Catching the international train to Belgium is always fun. If you get on at Amsterdam Centraal. Then you're sure of a seat. Join from Schiphol onwards and you may well have to stand.
That's on a good day. It being summer, the backpackers have made their summer migration to Amsterdam. You see them lying around in piles, their luggage piled around them, all around the station. The youth of all nations. With and without beards. With and without hippy skirts. They're harmless enough, unless you have to crawl over their rucksacks to reach the toilet. I wonder where they're all going?
I'd decided to be on my best behaviour. So no beer on the outward journey. God that was hard. Our train left at 08:56. I'm usually on my third beer by that time. Yesterday, just coffee.
One of the first things I ever read in a Dutch newspaper was about the highspeed trainline to Belgium. That was in 1987. The thing still isn't operational. The track has been ready for some time. But there's some delay in actually running trains along it. Most carriages on the Brussels-Amsterdam run have already been painted in the new Hispeed (the inspirational name for the service) livery. I'd assumed that it had been built as a TGV line capable of taking trains travelling at 300 kph. Silly me. They'll only be going 160 kph - no faster than some existing lines. It makes you wonder why they bothered.
We watched the "high speed" line split away from the Schiphol mainline and disappear into Holland's green heart. It rejoined us, equally empty, just before we entered Rotterdam Centraal. People piled off in Rotterdam nearly emptying our carriage. Then more people piled in to leave it fuller than at the start of the exercise. Will they run more trains when the new track opens? Probably not. When they introduced an ICE service to Cologne, they reduced the number of trains each day.
Dolores hadn't been to Antwerp since the tunnel was opened. It's quite an impressive hole, filled with trains, they dug under Antwerp station. Though from inside a train, you can see little more than a bare concrete wall and a shiny escalator.
As Dolores was along, we were well provisioned with sandwiches and drinks. She's very good at that sort of thing. We also has A Plan. Something I rarely bother with. What can I say? I'm a spur-of-the-moment sort of bloke. I take a map, not A Plan.
First stop was Beenhouwersstraat for a meal. Putting all the restaurants in one street makes like easy. After a quick look around we settled on a place with escargots in its fixed-price menu. Our kids are pretty perverse in what they will and won't eat. Lexie won't touch chicken, but insists on eating snails whenever possible. Andrew won't eat a cod fillet, but tucks happily into fried baby squid, complete with ink. I've given up trying to fathom any logic in their tastes.
How can some places serve a 3-course meal for as little as 8.75 euros? By bumping up the price of the drinks. We went for somewhere expensive. With a 12.50 3-course menu. But the cheapest bottle of wine was 29 euros. Luckily, in Belgium every restaurant sells half a dozen beers. Time for a Duvel. At 4.50, still a little steep, but not ridiculous. There are pubs in Amsterdam that
charge as much, or even a little more, than that. Dolores had to drink water. I promised her a nice beer later. "You can have a nice beer later." I said. I'm so considerate.
My Duvel came ready-poured. There was something slightly odd about it. Too sparklingly bright and slightly too golden in colour. Had they just slipped me a Pils in a Duvel glass. I took a sniff. Some spice - was that coriander and a touch of cloves? That's not how Duvel smells is it? I thought I could recognise it. No, too sweet for Pils. And too strong. Sweet and a bit nasty tasting, but blonde and alcoholic. Now what could it be?
I had a suspicion. My second beer was meant to confirm it. I ordered the only dark beer - Leffe Bruin. That came still in its bottle to my table. So that was definitely the right beer. I sniffed it. There was the same hint of spice, presumably from the yeast. Yup, the first beer had been Leffe Blonde. I would have complained. Except I'm not a great complainer. And I'd already destroyed the evidence.
Phase two of the plan was the "nice beer" I'd promised Dolores. Delirium Cafe is, conveniently, on an alley off Beenhouwersstraat. We would have sat ouside, but it was raining. It's funny how quickly you get used to no smoking pubs. Walking downstairs into the cellar bar, it was a shock to be greeted by fag smoke.
