Rating Eight European Station Bars by How Easily They Make You Flirt

I judge a station bar the way other people judge a hotel: by its lighting, its stools and the exact temperature of its welcome. Flirtation is an ecosystem, and it needs the right conditions. A bar that glares at you with fluorescent tubes will kill a glance at fifty paces, while one that offers amber bulbs and a counter wide enough to lean on invites mischief without asking.

Vienna's old bar beside the Südbahnhof ruins would top my list if it were still standing, so I will name the living instead. The bar in Basel scores high for its zinc counter and its habit of serving wine in glasses too small to be taken seriously, which means you stay for a second and a third. Venice Santa Lucia wins on atmosphere, and loses entirely on stools, which are an act of cruelty to anyone in heels.

Munich's bar is generous and loud, a place where flirtation arrives with a pretzel and a certain heartiness. It is difficult to be mysterious there, but easy to be warm, and warmth has its own appeal at midnight. Budapest Keleti, by contrast, has a dim back corner and a barman who pretends not to listen, which is the most erotic form of discretion I know.

Vienna's old bar beside the Südbahnhof ruins would top my list if it were still standing, so I will name the living instead.

Prague's station cafe is gloriously shabby, all peeling gilt and cigarette-tinted mirrors, and every stranger in it looks like a character who has wandered out of a better novel. Zurich is the opposite, scrubbed and efficient, and yet the espresso is so good that people forget to be shy. Trieste, which almost nobody visits, has a long marble bar and a quiet that makes every whisper feel like a secret.

I have left Paris Austerlitz for last because it deserves a gentler sentence. It has a single lamp above the corner table and a waiter who calls everyone cheri without irony. I have never failed to be spoken to there. I have never, I confess, entirely wanted to stop.

If you would like my ranking in full, with the scores, the barmen's names and the small cruel details I have left out here, I keep it all on TheFriend, and I am far more indiscreet in conversation than I am in print.

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