Wonder on The Orient Express

I have to admit I’m feeling smug about this one. As everybody knows, on Thursday 15th April, a volcano with a name no one can pronounce erupted in Iceland and grounded planes all over the world. We were due to leave for Venice that afternoon. Perhaps because I have spent so many years sitting on little gilt chairs reviewing haute couture gowns and have thus acquired champagne tastes way beyond my income, my answer that morning to, “How else to get there?” was to send an email to The Orient Express.

It is many people’s life’s dream to travel on such a mythical train but I wasn’t one of them, simply because it never entered my head that it would happen, not even, to be truthful, when a call came though to say “Yes!” followed by news that the steam-powered pullman, which is the English stage of the journey, was pulling out in 30 minutes from Victoria Station, which, even on a good day, is 40 minutes from my front door.

But once you are promised a cabin on the train that has carried Greta Garbo, the Duke of Windsor and King Carol of Romania, (the latter using the Orient Express first to conduct love affairs aboard during his reign, then to flee to exile with his treasure, so the train came under fire while crossing the then Yugoslavia), you don’t just give up. Instead, it was a sprint to St. Pancras in North London, a fast train to Ashford International in Kent, a cab across country and a “wait!” just as our fellow passengers were about to cross the channel.

Perhaps their evident surprise at the sight of my husband and I was due to the fact that we had missed the five-course lunch with champagne, wine and liqueurs, which had left them all sated and frankly, completely sozzled. More likely, it was the fact that, as news of the volcano had come through, I had just washed my hair but had not had time to brush it, so there I was, working my own ‘Tribute to Eyjafjallajokull’ look and, like tons of ash spewing up into the atmosphere, it wasn’t pretty.

Added to this, we must have looked shell-shocked to have made it against all odds, including the call, as I was locking the front door, informing us, “dress code is jacket and tie to dinner, evening dress and no jeans or sneakers on board.” Back track, grab suit, belt, shiny Churches brogues, vintage Christian Dior 50’s tie for him. Grab my evening jacket, add something spangly. Forget - as I would later discover - my shoes. (Thankfully, that my sneakers are navy and Hermes, meant I didn¹t get rumbled when my feet were concealed beneath the damask tablecloth in the dining car.) Husband was in jeans and sneakers as we left the house. He was in his suit by the time we jumped off the fast train at Ashford. Don’t know how that happened.

What they don’t tell you about the Orient Express (well, how would I know, given I had no time to read what they do tell you?) is that you go through the “Chunnel” in a fleet of luxury buses, so your first sight of the actual train is somewhere near Calais (I think, certainly, we passed a big sign which read “France”).

There you are met by your uniformed train steward doffing his cap, (ours, a cute Kiwi called Jake, had signed up to have an adventure). It is the steward who heaves your bags on the shiny brass overhead racks and in sweet Jake’s case, he didn’t even say, “Tatty Billabong bags? What on earth are you doing here?” but instead told us about the water (very hot, the coal boiler had been stoked since dawn) and pointed out the button that brought him at our beck and call. Bliss.

As to our cabin, it was cabins, because the people who last-minute volcano-cancelled — meaning we were able to get aboard (one assumes they were flying back and guessed that might get tricky) — had had the foresight to book two adjoining singles. With a connecting door. Very Strangers on the Train (as opposed, thankfully, to Murder on the Orient Express, a special edition of which is on sale at the onboard gift shop, along with a divine bracelet of golden train carriages studded with tiny emeralds, at mere 5,000 euros).

The toilet is shared by about ten cabins. There’s no shower. There’s a sink and a dressing gown and a fluffy towel and flannels and soap in a plastic dish, which meant we didn’t feel bad pocketing it as a souvenir. There’s embossed writing paper and you give the mail to the steward and it arrives, franked From the Orient Express. (I rather wish I’d written a letter to myself).

There are three choices of restaurant for dinner; the oriental-inspired, ‘Voiture Chinoise’, dating from 1927, the Lalique dining car, 1929, which we chose and got to chink glasses while admiring René Lalique’s creations in the Côte d’Azur’ style, and a clubby, mannish polished marquetry dining car, which, despite having been built in Smethwick, outside of Birmingham, is, I suspect, actually the chicest of the three but just doesn’t have a catchy name.

Not to imply that the Lalique dining car isn’t chic. Dinner in a diner, nothing could be finer, especially when dinner consists of Brittany lobster, followed by filet de boeuf roti, served with tiny spring vegetables, then a cheese board from heaven (“another slither of that delicious blue, please”), then a raspberry mille-feuille. And coffee and mignardises, a.k.a. cute pastries you can wrap in your napkin and take back to your cabin for a midnight feast as you cross the border into Switzerland, which felt very The Great Escape to me. (the crossing I mean. I doubt Steve McQueen packed pastries in a napkin).

All food is prepared aboard, under the eagle eye (and big chef’s hat) of Chef de Cuisine, Christian Bodiguel; an astonishing feat considering the size of the galley kitchens on a moving train. Sometimes they even do soufflés. For 100 people.

