Cheers, Amen!

Writer Jaroslav Rudiš bids farewell to Germany's last beautiful railway moment: the Czech dining car. It reminds him of a tavern in the Czech Republic with a priest.

"The door is unusable, use the other door."

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We Czechs suffer from homesickness. I don’t know why, but it’s true. We often feel lost in the world. Being home to us doesn’t just mean being with family or friends, but also in a tavern, where a very special form of family is often formed. If you live in Berlin like I do, you won’t find such a bohemian restaurant.

Luckily, there's the mobile tavern. A beautiful restaurant on rails that travels from Prague to Berlin several times a day, crossing eastern Germany, rushing through the Elbe sandstone mountains to Dresden, and from there through Brandenburg. When no work is being done on the tracks and it heads north, the EC Berliner, as the train is called, continues through Mecklenburg and brings bohemian hospitality to Hamburg, Kiel, or Flensburg. The dining car of Czech Railways is a salvation for us Czechs in exile.

But these classic restaurants will soon be lost. They are aging, and new travel speeds are outpacing them. Just like the old compartment cars, in which the air conditioning repeatedly fails during summer. New, slightly faster trains with new dining cars are arriving. The era of railway romance is ending. And with it, a piece of travel culture and Central European history.

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This saddens many railway workers a bit. But don’t panic, the modernization won’t happen that quickly. New trains have been running on some routes since the beginning of September. But you can still look forward to the old dining cars for at least a few more months, if not a few years. And you should definitely do that.

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I’ve been a regular for a long time. Whenever I feel like a Czech in Berlin, whenever something is bothering me, whenever I feel lonely in Berlin and miss Prague, I take the EC. It’s much cheaper than any other form of therapy. Sometimes I just take a ride from Südkreuz station to Spandau or back. That’s enough for a quick lunch, a beer, a cake, and coffee. As a railway worker, of course, I prefer to travel by train for longer trips. From Berlin to Prague. From Prague to Berlin. Or just to Kiel.

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We know each other on the route. It’s practical; without words, the beer quickly ends up on the table. Or coffee and breakfast, which is often served with beer.

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Every good host in Prague knows their guests and their wishes. The same goes for this train. Even here, the host is a priest, who serves Czech mass in the dining car. You sit in the train and feel like you’ve been transported to Prague, to the Black Ox or the Golden Tiger, as the legendary bars are called. Yes, the old dining car truly feels like one of those places. The atmosphere is very similar. It’s part of this culinary journey through time. You comfortably settle at wide tables with starched tablecloths, often decorated with flowers. Food is never served on cardboard or plastic. Always on porcelain.

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Like every priest, every good innkeeper must be able not only to tell stories but also to listen and comfort. One of the innkeepers in the dining car was once a sailor and cooked on a ship. Another learned at the best restaurants in Prague. Someone wanted to become a train driver, but their eyesight was too weak for that. So they don’t drive the locomotive, but work in the dining car. They all speak several languages because this restaurant brings together the whole world passing through Central Europe. Such trains, with such dining cars and such innkeepers, lead and hold Central Europe together.

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For the trip to Prague, first class isn’t worth it. Second class is more than enough because you can quickly hop into the dining car and get first-class service. You have to hurry or be a little lucky, as seats fill up quickly.

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When you sit at one of the white tables, looking out the window at the quiet Brandenburg landscape or the dramatic Elbe valley between Dresden, Bad Schandau, and Ústí nad Labem, and enjoy a schnitzel freshly prepared in a pan, you can spend the whole trip in this wonderful lounge. And many do exactly that.

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My friends, who are railway people like me, can spend the whole day just in this train. For breakfast, they order fried eggs with ham. We Czechs call it Hemenex, you get the idea: ham and eggs, which are a must here. At a certain point, lunch follows, and of course, beer, during which we discuss the state of the railways in Central Europe, letting ourselves be guided.

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It is agreed that a train without a dining car is a very sad train. From this point of view, Germany is a very sad country because many long-distance trains no longer have dining cars. The proper meal can only be found in the ICE. It doesn’t taste bad. But, of course, onboard catering powered by a microwave cannot be compared to my mobile tavern and my bohemian family.

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My railway friends will disembark at Prague’s main station, stretch their legs, and look at this Art Nouveau railway castle, which is as beautiful as the Prague Castle above the Vltava. Then, they will take the return train back to Dresden or Berlin. And before that, they’ll look forward to dinner, the legendary svíčková (beef in cream sauce) with dumplings and cranberries, a classic of Czech cuisine, which tastes great served on the tracks.

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In the dining car, time is forgotten, it blurs like the hills and mountains outside the window. Just like the worries. Of course, this is helped by freshly poured beer from Plzeň.

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Beer, beer, is offered to thirsty passengers as a sacrament. Yes, beer is cared for in the dining car, as we say in the Czech Republic when handling beer. The sacrament is received with a white creamy foam, reminiscent of Sněžka in the Krkonoš Mountains. The golden color. The temperature. The taste with a pleasant hoppy aroma. Here, beer never has that strange metallic or dangerously sour aftertaste like in some trendy bars in Berlin.

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Don’t get me wrong: I love Berlin, it’s my city. But if you’re from the Czech Republic and want beer, you can only really drink it in a Czech dining car between Südkreuz and Spandau. That’s quite amazing. And it’s delicious.

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Czech Republic and good beer sounds logical even to German ears. But did you know about Czech coffee? Well, forget the weak, poorly prepared coffee from fully automated machines that you get in other trains in Germany – if those machines even work. On the train to Prague, there’s a strong espresso. Presso, or pressíčko, as we lovingly call it in the Czech Republic. It tastes like it does in Trieste in the EC, which is no coincidence. On this train, you’ll learn a lot about Central European cultural history. The Czech Republic is not only a land of beer and dumplings but also a coffee paradise. Prague or Brno are still connected to Trieste, the coffee port of the old, so-called Danube monarchy, to which the Czech Republic belonged until 1918, with only one change in Vienna. Most coffee still comes from there to the Czech Republic. The same is true in this dining car, which is not just a simple beer bar, but also a great coffeehouse in the Viennese style.

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Central Europe, this narrow network of cultures, languages, and flavors, you won’t experience it so directly anywhere in Germany as in the winding Prague tavern. From this perspective, this dining car is not only a salvation for Czechs who are homesick like me, and for the culinary offer on German tracks – yes, it’s a digestible expression of the European idea. Unlimited enjoyment – is there anyone who doesn’t want to celebrate, approve, and preserve it?

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So, is it worth sacrificing all this for a little more comfort in new cars and traveling a few minutes faster through Saxony, Brandenburg, and Mecklenburg to Hamburg?

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Well, let’s not be so pessimistic. The first good news: Polish, Hungarian, and Austrian dining cars are also traveling through Germany. The second: My bohemian restaurant won’t disappear completely either. New, faster trains will come with local connections. A little smaller, more of a bistro than a dining car. Whether they’ll have Hemenex, I don’t know. But definitely, neither the ham nor the eggs will be freshly fried. But much will remain. The legendary svíčková. Also, freshly poured beer.

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Whether it will be like my cozy home, like a bohemian tavern, like a family, we’ll see. I hope so. Because once you’re in it, among friends, you never want to leave the dining car. You want to keep going and going.

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Just sleep, you shouldn’t sleep in the dining car. Then the innkeeper, the railway priest, will wake you up. But only very gently. Like in a Prague tavern. Or in a church.

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Jaroslav Rudiš, writer and musician, lives in Berlin and Lomnice nad Popelkou. His book Instructions for Traveling by Train was published by Piper Verlag in 2021.