What we might call The Murder of the Orient Express began after the Second World War, but the train is like one of those ham actors who, when shot in a play, milks the death, writhing about, apparently expiring only to revive for further histrionics.
After the war, Wagons-Lits resumed its various Orient Expresses, but its sleepers operating wholly within the Eastern Bloc countries were gradually taken over by the communist governments. On one of her immediately postwar journeys on the Simplon Orient, Agatha Christie was attacked by bedbugs when heading between Venice and Paris. In 1948, she planned a visit to Iraq with her archaeologist husband Max. ‘No Orient Express this time, alas!’ she wrote in her autobiography. ‘It was no longer the cheapest way … This time we flew – the beginning of that dull routine, travelling by air.’
In 1962, the Simplon Orient Express was withdrawn and replaced by a slower train mendaciously called the Direct Orient Express, with fewer weekly services all the way to Istanbul. On 20 May 1977 the Direct Orient Express ran for the last time. When I first opened my second-hand copy of Sleeping Story by Jean des Cars, a small newspaper cutting – I think from the personal columns of The Times – dropped out. It read: ‘In affectionate remembrance of the Direct Orient Express which passed away quietly in Paris last night. Deeply lamented by a large circle of friends and acquaintances at the Raleigh Club. Ride on! Ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die.’ (The quote is from a hymn, written in 1820 by Henry Hart Milman, and the Raleigh Club was a travel-cumdining club, connected to the Royal Geographical Society.)
So now there was no through train from Paris to Istanbul. Was that the end of the Orient Express? Not quite, because the plain, original Orient Express continued to run from Gare de l’Est to Budapest and Bucharest.
In 1991 the Orient Express lost its sleeper to Bucharest. Surely that was the end? But no, because the Bucharest sleeper was restored between 1998 and 2001, and even after 2001 there was still an Orient Express, even if it was hardly at all oriental, running from Paris to Vienna via Strasbourg, where most of the passengers got off. With the opening of the TGV Est line in 2007, the Orient Express suffered its final demotion, running Strasbourg-Vienna as an Austrian Railways EuroNight train. This was listed as the Orient Express in the European Timetable ending 12 December 2009. It was absent from the one starting 13 December.
***
We were now about a hundred miles from Paris. If we had been on the ‘classic’ route to Strasbourg, which the Orient Express took, as opposed to the Ligne à Grande Vitesse Est, we would now have been running through a station called Châlons, and until the Second World War the Orient Express stopped at Châlons to pick up the British, who therefore wouldn’t necessarily have to bother with that Parisian walk along Rue des Deux Gares. Here was the equivalent of being taken around the Petite Ceinture from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon to connect up with the Blue Train. But in the case of the Orient Express connection, Paris was avoided in a wider arc. At 2pm passengers would have boarded the ‘Continental Express’ at Victoria for Dover. At Calais they would have boarded a blue W-L sleeping car attached to an ordinary French express heading for Châlons. Railway Wonders of the World magazine described the journey in the mid-1930s:
Through Northern France, the train crosses some of the most fought-over country in Europe, though it looks smiling enough in the gathering dusk. During the past hundred years, it has seen the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War, though but for place names which are familiar, one would never know it. Rheims, in the evening dusk, looks as peaceful as ever, although it was nearly shelled to pieces barely twenty years ago. On the plains of Châlons, over which the train runs late in the evening, the advance of Attila the Hun, with his Asiatic hordes, was finally stemmed centuries ago.
Châlons Station remains, on the classic route. The station used to be called Gare Châlons-sur-Marne, because that’s what the town was called, but in 1998, the town went upmarket, becoming Châlons-en-Champagne, which is what the station is now called. It is served by high-speed trains even if they don’t go at high speed, because it is on the LGV Est network, even if not actually on the fast line.
