Around a continent on lots of trains
In which I look ahead to a season of travel around Europe, muse on writers' relationships to their drafts, and offer dining recommendations for Philadelphia.
First, a tech-hack: In this era of ever-multiplying newsletters, you might investigate a web content and RSS feed reader like Inoreader or Feedly. There are free and paid versions. Readers let you organize news sources, and even to send newsletters directly to them, bypassing your Inbox, and creating your own digital magazine.
This way you can enjoy leisure reading in a portal that does not receive mundanities like electricity bills, or things-on-fire emails from the office. Equally, there’s less chance of missing that Washington Post email accepting your op-ed in the forest of WaPo emails reminding you of the day’s top stories in six topics.
Travel planning
This week left like shards of time in which I flitted from one thing to the next. The main reason was rather delightful. Last year there was a five-day flash sale on Eurail passes - one, two-, and tree-month train passes valid in 33 (33!) countries. At 50% off, how could I say no? I could trundle around Europe consulting rare books and manuscripts to my heart’s content.
Now that I’m booking a bunch of trips, I’m struck by how finite “infinity and beyond!” can be. A few moments are fixed in time and place - the Association of Art Historians Conference in London, and the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival on the Welsh-English border some six weeks later, for instance. I’ll be zipping around the continent before, in between, and after.
Where to go first, in late March and April? South, where it might be warm and sunny! I’ll be on the trail of archives, manuscripts, and artworks in southern and western France. Where to go late? North, for the days will last forever! Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Berlin are on the wish-list.
I’m hoping that Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Vienna can happen in between other places, as well as a few weeks chez moi to eat miscellaneous home-cooked meals off my own plates in between adventures.
Returning to London is definitely happening (just not during the Coronation - note to everyone planning travel: this is May 6th). I still think about my last London trip, which I wrote about in a fall newsletter.
The fixed points on my calendar get in the way of travelling to Spain or Portugal, or east or south of Vienna, alas. I suppose there needs to be something left to do next year.
Hacks for Interrail passes (residents in the 33 countries) or Eurail (residents beyond the 33) passes
Play on the website or the app after you buy your pass but before you plan to book travel on specific trains, if you can. That way you’ll get a feel for hypothetical itineraries, notice if seat reservation prices go up closer to the date of travel, example.
On some trains, like Thalys, Eurostar, and sleeper trains, seat reservations are compulsory. If you plan on using a bunch of them, the cost is not trivial. You can easily pay twenty- or thirty-something euros for a seat reservation, depending on the train network and how far in advance you book.
Reservations for pass-holders may limited to a certain number per train, and the cost is usually non-refundable.
On the plus side, these reservations seem to be cheaper than even the cheapest advance tickets on the same service. Moreover, tons of trains do not require reservations. All the itineraries I looked up apart from crossing the Channel seemed to have options that didn’t require paying for seat reservations.
If you meander along on local and regional trains, stopping along the way to stay over and see things, you can avoid most of the seat reservation surcharges.
If you have a favourite archive, library or museum besides the magnets of national libraries and archives in capital cities, I’d love to hear about it! No doubt I shall have both tips and stories in abundance after these (still-hard-to-imagine) trips.
Learning to Re-write: on drafts
Notes to self
Don’t hate your draft! It’s the starship upon whose nose you perch. That’s why it’s always behind you.
Instead of hating it, thank it. Thank it for always being there for you, patiently taking whatever you can give it, waiting when you can’t be bothered or are feeling like you hate it. Sometimes it straightens its spine and plays devil’s advocate, gently goading you to give it the best you have to offer.
But mostly, your draft is a blanket of words - if you let it be.
Takes and recs: eating out in Philly
By popular request, here are more restaurant recommendations!
Philadelphia, PA (USA) is a great place for food. During the American Historical Association conference I dined at three delightful restaurants, and had a number of outdoor picnic meals. The restaurants:
Vedge. Seven of us had an extraordinary three-course meal composed of a garden of sharing plates. Strong, bold flavours full of fruit, spice, citrus, earthiness, creamy unctuousness, and a variety of textures. The dishes were a visual feast as well as a gustatory one - a transregional, fusionary experience (one that has me coining words).
I did not realize that Vedge was a vegan restaurant until someone mentioned this during dessert. Dinner felt like health food and gastronautery at once - and not just because I was dining indoors in a mask.
Dandelion. Dandelion casts itself as a British gastropub. The delightfully atmospheric interior, and the rich and comforting dishes I ate in one of the partially covered heated booths on the sidewalk were certainly reminiscent of British gastropubs.
Again, lots of shiny and flavoursome things on each plate made this an energizing place for both lunch and dinner.
L’Aquila. L’Aquila’s dishes felt like dishes I’ve eaten in Italy: generous on the olive oil front, well seasoned, and full of flavour. It was another opportunity to dine outdoors. Long may these dining booths continue, although with new regulations coming in last month, some may have disappeared.
I had trouble finding a vegetarian main course apart from things with shellfish (to which I’m slightly allergic). But perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough, or didn’t like the options I saw and deleted them from my brain. No doubt the kitchen would have been happy to rustle something up if they really had no meat-or-shellfish/octupus-free secondi. I took my (possibly selective) browse of the menu to mean that I had no choice but to order the wild boar meatballs.
L’Aquila makes their own ice cream - and they have twenty-four flavours. That’s 24 new reasons to spend a month in town.
Home-cooked meals are, for me, a necessary dietary and financial corrective to dining out as a gourmande. I recommend home-sprouted seed salads or stir fries as an effective penance-meets-piggybank saving solution. Dressed with a herb purée or a hot and sour sauce, sprouts can taste celebratory, not penitential.
Thank you for reading to the end! As ever, I would be delighted if you subscribed to, or shared, this newsletter.
References
Inoreader, the news and RSS feed reader (thanks to my friend Malick for the tip!)
Feedly, a news aggregator and reader
Interrail / Eurail for train passes
Vedge will open your mind to vegetables like never before
The Dandelion is a reliable bet for anyone missing British gastropub fare
Gran Caffé L’Aquila is both restaurant and deli
You can also find me on www.surekhadavies.org,
BlueSky (@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social),
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