Maybe because my father wanted me to be a boy so much he cried after I was born—my parents had decided not to learn the gender of their future baby—I adore trains and trams to pieces. Maybe I love them for completely different reasons, I don't know. But whenever I see a vintage railway, train, or tram museum, I feel like a kid again. I run to get the tickets—blissfully happy, bouncing almost—take millions of pictures, and stick my head out the window, laughing, just to be embraced by the steam and smell of burning coal.
The very special thing about these rides is that no matter how old the passengers are, we are all five again. The sheer excitement is bursting out of the cars, with greetings to and waving of hands at passing hikers, giddy giggling of the riders, and clicking of cameras. The camaraderie of feeling carefree and joyful for a mere forty minutes is contagious. You don't care about what happens beyond the walls of the small wooden car that clickety-clacks, choo-choos, and whistles you from point A to point B. You are enchanted by the rhythm, unapologetically happy, escaping with your temporary tribe to Neverland without the help of Peter Pan.
I am content to be an adult again, though, when, upon disembarking my steam-puffing arc of joy, I spy among the railway’s commemorative merch—T-shirts, toys, postcards, cookies shaped like a train engine, jars of jam—a bottle of beer labeled "Choleschufler": the coal shoveler. It is brewed for this historic railway branch by a small local brewery. This black-as-coal Porter salutes the hard work of a shoveler, who has to feed the engine 300 kg of fuel during the 12-kilometers ride. These numbers catapult me into a state of awe. I dutifully pick up a few bottles to celebrate it all: the local synergy of two tiny enterprises, their collaborative spirit and effort, and the hard work of both shovelers: the coal shoveler for taking me for the ride and the spent-grain shoveler for giving me an opportunity to appreciate the former and the latter. Cheers, and thank you. Please, bring more collaborations like this, world.
Words + Photo by Lana Svitankova