"I could live here"

On leaving Brussels Midi on the 1727 Dortmund train, it takes a while for the WiFi to kick in and for the train to emerge into daylight. The train crawls its way along, but at least we’re moving. Outside there is sweltering heat, much hotter - a million times hotter - than in the UK. I’d been hanging around on the platform for a whole hour having disembarked from the 1258 EuroStar from London St. Pancras, an uneventful journey sitting in seat 21, coach 2 with a little old lady for company. Now I’m in seat 64, coach 21.

Leaving the station behind, but still travelling at a snail’s pace, I look out at the overhead power lines, the trains parked up and others moving slowly into Brussels Midi. The city looks pleasant enough, the buildings daubed with graffiti.

I’m on the train for just over two hours and when I reach my destination (Dusseldorf) I’m only a short walk from my hotel, the Novum Madison, and only a short hop from Da Bruno, arguably one of Europe’s best Italian restaurants. Now I know that’s a bold claim, but I happen to like it and that’s it really. I’ve booked a table for 2000hrs, but will eventually change it for 2030hrs.

The train has picked up considerable speed, but we’re still in the suburbs. The little old lady on the Eurostar told me that it takes four hours to get from one side of Belgium to the other, but I’m not sure whether she meant by train or car or bike, probably by train. She’d been in the UK visiting her sister and was now returning home. Her husband had passed away, but when he was alive she’d spent time in Salisbury, close to where he worked, he was in the army.

While on the EuroStar somebody in coach seven passed out. They called for a doctor and within minutes a tall woman passed me while I was in the buffet car. She was the doctor. I went back to my seat clasping a mint tea and a KitKat and spent most of the journey reading Saturday’s Guardian, which I had brought with me. It was only a short journey, about two hours, just over, and by 1608 I had disembarked into the aforementioned sweltering heat.

The train is slowing and we’re arriving in another city. I can see a paddling pool, further evidence of the scorching sun outside and then more trains parked up and going nowhere. A building with the logo of Stella Artois on the side of it makes me wonder if we’re in Leuven, home of the beer known as ‘wife beater’. Stella has been reduced in strength from its original 5.2% abv to just 4.8% and believe me, the reduction has been bad for the brand.

I was right, we are passing through Leuven and out the other side, past more graffiti and into a kind of semi-rural landscape of cornfields and then more buildings, office buildings, so not as semi-rural as I thought. Despite the fact that I’ve given up drinking for the last 21 months, I have a sudden craving for a pint of Stella, chilled, but the thought of breaking the abstinence worries me; I don’t want to go back, but a summer’s day (it’s 24 June!) makes me salivate at the thought of a cold beer. I wonder if I’m really doing myself any favours not drinking? What am I trying to prove to myself? Have I proved it? Should I carry on? There’s always ‘no alcohol’ beers and they’re just as good and probably as refreshing, chilled, on a hot day.

The train is now travelling through a rural landscape: fields of corn on either side of the train, the occasional farmhouse, but little more; grassy banks on either side of the track appear and then more fields.

The guard has just offered me a bottle of mineral water for free, it’s the sort of thing that simply wouldn’t happen in the UK. Earlier, when the same person had asked me to show my ticket I had to fumble around with bits of paper taken off the internet until I found something with a reference number. As always when faced with an authority figure on a European train, I think I’m part of The Great Escape, except that I’m still in Belgium, passing little sleepy hamlets surrounded by corn fields and giant propellers standing motionless in the heat, no wind power being generated today, I thought, keeping a weather eye on the landscape in case I spotted any solar panels.

Ultra light cloud has given way to a blue haze with wispy clouds, like a watercolour painting.

A word about the train: it’s comfortable. I have a solo seat, meaning I’m not sharing with anybody and nobody is sitting opposite either, which is great. The seat is red and wide and the coach has subtle red lighting. It’s all very cosy, but the air-con could be put up a notch or two. 

Behind some trees I can see containers with names on the sides of them. Magetra. And now some kind of aggregates factory. We’re going through ANS and there’s nothing much there but a company called Infrabel. Just outside of the station the name has been sculpted in grass, so it’s obviously an important business for the town, if that’s what ANS is, a town. The train is slowing again. Houses, one with a swimming pool, others with windows open and more still at the top of a steep bank and then the view is obscured by trees.

