On the Bosfor Express

The restaurant at Istanbul's international train station is called the Orient Express. I found myself humming "I would have liked to know you, but I was just a kid", wishing for the romance and adventure of the Paris-Istanbul train. Aw, even by the time Paul Theroux did it in 1975, it wasn't too exciting any more, but the legend is good enough to withstand any kind of reality check. RIP, Orient Express, 1883-2009.

By the way, Theroux's short story, Misery on the Orient Express is great fun and I thoroughly recommend it: http://m.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/75jul/misery.htm It's expanded in his travelogue, the Great Railway Bazaar. I'm only half way through that and I recommend it too, but the short story is magic.

The Bosfor Express goes to Bucharest. Joel and I are on it! Istanbul is one of the best places it's possible to be, and we were almost hoping the train would be booked out, but time is tight and it makes most sense to move on to Bucharest tonight and then Budapest the day after tomorrow. Joel will fly out from there, and I'll continue to Munich and then probably go home via Brussels rather than Paris because I don't know what Belgium looks like. Everyone is a monk or a politician, right? And the streets are paved with waffles?

We crammed a lot into three days in Istanbul. We took a boat to Asia and bought berries from a street vendor. We devoured pomegranate molasses and figs and a view of the city at a new-Turkish rooftop restaurant. We admired recreations of machines and winced at surgical implements at the Islamic Museum of Science. (Upstairs: astronomy, navigation, clocks, warfare, medicine. Downstairs: chemistry, mathematics, not sure what else because the museum closed.) We drank endless glasses of lovely tea. And of course we saw the Aya Sofia and several impressive mosques and the fantastic haunting Basilica Cistern, which would be one of my favourite things on the planet if only the other tourists would just stop chattering for ten minutes. Grr.

It would take a long time to be bored of Istanbul, and then you'd just be a few hours away from any number of other wonders, so it'd be hard to stay bored. Istanbul is great. We'll be back.

But for now we're in our own little compartment for two on this pleasantly rumbling train and it's about as good as it gets. The carriage was built in a time when wood panelling was the classiest of all possible decor, and it has a little wash basin and tons of storage space and tiny reading lights. We love it, but feel that we dressed inappropriately for the occasion: those hooks should have hats on them. We should probably be smoking. There is insufficient intrigue.

Look, seat61 has pictures of train compartments! Scroll down a wee bit to see the Bosfor:
http://www.seat61.com/Turkey.htm#What%20are%20the%20trains%20like