From the sweltering heat of Arizona to the insufferable heat of Chicago, my Dad and awesome stepmom, Sharon, did venture. What did they want to do in the City of Broad Shoulders? Maybe check out the Sears Tower? Perhaps visit the Art Institute? Or did they want to take a scenic architectural tour? 

No. They wanted only Trainbeer. 

In my father’s own words:

“We’re a hundred tons of steel and glass, hurtling down the track,

We in our air conditioned cool, posted up in the Trainbeer throne,

Upper deck, back of the car, forward facing seats, and, in the moment,

We become one with the worldwide phenomenon,

Touching that chilled Trainbeer to our lips, drinking deeply, sublimely,

Satisfied smiles on our faces, as leafy green Chicago flies by.” 

I once spent a month in Death Valley with Jeremy Sasson. He was a student of mine in the Athenian Wilderness Experience. With humor and resourcefulness, he took all the challenges of desert travel in stride. And now, I’m proud to annouce he’s become a Trainbeer foreign correspondent (talk about climbing the ladder of success). Here’s a recent dispath from Spain. Because of his brave contribution, I will forgive his Giants propaganda.

If there is one thing in Spain that is in a worse situation than its economy, it is its beer. Understandably so, the previous foreign correspondent elected to comment on a Spanish wine instead. I, however, have put my life on the line in the interest of Trainbeer.
Cruzcampo, like most Spanish beers, is a lager light enough to be consumed in large quantities on a sweltering Spanish summer day. This usually transitions flawlessly into a long Spanish siesta.

As a beer connoisseur, Cruzcampo will never mean a whole lot. But as a Giants fan, it now means the world. But as a Giants fan, it now means the world. After waking up to the news of Matt Cain’s perfect game, I knew I had no choice. From this day forward, Cruzcampo will be known as “Matt Cain Perfect Game Celebration Ale presented by Cruzcampo.” Spanish beer never tasted so good.

Mike Matera and Jen Clark, of Santa Cruz, were kind enough to email a pic of themselves swilling on the Japanese bullet train known as the shinkansen.

Longtime friend and founder of the Santa Cruz fatkid movement of the 2000s, Michael the “Shogun Maximus” had this to say: “Actually, they are a highball and Satori soju. Yes, they have canned cocktails in Japan. It’s an amazing place.”

It ain’t beer but we’ll allow it given the exotic locale and sheer novelty. Kampai!

An old college buddy, Ethan Fry, got into the trainbeer spirit recently. He had this to say about his experience with his Dogfish 90-minute IPA:

“It was a celebratory beer. I had just taken a job interview in Boston and met up with some old work friends. This beer (and the Amtrak) brought me back to my workaday pvd->bos->pvd train commute of yesteryear. It also marked the recognition that as great as it is, Boston is not my town, and as such a return to my California roots was imminent.  Knock knockin’ on the golden door…”

It was a trainbeer nightmare. I hustled onto the train and with the usual satisfaction extracted a giant beer from my satchel. It was a Ruination IPA, 7.7 % if you must know. I fished around my bag for my keys with the needed bottle opener. I found only paper clips and bottle caps. No opener. Dismayed, I looked around for a single other kindred soul, but seeing only business, corporate types, I began to panic. It had been some years since opening a beer with my teeth and I was never particularly good at it. I blame my stepmother, the dental hygienist, for this character flaw. I gathered my things and made for the putrid train bathroom. In that disgusting private space, I would find a way. Once ensconced, I tried to ignore the urine sloshing in the metal toilet and placed the lip of the beer’s cap on the edge of the sink. I thrusted the butt of my half-clenched palm downward in a spazzy, feeble motion. Six times before a tiny fizz. Thirteen more times before the cursed cap sprung off, skittering across the floor. Sweating, shaken, I emerged with the beer. At this point, all seats were taken. I stood in the aisle as the train lurched and rocked. Strangers stared. I eased the giant frothy beer from the folds of my jacket and drank deeply. More stares. More lurching. My sea legs rolled with practiced ease. Home just a few stops away.

Dirk VanderHart’s final Trainbeer adventure. Thank you, Dirk, for your courageous scribblings from the railways of the Olde Country, such a beautiful and tortured collection of grandeur, joy, existential clamminess and alcoholic exuberance. You have made your mark, sir; Trainbeer is forever changed, mostly for the better.

Amsterdam, Netherlands — Train from Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam Centraal Station

Cognizant as I am of the disdain this blog’s curator has for Heineken, I made it a priority to purchase something else from the airport supermarket. Fine Dutch beers were in short supply, however.

I ended up with this tall boy of Bavaria’s 8.6 Special Gold, though my girlfriend warned me its ornate gilded appearance could only mean a bankruptcy of taste.

We purchased the most-expensive tickets available (5.60 Euros), and passed through a crowded car of squalid plebes to the near-empty first class. It was grey in Holland — this day and every — and as we took in the waterlogged Dutch countryside I coughed loudly, simultaneously pulling the tab on my Bavaria. The railroad official on the other end of the car was none the wiser.

I squinted as I took that first crucial pull, and was instantly transported to a time just after I graduated college. I had yet to secure a job of any sort in those days, and pocket money was necessarily tight. But a young man needs his ale, and I fell into the habit of drinking 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor. Old English, Mickeys, Steel Reserve; I cared not, and eventually had so demoralized my taste buds that the brews began to taste good. Or, anyway, good enough.

That was a long time ago, though, and I choked back my revulsion as I pulled on this foul Dutch concoction. It recalled Steel Reserve, but with a cloying, biting overtone. I offered a swig to my girlfriend, who immediately stifled a gag. Despite all this, I drank nobly on so as not to besmirch the mission of this blog. Plus it was our last night in Europe.