The next station east on the classic line is Vitry-le-François. Here, on 16 November 1929, the Orient Express crashed into a freight train. The driver, fireman and one conductor were killed. A photograph of the wreckage was turned into a postcard – which it would have been cruel to send with the message ‘Wish you were here.’ (In June 1961 there was another railway disaster at Vitry-le-François. A passenger train was derailed by a bomb planted by the OAS, French far-right dissidents opposed to the independence of Algeria; twenty-eight people died.) While on the subject of OE disasters … In December 1901, the Ostend-Vienna Orient Express (1894–1993) jumped the tracks and entered the station restaurant in Frankfurt. In his book The Orient Express, Anthony Burton writes, ‘It was an establishment made for serious eating, the sort of place where one would not expect anything more disastrous than a corked bottle of wine.’ Nobody was killed.
As we whirled through wide dark fields, punctuated occasionally by enormous farmhouses, I myself began to feel hungry. Dinner on the original journey was served an hour and a half after departure – at 8pm. The restaurant car incorporated a gentlemen’s smoking salon with all the European newspapers, and there was further expensive marquetry, with scrollwork, cornices and gilded metal flowers protruding, and ‘rather garish’ (according to E. H. Cookridge) paintings. The lighting was by gigantic – yet mellow – gas chandeliers. The meal involved nine courses: soup, lobster, oysters, caviar, fish, game, cakes, sorbets and cheeses. Afterwards, Edmond About walked through to the kitchen to shake the hand of the Burgundian chef.
In the buffet of the duplex TGV from Paris to Munich – with night falling rapidly over the countryside of the Champagne region – I myself bought a tuna sandwich. Glancing down at the receipt I saw the words ‘Newrest Wagonslits’, which gave me a jolt, until I remembered that one corporate remnant of Wagons-Lits, Newrest, is still in the railway catering business, and is allowed to use the hallowed W-L name by Wagons-Lits Diffusion, which controls the brand. Contemplating the receipt, I imagined, materialising before me, an early W-L waiter, in a uniform comprising frock coat, knickerbockers, white tights and Prince Charming slippers. Admittedly, this rig-out was for special occasions only, not for normal dinners, such as this, taken from an Orient Express menu dated 6 December 1884:
Potage tapioca
Olives et beurre
Bar sauce hollandaise
Pommes au naturel
Gigot de mouton à la Bretonne
Poulet du Mans au cresson
Épinards au sucre
Fromages
Tarte aux fruits
***
The truly high-speed phase of the LGV had stopped at Baudricourt, a hundred miles short of Strasbourg. (The second phase, reaching that city, would be opening shortly, having been delayed by the derailment of a test train – killing eleven people – in November 2015.) Now, the countryside seemed to have become slower as well, with muddy woodlands appearing, the farmsteads becoming more picturesque. On arrival at Strasbourg, there was much cheek-kissing between French people on the platform, as though to affirm the Gallic identity of a place so close to Germany. Half of our train was detached and then we pulled away, past the illuminated sign of a Restaurant A l’Abattoir. Things were becoming subtly more foreign. As we passed though Kehl there was a ‘Diamond Casino’ on the platform.
Five minutes after our departure, an unshaven, urchinlike man came and sat opposite me. He looked too scruffy to be on a TGV, even in second class. He was watching me as I looked at my map. ‘Your plan, Signore – I look?’ Seeing my hesitation, he smiled. ‘Quick look? How about it?’ I passed it over, and he began scrutinising it like a general planning a campaign. He seemed mainly concerned with Italy: ‘Venezia, Venezia, Venezia,’ he muttered, then ‘Roma, Roma, Roma.’ After a few minutes, he looked up, smiling again. ‘Cigarette, Signore? One cig
arette? How about it?’
‘You can’t smoke on the train,’ I said, trying not to sound too priggish.
He nodded, then changed tack. ‘A coffee?’ he suggested. ‘One coffee, signore? How about it?’ I fished in my pocket and gave him the only coin I found there – a single euro. He eyed it ruefully. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘almost!’, and he returned to his study of the map. I was paying the price for having moved from the seat next to the undoubtedly less-nutty German. But when we pulled into Stuttgart, the Italian neatly folded up the map and returned it to me, saying, ‘Grazie, Signore.’ He got off the train, and I watched through the window as he inspected the tracks on the opposite side of the platform, possibly looking for discarded fags. I was relieved that he’d got off; all I needed now was for him to stay off, but our TGV was lingering in the station. Finally, as we pulled away, he disappeared from view. If he did get back on the train, I never saw him again.
