Big rail story

One writer, one Interrail pass and a wildly over-ambitious, 37-stop journey to test railway accessibility in Europe. Wanstead-based travel writer Carole Edrich presents the ninth instalment of her Big Rail Story

I shouldn’t stop at Ghent, this time around, but I do. I’ve just learned about the cuberdon. It’s a popular local sweet, also known as a neus (nose), neuzeke (little nose) or Gentse neus (Ghent nose) after its cone shape.

The sweets are famous, both for their taste and for the rivalry between the two stands in Ghent’s Groentenmarkt (vegetable market). Each stallholder says their cuberdons are the best and that the other was stealing their clients. Both had licences revoked in 2014, a 2015 thousand-euro-per-insult ruling was ineffective, and a 50m separation between stalls was declared. Deliciously, one stallholder was given a seven-year ban over his business’s fraudulent bankruptcy. By the time it was cut to five, he had already lost his pitch.

I choose the traditional purple: its crunchy outside contrasts beautifully with the soft, raspberry-flavoured filling. Refined sugars exaggerate the undiagnosed aspects of my disability and these little noses contain a mouthwateringly moreish amount. I’ve bought a baker’s dozen, but stop at one.

Back on the next train (I rebook, of course; I’m loving the Interrail app) and am soon in Brussels. There’s just enough time to meet two friends, providing I’m careful, so I get off at Brussels Midi for coffee with Catherine, then Brussels North for Georgie. Brussels Midi (Brussels South, you’ll remember) smells of waffles and coffee, warm sugars and good perfume. It’s not particularly pretty, but it’s clean, navigable and functional. Brussels is very much safer than London. I forget that this safety is relative and decide to walk to Brussels North. Not the brightest of moves, with all this luggage, especially since the smell of drugs on the way is strong enough to make me wonder if passive inhalation will get me high.

After two fairly quick coffee-and-catch-ups, and the redistribution of little noses, I’m on a train to Antwerp. I pass Schaarbeek (where my artistic collaborator lived until her untimely heart attack), Buda, Vilvoorde (where the English Bible translator was strangled and burned in 1536), Eppegem (with its Second World War military cemetery), Weerde (which isn’t as weird as it sounds), Hofstade (sounds like the Dutch for Head Town, and isn’t) and Muizen, probably named for its nearby marshes (but which sounds like the Dutch for mice, and is).

Then we pass Mechelen, where I once did a press trip for 14–18, a two-and-a-bit-football-pitch-sized multilingual musical about a group of Flemish friends at the outbreak of the First World War, a war that lasted far longer than they had imagined. In contrast, I tell myself, my Big Rail trip is running either early or to schedule. Genius? Me?

Author: Editor