The train I went on, Paris to Istanbul in 1985, the 100th anniversary of the Orient Express, has been found, abandoned in Poland !
www.cnn.com/travel/article/orient-express-mystery-solved/index.html
| How a train fan solved a real life Orient Express mysteryThe cars were painted a distinctive night-blue hue once associated with the Orient Express, the famed long-distance trans-Europe passenger train synonymous with 20th century travel glamor.www.cnn.com |
In 1984, I was called by TC Swartz, the President of TCS Expeditions. “Tim, we need help. We have this train going from Paris to Istanbul next year .. it’s the abandoned Orient Express and we have found it and are putting it back together and doing it up … would you be willing to come and give us a hand and travel with it…?”
Well, kind of DUH !! And they even paid me.
Now of course, it is being refurbished yet again and folks will have the thrill of bouncing along and for a huge amount of money too. But it is the real thing. Agatha Christie fans can have an orgasmic trip for sure, working out just who will be murdered when and by whom. At least we did not have that problem, but stopped several times and did sightseeing etc and when possible, we went in to a siding, in the middle of the night, so that folks could get some sleep.
The wagons, which had been scattered all over Europe, were freshly painted in a classic deep blue, with a lot of gold scrollwork and if you could read, then you knew it really was The Orient Express. Everything was polished up to a dizzying shine, the tiny pink lampshades in the two dining cars’ tables glowed warmly at night and the barmen turned out gallons of vintage cocktails and fine wines. Sometimes we would stop in stations, probably for a change of drivers (all very unionized with hours of duty), so folks who were just waiting for their commuter train, suddenly were staring at us, chattering away and downing martinis like Prohibition was starting tomorrow. I am sure some families wondered later, exactly what did Dad have to drink on the way home? Sometimes we found ourselves stationary and parked right next to a train on another track. We were a sort of rogue train, getting in the way of all the regular train traffic, so we were the one that had to wait. Just seeing the expressions on faces in the other trains was priceless.
The chefs, paid volunteers from posh Parisian hotels, who took the challenge, to turn out 100 individual souffles using cast iron and wood fired ovens, bouncing along at 50mph, was simply amazing. And those were just the first course of several. Dinners were beautifully long and there were complementary digestifs too … all to make them sleep in a rattle trap train.
At the start of the trip, I escorted the group from JFK to Orly, on a lovely old B707. There were only about 20 on the official Air France flight and most of them filled First Class. I had a minor row with Madame le Chef de Cabin, who did not like the fact that some irk from the steerage wanted to come into the sacred FC domain, break open the iron curtain and give info to HIS guests as to what would happen on arrival in Paris. As we filled 10 of the 12 seats there, I felt I did have some right. And in the end, when I told her what was about to happen, we were amis, so that was good and I had a nice glass of champagne in the front galley to cement the fact.
There were a couple of bags missing in Orly… dummies who had a one hour transit in JFK from their Braniff flight from Houston, so of course I knew the chance of that bag connection was minimal. It was the first time I had heard, when they filled out the form, that you could spend $500 on a cashmere sweater at Nieman Marcus… such facts were unknown to my pedestrian Long Island existence. I had barely heard of NM of course. Don’t forget this was 1985 !!!
We started with festivities in Paris, at a very fancy chateau hotel next to Versailles (where memorably, for me, when I closed my door on the departure morning, I heard a huge crash inside, so went back in and found that the whole bathroom ceiling had pancaked down … yikes. All the fancy plaster moldings and some pipes right in the spot where, ten minutes ago, I was brushing my teeth. …. hopefully this was not an omen).
I remember at the first breakfast, when I could see there was an ordering problem, involving a large Texan lady and loud too, with her possibly Algerian waiter, think Manuel of Fawlty Towers. I went right over. She wanted Grits. Give me a BREAK lady, we are in Paris! What the hell would replace grits in France? I suggested in my best French that perhaps ‘le porridge’?? was available .. a total stab in the dark . . it existed ….we settle for that. I just thought “It can’t go on like this …??
Well ……………..
So, we set off.
After only two hours on the train, we descended in Rheims, the center of the Champagne area and decamped to chez Mumm. We drank flutes of their best champagne in their vast, dark and dank cellars, using those monster Jeroboam bottles that you always see but don’t think ever get used; we forced down some foie gras and exquisite tournedos and a nibble of local cheese and macarons; we waltzed in Vienna with dancers from the Opera; we heard Mozart in Salzburg (where to my snob horror, I found out they really wanted to see where The Sound of Music was filmed … fortunately, a downpour nixed that); we sloshed through Budapest (the weather did not cooperate for the first half of the trip) …we went to the Castle of Bram in Romania and were frightened by the Dracula legend … it was just a fest all the way.
One of the features of a trip like this, was that we would have a doctor with us at all times. Great sense of security with that. We had a 30ish French doctor, who had studied in the US and who had perfect English. Parfait. The first night on the train , he is summoned. Little of his training had prepared him for his patient. She became known as Mrs Piggly Wiggly. Those of you who are not from the south of the US, will have no clue about that name. Others, of the Southern persuasion will know. Piggly Wiggly is a huge supermarket chain in the southern US. If you say Tesco to a Brit or Aldi to a German, they get it. Well, we had the grande dame of the Piggly Wiggly wealth with us. Perhaps she had seen A Streetcar Named Desire too many times, but she sure was Southern Frail. The lightest breeze might have carried her off and she wore suitably gauzy outfits that would look good in any slight draft . SO .. first night out, the MD is summoned to her cabin. He enters and finds the new Blanche Dubois in her negligee … she is at least 80 years old. She is having an attack of the Southern vapors, for which there is not much in any medical school can be called upon to cure. Being a professional, he places his stethoscope on her chest to check. Quick as a flash, her left hand rises and clamps itself onto his crotch. YIKES !!!!!!! He declares that she will live and whenever she demands medical intervention, one of us, usually me, had to go with him to protect his honor.
You can’t invent all this.
And so we progressed, quite royally across Europe. We were waved to and we waved back with abandon. Of course not the silly little bouncy wrist wave of the Chinese, but more the elegant raised arm, hand facing inwards, of any proper royal family. It was the least we could do.
And finally, our arrival into Istanbul was so fantastic. The railroad station there had been built as the terminus for The Orient Express. The local publicity machine worked well for the arrival. OUR TRAIN IS COMING BACK!!! They replaced the modern diesel engine that had been hauling us for the last week, with an original Thomas the Tank Engine genuine old toot toot steam locomotive. We all closed out eyes to the fact that the modern locomotive was now repositioned to the rear of the train, to give a push if needed, but the tiny little engine, tooted its way, white smoke streaming out of a tall smokestack, through the underbelly of Istanbul and people were waving out of their windows, with flags and some even had carpets hanging down to shake as well. We all waved royally back.
We steamed in to the proper iron-girdered station, which was festooned with French and Turkish flags and masses of flowers and dancing girls throwing a million rose petals all over us, as we descended, flushed with the success of the whole trip. The Istanbul commuters stood in awe. I have never forgotten it.
The train was staying the night and then repeating the trip the other way with a whole new load of rich and happy punters. We had one couple with us, on honeymoon no less, but a tad too garish, lots of new money. We knew about that …old is good, new often is not, who were so excited about the trip that they asked if they could return and do it all again backwards. By sheer luck, there had been a last-minute cancellation that day, so they spent at least one night in a bed that wasn’t moving for any other reason and next day set off back to Paris.
It was all magical.
timothyvalentinestravels 