The bar car, built in 1931 in the Art Nouveau style, is a hoot. A real live piano player on a train! What’s so wonderful is that everyone is having the time of their lives - from the honeymooners to the 80th birthday parties to those who are - and yes there were a couple on ‘our’ train - taking the trip of a lifetime because they know a terminal time clock is ticking against them. What could have been depressing, what could have been mawkish and certainly, from a black hearted fashion hag’s point of view, what could have been an utter tragedy (feathers in the hair! Shiny evening dresses sticking to body parts!) was instead wonderful. There is, believe me, nothing more ravishing than the sight of a handsome English woman, somewhat past the flush of youth, in the strapless evening gown. The ladies of the train were all done up to the nines and, given the only mirrors in the cabins (they rotate on an ingenious gimbal) are make-up sized, no one had been able to self-scrutinize and destroy their self confidence. So it was as if everyone looked as they –wished– they looked, even the men, jemmied into tuxes they hadn’t had on for a while. The mood was intoxicating. As was my crisp, dry martini.

By now, you might be wondering, given I got to ride the train and you didn’t, “but isn’t it, really, quite naff?.” I thump my fist down on the polished marquetry and say “no!” The train is not glamourous in a “George Clooney is over there” kind of way. Instead, everyone is the star. Frankly, I don’t care if Tatler-types might say those aboard are not “the right sort” because some passengers having a royally good time have made their money not by sitting on their tweedy bottoms stroking their inheritances but by sheer hard slog. Am I the right sort? Are you? Who cares as long as the barman treats us like we absolutely are. Oh, did I order that second martini? Goodness, these canapés are sublime.

Down with snark. When everyone is determined to have the time of their lives, it raises the bar - to the point I ordered a Black Russian after dinner (I wanted something racy and 1920s). The latter cost 15 euros (to be fair, it came with nuts). The price structure is thus; you pay your passage, drinks on top, and all food is included, unless you want the Beluga caviar, which comes served with blinis and sour cream, over a bed of ice and accompanied by a shot of vodka at an additional 390 euros. We survived without.

At midnight, we reached Gare de L’Est, empty but for a whirr of smart porters, which was both enchanting and bizarre considering, had we caught a Eurostar from St. Pancras, we’d have reached Paris some 10 hours earlier. On the 4th October 1883, the Orient Express departed from here on its first trip to Istanbul. By now, and in love with being aboard, I slightly wished we were going all the way east, as you can still do, just once a year. Back then it took 5 days, now it takes 6, with overnight stops and hot showers in Budapest and Bucharest.

Breakfast in Liechtenstein - now there’s something that hadn’t crossed my mind yesterday, nor had the thrill of sleeping where Josephine Baker once had. (The legendary performer was aboard when the train was shot at during World War II). Others were stretching and yawning to greet the day in bunks once slept in by US troops (sleeping car 3539 was used by the US Army Transportation Corps between 1945 and 1947) or beds that had seen plenty of action; (during the War, sleeping car 3544 was stored at Limoges where it was used as a brothel).

The train may be buffed and polished but otherwise unchanged since the golden age of travel but alas, the views from the window are modern. It’s startling how many vast warehouses there are all over Europe, how many goods yards piled high with so much stuff and how neat the construction yards are in Austria. No picturesque hovels and urchins these days. No kind villagers in traditional dress with folkloric embroidery, such as those who came to the aid of passengers, caught for ten days in a snowdrift 60 miles from Istanbul, an incident which inspired Agatha Christie’s famous tale. But the mountains are just as majestic.

Next, a bit of leg stretching at a stop at Innsbruck. By now, news of the volcano and our dramatic feat to catch the train had spread. “Well done you!” boomed the marvellously posh Rachel, who we would bump into again in the lobby of the Gritti Palace (I told you, - champagne tastes I can’t afford) and who would announce with a whoop of delight that she was to travel home - all through Europe - with strangers and by minibus. (Her husband did not seem to share her unbridled glee).

Clackety clack down the track to Verona (Two gentleman of…) where tea was served in our cabin - proper tea in a silver pot and with little cakes, all of which we ate, despite having had lunch because you are only going to get served afternoon tea on the Orient Express by Jake the cute Kiwi steward once in a lifetime, right?

Most passengers who disembark at Santa Lucia station are spirited off to snazzy hotels like the peerless Cipriani, where I’m going to stay two weeks every year when I grow up. For two hitchhikers, the glamour seemed to fade as we rumbled our own suitcases along the canals to our little hotel. But happily, we were mistaken. As the days went by and the “No Fly Zone” kept the skies over Venice looking just as Canaletto painted them in 1730s, our little band of train travelers would bump into each other:- on the “vaporetti” water buses that go up and down the Grand Canal; on the “traghetti” gondola ferries which, for just a euro, will paddle you to the other side and, as budgets got tighter, in back street pizzerias. Always, there would be a smile of recognition, then the sharing of stories among we, the most glamourous of refugees, including the couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary who were delighted to be stranded away from their six children (the oldest being big enough to take charge of the youngest). In the most beautiful city in Europe, it seemed we knew almost everyone, because although 22 million tourists arrive in Venice each year, there were almost no new arrivals, and even the 60,000 Venetians who are so outnumbered seemed to be smiling.

After five days of no flights, the guy next to us at breakfast announced he was so desperate to get back to work and not to miss a bid on which his career depended that he’d ransomed all for the very last cabin on the Orient Express on its once-weekly home run, the only way out, he said, having queued for hours at the station for a regular rail ticket and got nowhere. He was hip, an architect type and we surprised him by admitting we had arrived by the legendary train. “Really? What was it like?” “Suspend your disbelief and be prepared to be enchanted,” seemed the appropriate reply.