Level X / Volume 13

While Deutsche Bahn decommissioned the last 20 bistro carriages in its Intercity fleet in December 2023, travel catering is receiving increasing media attention elsewhere: the time-honoured on-board restaurants on the routes of our eastern neighbours are being celebrated on social media channels and praised in international media.

“Dining in Style, at 90 Miles an Hour” was the headline in The New York Times in April 2023, raving about the “sound of schnitzel klopfen” in the Eastern European dining cars. Starting from Vienna, Author Evan Rail travelled around 2,400 kilometres in 12 different trains, spending a good part of the time in the dining car. The reporter was visibly impressed by the seemingly outdated restaurants on wheels with their tablecloths, draught beer and freshly prepared regional specialities. Full of melancholy, he regretted the discontinuation of the dining car service on most American Amtrak routes in 2019. However, Evan Rail was not the only one to go into raptures about the cosy atmosphere and personal service in the Czech, Hungarian or Slovenian on-board restaurants.

It was only on 18 December that a declaration of love to the dining car appeared on welt.de, written by Jaroslav Rudiš, an abridged text from his book Zug um Zug durch Europa, published in 2023. In it, Rudiš tells stories of rolling family businesses such as the dining car of the Eurocity “Emona” from Vienna to Ljubljana. Mr Popović Senior and Mr Popović Junior work here. Together they run the “Wirtshaus mit Hausmannskost”– the only Slovenian dining car on a regular service. Or from Mr Peterka, who serves his guests highlights of Bohemian cuisine on the route between Hamburg and Prague – freshly prepared by the chef who is also travelling with him.

Jaroslav Rudiš, who himself comes from a family of railwaymen, is an ardent advocate of rail travel and sees Austria, the Czech Republic and Switzerland as pioneers in terms of comfort on rails. “The railway holds us together in Europe,” he said in a radio interview with Deutschlandfunk in 2022. “You can only understand and enjoy Europe from the train and looking out of the window.”

But back to Evan Rail and his trip to Europe for the NYT. During a stopover in Vienna, he interviewed David Ecker, who has been running his @_DiningCar project on “X” (formerly Twitter) since 2018. His account, on which he regularly reports on his experiences in European dining cars, has an impressive 14,500 followers. Over time, the “X” account was joined by a website (diningcar.at) and other accounts on Instagram, Flickr and Mastodon. His Flickr profile contains hundreds of photo albums organised by route and operator with a total of over 6,000 images – all of them of dining cars. On his “X” profile, fans from all over the world now share their thoughts on "their" dining carriages. Other accounts are now also dedicated to the topic: @speisewagen declares “riding a dining car a way of life” and even @seatsixtyone (The Man in Seat 61, aka Mark Smith) has made photos from the on-board restaurant part of everyday digital life.

Hashtags such as #diningcar, #Speisewagen or #Bahnzeit are regularly trending with posts that are reminiscent of the glamour of bygone (travel) times and inspire a constantly growing online community.

Hungarian dining car, 2014, © Ralf Roletschek / Wikimedia Commons

Slovenian dining car in the EC “Emona”, 2019, © David Ecker / Flickr

Dining car in IC 510 from Košice to Vienna, 2018, © David Ecker / Flickr

Dining car of the Czech railway on the Hamburg-Prague line, 2017, © Torsten Maue / Flickr