Delirium has a huge beer list. A list so huge, it's hard to work out what you want. I didn't have time, so I ordered a hercules. Not had one in a while. Dolores chose a draught Floris Kriek. A bit girly, but, hey, she is a girl. And she enjoyed it. That was her treat for the day, so she better had do.
There was little moaning from the kids, despite Delirium being quite dingy and smoky. Lexie did try to hurry us out after the first beer, but his heart wasn't really in it. We all mellow with age. I'd noticed Hansens Kriek while flicking through the menu. Not something I can find easily in
Amsterdam. And I'd already started lecturing Andrew on fruit beer. It would be a good tool for explaining my point. "Smell that. Like mouldy hay with a little cow dung in it. Maybe a trace of cow piss, too. Lovely, isn't it? Have a taste." He wasn't having any of it. "It might smell like poo, but it tastes like cherryade. Honestly." Andrew still wouldn't budge. "I can smell vinegar." he said.
Lexie was keen to move on for a reason. Stop three was his choice: a toy shop. That, too, was just around the corner. A Bart Spit. Nothing very exotic in that. They run about half the toy shops in Holland. Yet everything, at least according to the kids and they should know, was cheaper than in Holland. Including computer games. That's what they bought, games. A WII game each.
The forth and final stage of The Plan was the War Museum. Andrew's choice. Just 5 stops on the Metro. It's pretty hard to miss, stuck on a hill at the end of a monumental boulevard heading east out of the centre. A monumental structure in all senses of the word. And free. That's a pleasant change from Holland, where no museums are free. Not any ones I've been to, at least.
Dolores hadn't expected to like the museum much. Tanks and guns aren't really her thing. But the museum is about a lot more than that. The first room is full of cabinets packed with the objects soldiers carried in different periods. Their uniforms, weapons and the crap they kept in their pockets. All sorts of small personal items. Now that is Dolores's thing.
The museum looks big from the outside. But from that vantage point, you can't see most of it. In reality, it's enormous. Just when you think you've been around it all, you discover suites of further rooms. Finding an enormous hanger full of aeroplanes was a shock. And the courtyard crowded with tanks. Including a Hetzer. Andrew guided Lexie around the tanks, explaining about the different suspension systems. It's one of his specialist subjects.
We didn't get chance to explore fully. Throwing out time arrived before we'd finished. At least we'd got our money's worth. Before leaping on the Metro, we went in search of a supermarket. To stock up on scran for the journey home. I stood, gob well and truly smacked, at the bread counter. They had crumpets. Since Marks & Spencer closed, crumpets have been unobtainable in Amsterdam. Brussels truly is the capital of Europe, if you can buy crumpets everywhere.
By now we were too late for the 17:15 trains we'd planned to take back. But, arriving at Centraal Station, we noticed that it was still on the departures board. Sure enough, when we rushed to the platform it was there. But with its doors closed. The conductor's whistle blew as we reached for the door handle. Bottom. Just missed it.
Rather than hang around in gloomy Brussels Centraal, we took the next train to Antwerp. Dolores wanted to look around the new bits of the station. And we could picnic in its more pleasant surroundings.
If you're thinking that there's remarkably little beer in this tale, you're correct. At 18:00 my beer counter was still stuck on 4. In the supermarket I had considered this shameful situation and did something to rectify it. I bought a four-pack of Guinness Special Export. It's a good train-drinking beer. Not bottle-conditioned, so no disturbed yeast to worry about. And a tasty beer.
The train back wasn't crowded at all. It helped that it didn't go via Rotterdam or The Hague, as it was supposed to. A problem between Rosendaal and Dordrecht meant that it was diverted through Den Bosch and Utrecht. Though they forgot to stop in Den Bosch.
We were home at 21:45. I thought you'd like to know that. And I hadn't even finished all the Guinness. I'm losing my touch.
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