Karlsruhe Station was dominated by a giant neon sign reading ‘Karlsruhe’, and snow was falling beyond the platform canopy. We began heading south-east towards Stuttgart and at Augsburg the snow was coming down thickly enough for me to envisage the cancellation of the train. Nevertheless, we pulled into Munich Hauptbahnhof on time at 21.36.
On that original journey, the train stopped at Munich to take on German journalists and a replacement dining car, something having gone wrong with the original. According to Martin Page in The Lost Pleasures of the Great Trains, the French journalist, Edmond About, soured the internationalist mood of the junket by noting ‘somewhat bitterly that the new station in Munich had been built out of French reparations after the war of 1870’. (About had lost his home in Alsace as a result of the Franco-Prussian War.) The present station represents a rebuild of 1960. Hitler had planned a massive new station for Munich based on St Peter’s Basilica in Rome but – naturally – six times bigger. It was meant to be completed in 1950, but only the foundations were laid.
I had two hours to kill before my sleeper. A bell – like a church bell – was tolling in the station. It created an air of tension. The main concourse was full of food courts, inhabited by weary-looking people who might or might not be about to catch trains. I scoured the departure board, verifying that EN 463 to Budapest was listed. (It’s also known as Kálmán Imre, after a Hungarian composer of operettas.) I then approached the exit by walking through a shopping mall. Red plastic buckets collected melted snow dripping from cracks in the roof. Most of the shops were closed, but a well-stocked tobacconist was open for business directly beneath a banner proclaiming ‘Welcome to Munich Station: Smoke Free Zone’. But nicotine had the last laugh, because, emerging from the station, I ran a multicultural gauntlet of shifty-looking characters who were all smoking, and most of them were drinking as well. They were what the Edwardian railway police of Britain used to call ‘station loungers.’
Heavy snow fell onto the square in front of the station. As I stepped over some tramlines, my suede shoes – suitable for padding along carpeted railway carriages – immediately started to leak.
I trudged through the snow towards the welcoming lights of what turned out to be a strip club. Next door to it was a place called Sport Café Schiller, which was crammed with boxing memorabilia and big German blokes. Middlesbrough vs. Wolverhampton Wanderers was on the widescreen TV. You have to go a lot further than Munich to escape even second-tier English football. I ordered a beer, and ‘Noodles and ham’.
‘Enjoy the evening, and the town,’ said the waiter (probably an ex-boxer) as I was about to leave.
‘I’m afraid I’m only going back to the station.’
‘Yes,’ he said regretfully, ‘and that is not at all pleasant.’
Inside the station, a shouting match was taking place in one of the food courts between a waiter and a man of Middle-Eastern appearance. A small crowd looked on, half amused, half nervous. As far as I could tell, the waiter was inviting the man to leave, but the man was refusing to do so, or at least not until he’d finished the plate of food before him.
I drifted over to a deli counter, contemplating the purchase of half a bottle of wine for the train. A young German man came up to me. He looked like an overgrown schoolboy, with short blonde hair and glasses. ‘You can get cheap Berliners after 11 o’clock, you know,’ he said, in excellent English. By way of explanation, he pointed to a display of cakes, and I recalled that a Berliner was a jelly doughnut.
Quite a crowd was gathering around this cake counter, and the young German explained that the prices would be dramatically reduced in five minutes’ time, at eleven o’clock. As we waited, he said, ‘You are on a tour of Bavaria?’ Before I could deny it, he said, ‘Then may I recommend a visit to Berchtesgaden? That’s Berchtesgaden near Salzburg, famous as a base of Mr Adolf Hitler and later the American Army. When I say “Mr” Adolf Hitler, that does not mean I approve of him. You take a Deutsche Bahn bus – not a train – from Salzburg. For the first person it is twenty-three euros, for the next one in the party, it is five, and at night it’s two. So you can get people there without telling the police.’ I didn’t quite see how this last remark followed, but there was no opportunity to say so. ‘All of Bavaria is very beautiful, and safe,’ the young man continued. ‘It is Conservative. In Germany, politics is governed by population density. Low density is Conservative; high density is Social Democrat. As a city, Munich is Social Democrat, but it is also safe. You can have 5,000 euros in an open pocket, and no one will touch it, because everyone has money. But we have a problem with immigrants, because they do not have money.’
