Not the Orient Express

I left Romania on the most comfortably appointed sleeper train in which I have ever had the pleasure to travel. Wood panelling! Soft mattresses! A distinct and welcome absence of grime, disinfectant, stale cigar smoke, lime, insects and cold draughts! The Chisinau-Bucharest train had undermined my affection for a good long train trip so much so that I had thought of flying to Istanbul rather than braving another stinky rattle-trap and slightly threatening cabin-mate. This time, I booked my ticket through a travel agent at Bucharest station, decided to splurge on the second snazziest grade of travel (three in a cabin), and insisted that I sleep in a wimmin only cabin; 56 euros and 20 hours of travel later, and here I am in Istanbul, my commitment to long-haul train travel reaffirmed.

I stared out the window as the sun turned the fields and forests and hills and sky from green and yellow and brown and blue to the most extraordinary shades of purple and orange and red and white. Men in hats sat in hay-carts driven by donkeys, kids played soccer in fields just harvested and little groups with baskets sat under trees and picked mushrooms. In between times, I had Daniel Deronda and an old Guardian to entertain me.

The internet had provided me with a number of different and contradictory factoids about the visa requirements for entering Turkey. I was pretty sure, if not entirely certain, that I could buy a visa at the border but had no idea how much that would cost or what currency would be needed. The blogs yielded stories of dodgy border guards refusing various currencies and requiring a little extra currency to lubricate the process. I spent my last Romanian lei on beer and took a handful of euros and US dollars to the visa dealer at the border. Here’s my addition to the factoids. If you hold a British passport and you are entering Turkey by train, a visa will cost either £10 or 15 euros or US$20, making it most economical to pay in euros (I think). Woman of experience I may be, but I haven’t yet bribed a border guard. Someday.

Transparent as the process was, there was still a lot of waiting around to be done. The train pulled into Bulgarian border control at about 1.30am and left the Turkish control two hours later; most of that time was spent shivering in queues. I’ve had ample opportunity of late to observe the social habits of people in queues and particularly to wonder at the overwhelming urge that many people seem to have to form groups and committees and engage in chit-chat. I think I missed out on that gene. At any rate, I was on autopilot and had forgotten to pre-program small talk and so didn’t really join in the banter. I was cold and I didn’t really want to tell my life story in five easy chunks* to some strangers in the dark. And, misanthrope that I am, I didn’t really want to hear a set of soundbites about the English speakers around me. I’ve never really needed to talk to kill time and forming bonds with other people through complaint is a habit I’m trying to break. Solidarity in the face of adversity is one thing but the kinds of connections I see wealthy westerners like myself forming with each other when they are stuck in a new environment don’t really appeal.

Oh, the clock doesn’t work. Look, that clock there shows different time to this one here. It’s just not like home, is it. Gosh, these clocks that don’t work, you’d think they’d get onto it. Is that other feller there working or just loafing? Oh, complained the Australian couple, nodding to each other, you wouldn’t get this kind of trouble with immigration at home, would you? We-he-he-heeeelll, blustered a drunk and whiskery American gent apparently exploring his second youth, they told you this was gonna be a sleeper train, did they? We-he-he-he-heeeell! Don’t believe a word they say, that’s what I say. And always, I say always, always watch your pockets. I’m going to ask the conductor whether he knows what time it is. Is that all we’re waiting for? For them to stamp our passports? What about that other feller? What’s he doing?

And so it went on. I don’t suppose anyone is much good with sparkling repartee at three in the morning.

I watched locals who had made the trip before bring out thermoses. I envied the squat old ladies their fur lined boots and lurid headscarves; they looked warm and I was cold. I’d made friends with the conductor, a round man with a very impressive walrus moustache, and his offsider, an impassioned Romanian patriot named Orlando, and they told me how bad EU membership was for Romania and Bulgaria. I got to wishing that I was still a smoker and tried to whistle the theme tune from ‘Cabaret’ instead but it was too cold to stay on target. The slightly loopy Romanian lady with whom I was sharing a cabin gave me the low-down on her cats and her June to November fruit and vegetable pickling program in the Ceaucescu years. Comatose small talk is easier in French. ‘Dearie me,’ a middle-aged Australian man intoned loudly and dramatically at least five times within a twenty minute interval and I resolved to eliminate the expression from my expostulatory vocabulary, so silly did he sound.

Eventually, everybody got their passport stamped, everybody got back on the train, everybody got to Istanbul. The last twenty minutes of the trip sheared by the coast, the view broken from time to time by the remnants of the old walls of Constantinople. Walking down the platform, I passed the stained glass windows of the Orient Express café and remembered that I’d been at the other end of the line in Venice six weeks ago. The first thing I noticed when I left the station was what claimed to be a baklavaria, an omen which portends very well, I’d say.

* My life in Five Easy Responses
1. I’m Australian. 2. I’ve come from Bucharest. 3. I’m going to Istanbul to meet a friend. 4. Yes, I’m travelling alone. 5. No, it’s fine, I like travelling on my own.