1. I’m looking forward to the 11.59 train to Berlin. The German ICE is fast, just seven hours with a change at Koln, and comfortable. It cost just €90 euros just two days in advance, courtesy of those lovely people at Deutsche Bahn Well, it should be. But I find I am booked on a train with a broken down aircon sysem. It’s not hot outside but its stifling within. Worse, I am not in first class, as pledged. The staff – polite, mannered, accessible, and smartly dressed – hand out free drinks, apologising. There’s water of applejuice. Eine beer? Nein bier.

The train is running 25minutes late, engineering work this Sunday (sound familiar, Brits?) leaving me 2 minutes to change platforms at Koln. Luckily the train driver is all help and smiles, telling us over the intercom which platform to get. I make the train, just.

ICE buffet cars are a misnomer; they are full-on dining rooms with three-course menus. DeutscheBahn even has a guest chef for every month, I forget his name but he is a Bavarian from Bavaria, with a grey-tipped goatee beard.

For starters, it’s suppe – a broth that is easier to eat than pronounce: “Pfifferlingrahmsupper mitt speck-zweibel-furfeln.” In other words cream of chanterelle soup with bacon and mushroom. For mainz, it’s much more a mouthful to pronounce, knoblauchlander pot au feu miu frulingemusemit rinderbust. For the unitiated, and those short of time, that’s pork casserole.

Trouble is, there is no knoblauchlander pot au feu miu frulingemuse mit rinderbust. Rather than go through the culinary dictionary again, making cow and pig noises to the waitress and giving the thumbs up or down sign, I plump for the Deutsche mainstay, chili con carne, or as they say in Germany, chili con carne.

June’s Bavarian chef has concocted a rave new addition: sweetcorn. It is a master triumph! The sweetcorn adds colour to an otherwise reddy brown dish, though, it has to be said, virtually no extra taste. Nicht! He should have added some chili, too. The price has spice, however. Fifteen chuffing euros (”die chuffing sie funfzhen euro?”). I then realise that there is at least the aircon in this carriage. Actually there’s aircon in every carriage, except mine.

Still, at least I had sweetcorn! (Zuckermais)

Tim Food, berlin, transport Brussels, Germany, ICE, trains