‘But Germany welcomes the migrants,’ I said, thinking of the images from Munich Station in September 2015, six months previously, when Syrian refugees, alighting from trains from Budapest, had been greeted with hugs.
‘Mrs Merkel welcomes them,’ the young German man corrected me. ‘She has been very direct about that, and it is a courageous policy.’
‘But you don’t agree with it?’
‘No.’
The Berliners were now available at the knock-down price. ‘Can I recommend the apple ones?’ he said. I offered to buy him one.
‘It is not necessary,’ he said, but then he changed his mind. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I will take two. They are thirty cents each.’
As I carried my wine towards the platform for EN 463, the food court argument was approaching its climax, with two policemen attempting to mediate. It was resolved as I passed by: the man who’d been invited to leave did leave, but while carrying his yet-to-be-eaten plate of food.
About thirty people were waiting on the platform for EN 463: backpackers, a couple of family groups, careworn businessmen. All types were represented except the rich. The entrance to my sleeping car was guarded by a Hungarian official in a blue Puffa jacket and peaked cap. He asked very politely for my ticket, and I couldn’t find it. After two minutes of fumbling through my pockets, I asked if I could look for my ticket on the train. He shook his head regretfully: ‘A ticket is a must,’ he said. I found it at last, but in the confusion failed to see that the blue-and-white carriage was marked ‘Voiture Couchette’ and not ‘Voiture Lits’, which would have denoted a proper sleeper, which is what I had booked. And I was only able to glance fleetingly at the window label, which would have read, had I had time:
Salzburg 01.18
Linz 04.51
St Pölten 05.44
Vienna Westbahnhof 06.10
Hegyeshalom 07.12
Győr 07.36
Budapest Keleti 09.05
Only a couple of other sleeping compartments besides my own were occupied. A menu in the corridor advertised ‘Tea, coffee, alcoholic drinks.’
‘Not available,’ said the Hungarian guard, who was following me.
‘But is there a service of breakfast?’
‘A small breakfast,’ he said, with an apologetic smile.
The compartment was brown, cream and yellow, and had one lower bunk made up and no sink. An announcement came over the tannoy: �
��I am Martin, your German train manager. We will be calling at Salzburg at 01.18, where our train will split into three. One part to Zagreb, one part to Venezia, and the third part to Budapest. There will be no further loudspeaker announcements.’
Five minutes later, I encountered Martin while strolling along the train. He was in the next carriage along, which was far more luxurious than mine. The corridor was thickly carpeted. Wood-panelled sleeping compartments were set at an angle, to allow them to be longer. The corner of each protruded into the corridor, but these protrusions had been rounded off, creating a sinuous effect, like vertical waves. ‘This car is German,’ Martin explained. ‘Yours, along there,’ he added, with a slight note of disparagement, ‘is Hungarian, and unfortunately there were no sleepers available tonight, so you are in a couchette.’ A woman was emerging from one of the compartments, revealing a stylish wood-framed bed and a rich-blue carpet. ‘There’s no problem at all about sleeping in these,’ she said, smugly, before heading off to the loo.
Our train seemed to be entangled with other trains. ‘That is because it is three trains in one,’ Martin said, in his trenchant way. ‘It is a EuroNight train to Budapest, also two City Night Line trains: one to Venice, one to Zagreb.’
City Night Line, incidentally, used to be spelt in the same annoying way as EuroNight, with no gap between the words. That was when it was a joint operation between German, Swiss and Austrian national railways, a collaboration beginning in 1995. From 2007 it became a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn (DB) alone. For the last three or four years, DB has been paring back any sleepers that competed with its high-speed trains, including services running between France and Germany, Holland and Germany, and Berlin and Munich. As already mentioned, the entire DB sleeper service will have stopped by the time this book is published, unless a petition has managed to save it. But the plan is for some of the German sleepers to be taken over by the Austrian national railway, ÖBB.
Night Trains Page 14