It’s 1815hrs and we’re definitely somewhere. I think its Avroy, a fairly big town. But I’m wrong, it’s Liege, but not just Liege, there’s another word, beginning with G. It’s a very modern station, but there are no more signs so I’ll never know what the G stands for. I like Liege, but then I like everywhere that isn’t where I live. Suburban trains congregate outside the station and they’re all daubed with colourful graffiti. Liege seems to be surrounded by steep banks (or hills) of trees and as we hit the outskirts there are blocks of flats and more houses, three-storey affairs, a church, red and white pylons. I have to remind myself that wherever I am, everything is the same. We pass through Chenne and skirt around one of the steep banks only to find more on the other side. As the train enters a tunnel I’m conscious that we might be going through one of the steep, mountainous banks, although ‘mountainous’ is probably an exaggeration, they’re hills.

I’ve been on the train for one hour. The tunnel is long and seemingly never-ending. We’re out of it! And then back in, or not, as the case may be, we’re out again. There are a series of bridges and we travel under them, some of them seem almost like tunnels, but just when I think we’re here for the long haul, daylight reappears. On my right I can see for miles, but then my view is momentarily obscured by a grassy bank. There are trees, like florets of broccoli, houses dotted here and there into infinity and in the distance dark hills topped by surreal clouds, like Toy Story wallpaper. Houses, cornfields, poplar trees, woods.

What is it? What do I crave? Why do I look out of the window longingly? Why is it that I feel I’d be more at home here than where I am at present, even if upping sticks is out of the question and, arguably, a foolish thing to contemplate? I feel it wherever I go. “I could live here,” I’ve said a million times, but perhaps all I really want is to linger awhile, to lie in the fields, to stop for a minute, somewhere (anywhere) and not have to fret or worry about stuff. 

Hergenrath? At least that’s what I think the sign read as we passed through the station. It was gone within seconds and now there’s trees, through which I can see the odd house and now another tunnel, a proper one this time, but only short. Countdown markers, another town, allotments with sheds - or are they small houses? - and now we’ve arrived somewhere. More tiny houses, well kept. We’re in Aachen. Platform 8C. We’re in Germany.

The train slowly pulls out of the station. I was last here in 1978 with a punk rocker from Hull. I was en route to Dortmund and then a place called Ludenscheid. Strange memories especially of my pal Keith Collins, now deceased, who should have been with me, but he decided to stay behind and take drugs. I remember that year I was going to go to Scotland with two other pals of mine, but they were a couple and I would have felt out of place, a gooseberry perhaps. I remember my dad saying ‘go to Germany with Keith’ and then Keith not going and me travelling alone. These were the days of the boat train from Victoria and the ferry across the English Channel to Ostend and then the train, although I can’t remember the exact journey.

It’s nearly 7pm and the heat continues, the sun still shines and the skies are blue. I might be wrong, but I think the next stop will be my final destination, Dusseldorf. There’s about 30 minutes left. The wind farms are back and so are the fields and the woods. The sun shines on a golden corn field and then we pass through somewhere called something like Langerwehre, another pleasant-looking place. The landscape opens out again. I can see for miles across fields towards houses and a distant ridge with some kind of tower, like Seattle’s Space Needle. 

There can’t be much longer to go and I’m worried that there will be a rush to get off the train if I don’t pack things away now. But I haven’t packed things away, I’m still observing what’s happening outside the window; there were wide open spaces a second ago, but now there are fields hemmed in by woods or rows of trees, there are industrial buildings, more industrial buildings, and I sense that, once again, we’re on the outskirts of a big city. I’m right, we’re in Cologne. As we approached the station I could see the blackened cathedral behind the rooftops.

People mill past on the platform, a man eating a slice of pizza, another man with a rucksack and a bright orange mat of some description, a black woman in a red dress. I could alight here and catch a train to Berlin, but why would I do that? There would be no point. We’re on the move again and I’m sure that the next stop is Dusseldorf. The train must be running late as I thought I would be there by now.