September 28-30: AMSTERDAM WAY-STATION

As I leave Gare du Nord, Paris cries/it's raining. Ah, the climate far north of the Alps. So it goes.

By some kind of logistics miracle which seems to have leaped the long security scan line, our massive Thalys high speed ear-popping electric leaves pretty much on time. Once under way a multi-language announcement comes across the PA, announcing a questionnaire doing the rounds of our 18 carriages, "Please fill it out, you're doing us a great favour," etc. I'm on my way to the buffet car when I spot Questionnaire Woman coming from the other direction, so I slide into a spare seat to do my statistical duty to both Paris and trains.

Nationality. There's a box on the lengthy form for Australia but none for Aotearoa New Zealand... which in spite of the size of the form has been relegated - presumably for reasons of space or size - to 'other'. I'm not the only one to note the exclusion. From the seat right behind me, "New Zealand's not on here." I turn around, "I noticed that too!" On the French-Belgian-German run train, I have landed in the Aotearoa New Zealand sector.

Our country may seem small, but our people lurk everywhere - on trains, sometimes behind flowers...

My compatriots are three sisters from the far north, one with her daughter along, in Europe for a family reunion with a large clan of Dutch cousins who they'd never met till a couple of weeks ago. Even without their two brothers, who couldn't come, they've been having a ball. They pull out a cardboard cut-out head and shoulders of their Dutch émigré dad (deceased a few years back), who they've just taken on a wee trip to Paris. I swap my story and we turn to common ground and events, such as the Silver Scroll music awards, which I've just spent my last morning in Paris with. Five women finalists for top single, Lorde winning with 'Green Light'. Here we are on the train, another five women. We get onto politics and the national election of the weekend before, which hasn't produced a clear majority for governance, meaning a coalition will need to be formed. For common social policy reasons recognizing that the neo-right conservative agenda will get booted in favour of a long-overdue return to greater social equity, I reckon it's going to be Labour-Green-New Zealand First. Our animated discussion goes on for quite some time.

Suddenly, in the middle it, the returning questionnaire woman looms. None of us, of course, have finished. "Well, it's only about 78 questions," jokes the guy on the other side of the aisle. Questionnaire Woman gets a bit short about my not having completed the inquisition, and attempts to steer me away from answering "not important" questions about trains. Obviously she doesn't know she's talking to a train propagandist. Obviously trains are way more important than Paris, even if it is probably that city paying her for her precious time. Obviously she wants to work no longer than she has to and beat me to the buffet car. I do bad cop, one of the sisters does good cop, and we good women hustle to complete our questionnaires.

Arriving in a damp and overcast Amsterdam evening I exchange good wishes and farewells with my countrywomen, and head for the ticket booking office. The electronic card processing machine switches languages when it sees what country my bank card is from. The nice service man gives me a short lesson in Dutch greetings. I meet my friend Tirza beside the piano in the main greetings hall. Everyone gets on and off the bus by paying with swipe cards. No cash. I remind myself that, in part, the Netherlands is sophisticated because it's been an international tax haven for years. They also have a highly representative governmental system, a more or less affordable health care system, and a fairly comprehensive integration system for refugees. Shame about the weather.

Yet another progressive thing about the Netherlands

Don't believe everything you read about Amsterdam house prices, gentrification is rife

I'm welcomed to my hosts' lovely apartment (in a block of brick, late 19th century renovated worker apartments in the Spaarndammerbuurt https://www.jlgrealestate.com/spaarndammerbuurt/ part of West Amsterdam, with almost-as-mad-as-in-France staircases) by a rain storm and with a delicious, home-cooked, designer-food dinner. The next day, a rest day, the bathtub beckons in the morning, and after lunch the sun comes out, shining its obvious message on the big, comfortable couch. At wine o'clock we head out to the extremely friendly neighbourhood wine shop, http://www.jacqwijn.nl/, to taste several wines at one of their regular tasting events. After 'suffering' several whites and being inundated by a massive downpour, the outstanding tipple for me is a spicy, fruity red from Portugal's Alentejo region. Research for future train trip destinations is demanding!

And then suddenly it's Saturday 30th of September, my final Interrail pass day, departure day, return to Berlin day. I'm like a reluctant Cinderella having to be finished by midnight, though no worries, tickets are booked to even make it back in time to visit my local supermarket well before it closes at 23:30. 

And still enough time at hand in the busy railway square of the central city to pop by jazz legend Chet Baker's commemoration plaque - for the record, he fell from his second floor hotel window here, out of it on heroin and cocaine. Death can be so undignified.


To make the heading east transition easier, today's foodie celebration is at the most outstanding organic food market I have ever been to. It's at

And our first stop is...

The gallant oyster opening hand approacheth (pre-donning the chain-mail safety glove), awaiting our ladies' bidding...

...and having slit, moves on: Empties

The rest of the market is similarly well provisioned with a cornucopia of delights and I need little encouragement to stock up on a few supplies for my ultimate train journey east, while my eyes drink everything else in. If I was living in Amsterdam I'd be shopping here every week, just as my hosts do. Aside from the oysters, grown by small-scale coastal fishers and sold on sustainably through transparent, short-chain suppliers https://www.goedevissers.nl/ ('good fishermen'), there are cheese mountains, pastry pinnacles, mushroom and herb meadows, brick houses...

Fakes

Real thing

We finish our shopping endeavours with coffee at some apparently very famous coffee shop that sits on a nearby, very famous 'most photographed in town' corner, and that's crammed full of local memorabilia and other historically illuminating stuff.

Then we traverse what my friend Tirza says used to be one of the nicest streets in the city but is now gentrified/touristified to hell and back. Marijuana smoke punctuates the drizzly air. Strangely - given my arrival trip's travelling companions - en route to the station is the 'Kiwiland' growshop. Obviously with this mystical bookend sign from the universe, it's almost time to go. 

Tirza and I sit in some swishy new bar lounge somewhere under the railway tracks at the main station and I down my last ritual "Goede reis" (bon voyage) drink, which in the Netherlands really has to be Jenever. Of course it doesn't shine a lamp anywhere close to the various delicious night-cap beverages my hostesses have plied me with on my two evenings here, but as a symbolic gesture it does fine. Proost!

And then I'm underway. Just as when leaving Paris, it's raining, the spray thrown up from speeding cars on the highway forming a mist a couple of metres high.

But unlike when leaving Paris, now we're heading east, the heating is on...