserie? That’s not a term that rolls off my tongue.
I say bar but they’re more than café/restaurant than bar to me. There doesn’t seem to be an Australian equivalent. Often open from morning til night, they serve coffee as well as draught beer and all sorts of drinks in between. You can go for just a drink or a three-course meal with casual table service and find people from all demographics seated side by side. I’m not sure what to call it, a brasserie? That’s not a term that rolls off my tongue.
Anyway, we find one opposite the station and choose a table outside. I shiver as a cool breeze blows along the street and go to grab my cardigan. I know immediately where it is. ‘Bugger,’ I mutter.
‘What?’ Steve asks.
‘I left my cardigan on the train.’
‘Oh, really.’ His eyes flash back to the station which is clearly in view.
‘The train will have left by now.’ I continue, ‘there’s no point even asking about it. We won’t be back here again.’
‘Bugger,’ he says.
‘I hung it up on the hook behind the seat. I saw a woman do that with her coat on the last leg and I thought that’s sensible.’ He nods. ‘Oh, well. No point worrying about it now,’ I say more to myself than him and then ‘How about a beer?’
He looks around for a waitress and says, ‘Thought you’d never ask.’
Here’s to apéro hour — not a meal, not an afterthought, but a celebration of the small things done well. A drink that feels earned. A snack that sparks conversation. A reminder that joy often lives in the in-between.
If I had to name one habit that makes the biggest difference in how I cook, it wouldn’t be knife skills, fancy equipment, or even the quality of the ingredients. It would be this: tasting as I go.
There’s a school of thought that treats recipes as sacred texts — immutable, untouchable, to be followed exactly lest your dinner collapse in shame. I am not enrolled at that school. I transferred long ago to the far more chaotic (and frankly more fun) institution of Recipes as Templates.