The train pulled into Amsterdam, friends, and the drinking and the rain continued as they will in that city. I say with mixed pride and shame that the night that ensued was the only of the whole trip where I found myself curled about the toilet, cursing the fates and, to a lesser degree, the good people at the Bavaria Brewing Company.

Safe riding, everyone.

Here’s the second of three dispatches from Dirk VanderHart, true comrade, Portland bon vivant and Trainbeer’s first foreign correspondent.

Editor’s note: You will notice that VanderHart sips on a Champagne-like beverage called Cava in this adventure. Generally, Trainbeer’s Editorial Board only accepts submissions featuring beer on trains. But it is making a one-time exception for VanderHart’s prose.

Barcelona, Spain — C2 RENFE Train from El Prat Airport to Placa Catalunya (SAME DAY)

This is, as far as I know, a trainbeer record. Two countries, two trains, two beverages, ONE DAY. It felt good, I can tell you. As good as the pleasant Catalan sun glinting off the Mediterranean, the swaying palms, and my fake hipster eyewear.

Let me first say that were I to rank my top 20 or so favorite places in the world, Barcelona’s El Prat Airport might be one of them. This is solely given how pleasant, clean, comfortable and all-around attractive it is relative to its counterparts. The chairs are of a supple, leatherish substance, with a sproingy give and just enough an incline on their high backs to be relaxing, but not ostentatiously so.

The high glass windows offer views of both mountains and sea, the high definition Philips televisions broadcast hilarious European basketball games, they serve tallboys of San Miguel beer for CHEAP. I want to go on, believe me, but recognize this is a beer and train blog.

I hope I won’t be too much maligned, then, when I admit I selected a fine Spanish Cava for the next span of my journey. Cava, you’ll know, is the Spanish compeer to French Champagne. Many in Spain will hint, but never outright aver, that it’s just as good. I can say it is cheap and delicious and, to one with an unrefined palate like mine, just as good. The airport concession stand, in fine El Prat style, offered up a plastic champagne flute upon purchase. The train was right on time.

But this train drinking experience was touch and go. Perhaps it was the crowded nature of the RENFE car, swollen with tired travelers from a multitude of cultures. Perhaps it was the perceived opulence of popping a bottle of sparkling wine and pouring it into its component glass on an airport train. It might have been the many pictures and videos taken, or the satisfied smacking of lips during the act.

Whatever the reason, people did not appear pleased I was drinking Cava on the RENFE, particularly one gentleman in a Green sweatshirt who I guessed (through sheer appearance) may have been from Austria. He kept giving me the stink eye. I kept drinking.

The Cava (Anna de Cordoniu, by Cordoniu) was a brut, the bubbles were acceptably tiny, and I was in fine fennel when the train pulled into our destination.

It’s my profound honor to introduce Trainbeer’s first foreign correspondent, Dirk VanderHart.

In a recent trip to Europa, VanderHart took Trainbeer to new heights: three trains, three countries, three beverages.

At no point was the intrepid reporter certain this feat was legal, but as he pointed out: “They speak different languages there, Greg, and I refuse to play that game. Absent any standard signage depicting a martini glass struck tragically through by a teetotaling red line, I assumed a tacit permission to drink and muse.”

This is the first in a three-part series. 

By Dirk VanderHart

Paris, France — RER B line from The Chatelet to Charles de Gaulle Airport

Brigand, a Belgian beer, recalls a time when swarthy, illiterate men roamed the forest roads, terrorizing passing caravans of duchesses (presumably wooed after brief bouts in captivity, related to us through a montage showing both parties — ruggedly handsome brigand and fair duchess — gradually letting down their guard and learning, once again, to love). As you can see from the bottle there were fire arrows and shit. Men stood for something greater than mugging for the upcoming election.

France being the epicenter of a certain romantic sensibility, and also in the heat of a fiery election year, all this was on my mind as I departed the City of Light for a final hurrah in Spain.

It was hot in the train, I remember, and we were seated across from a pair of Irish girls who I guess were about 20. They’d met some Americans in Paris, evidently, and were great fans of the Texas accent. The beer was sweet, in the Belgian style. Also potent (9%) and full. Quite like a large slice of alcoholic wheat cake, if I’m being technical. I drank solemnly, listening to those vapid Irish lilts, swaying with the train car, sweating profusely sans deodorant. Like a Frenchman.

No, like a Brigand.

The letter reeked of a swift descent into madness. “Greg, Prepare yourself for a strange experience…” I had always considered my friend Brews Reporter stable, if at times cryptic by fire light. But his letter spoke of breakdancing pythons, flume rides, zambian monkeys who speak portugese and ski…and of course, this giant 10 percent beer Brews brewed in the shanty near his cabin in Canaan, NH. The ingredients include pale malt, flaked maize, agave nectar, cinammon extract AND tea, cocao nibs, chiles de arbol and tequila soaked oak chips. As far as I know, this beer has neither name nor classification. It could be a twisted Brews joke for all I know. But it’s delicious. And as I swill its smoky contents on a train headed north through the fog and dusk, I feel like a snakebit shaman roaming the desert with a tambourine and, yes, a peace pipe. Well played, Brews, well played.

Lifting the tall can of Sapporo to his lips, as the sun danced atop brownstones and wire, he felt the piercing glint of kismet. He drank deeply and waited for it to pass.

A young Faye Dunaway enjoys a lager, while black folk across the aisle shake their heads and think, ‘Crazy white folk.’

Trainbeer canoodling with the hoi polloi! Crikey! Posh! Becks! Jordan! That other guy!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mrs. Trainbeer. She just told me she felt like the wife of a fascist dictator. Clearly, the gravity of this tradition is not lost on her.