Have you ever read Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, or seen the film? There are linen tablecloths in the restaurant car and uniformed waiters. The sleeper berths are the last word in luxury. While we did not expect to meet Hercule Poirot on our journey from Sofia to Istanbul we were rather looking forward to a little old-world extravagance.
The reality in 2015 is a far cry from that romantic picture.
We could not make reservations over the Internet, so we presented ourselves at Sofia station, where a pleasant woman speaking good English explained that the choice of sleeping accommodation was simple. There were no berths of any class. We would have to sit up all night. Well, we'd managed that from Budapest to Sigisoara and it hadn't killed us. We could cope. "And" she added, "there is no restaurant car. You will have to take your own food." Blast!
"The train goes as far as the Turkish border, arriving at about 2am. You will go by bus from there." This last factoid wasn't a surprise because earlier Internet researches had revealed that the Turks have been doing major work on the tracks and we knew that the final part of the journey would probably be by road.
There was a tram from outside our hotel directly to the station so that part of the journey was simple enough. We surveyed our takeaway food options. Sofia had not been a gourmet experience until then and the station offered nothing to change our opinion. The least worst option seemed to be large slices of pizza and a giant bottle of beer. To kill time we opted for a coffee from the tobacco-and-spirits shop that boasted a few tables and chairs. Not only was it the cheapest coffee in Europe at about 60 cents for the cup, it was the best coffee we'd encountered since leaving Germany.
The effect of this cheering jolt of caffeine was to make me study the shelves of spirits. None of the labels was familiar, and, since we were in Bulgaria, they were mostly in cyrillic script. I selected a green bottle with a friendly-looking label. "Schnapps", explained the tobacconist-cum-barrista lady. The 200ml bottle set us back $3.50.
The electronic departure board signalled that we would be departing from platform 12Ѝ. Now Sofia station boasts the worst signage in Europe. We found platform 12 without difficulty, but there were two trains sitting there. Which portion was platform 12Ѝ? There was no hint. So I walked along the nearer train looking for a coach with the right number on it (we had reserved seats, remember). The first several were unlabelled. Then a conductor appeared on the platform. "Istanbul?" I asked in my best Bulgarian. She pointed to the coach immediately behind the locomotive. "This coach. Only one through coach." So the famous Orient Express is reduced to a single, ageing 2nd class coach behind a workaday electric loco.
At least we departed on time. And then stopped at every village along the line. The first call was still within Sofia, where a band of young men, apparently going home from work, boarded. There was plenty of room in the coach as we trundled through the Bulgarian countryside. The young men chattered and we ate our pizza. The cardboard and paper wrapping was a surprisingly efficient insulator so it wasn't completely cold, nor was the beer completely warmed. We sipped at our ridiculously cheap schnapps. It was OK.
Dusk turned to night. A conductor walked down the coach. "In 45 minutes, off train onto autobus. In Plovdiv." His English wasn't up to explaining why we were being transferred to a bus, but the message was clear enough. Plovdiv is Bulgaria's 2nd largest city and, Wikipedia tells us, is an important economic, transport, cultural, and educational centre. We saw nothing of importance as we carried our luggage across the tracks and waited at the kerbside. Our Orient Express experience was over.
The bus quickly left the city and settled onto a motorway. This, I thought, may save us some time. It is actually quicker (and cheaper) to travel from Sofia to Istanbul by bus, but they don't have on-board toilets, which is an important consideration for the mature traveller. More fool me. It seemed hardly any time before the bus had to turn off the motorway to call at the next train station. And on we went through the night. I got the strongest impression that we called at one station twice. Maybe the driver missed one and had to double back. And towards 2am, as promised, we arrived at the border with Turkey.
If I'd thought much about it I would have guessed that the border would be a single, half-asleep customs officer stamping passports like an automaton. In fact there were thousands of people lining up to enter Turkey. Trucks have their own lane. I swear they were backed up for two kilometres. Buses and cars at least got within sight of the border control buildings before they had to queue.
Leaving a country is normally the briefest of formalities, but the Bulgarians took aside one lady. She was part of what we took for a family group. The husband was, I think, Canadian. The wife was notable for wearing a formal evening gown for an overnight journey on public transport. What was the matter? Why should she not be allowed to leave Bulgaria? Whatever the problem was, it got sorted out and the whole party re-boarded the bus to advance to the Turkish side.
Nearly everyone needs a visa for Turkey. It's a nice little money-spinner for the government, with a computer somewhere in Ankara collecting fees and despatching e-visas in pdf format while the traveller enters all the information. New Zealanders are among the chosen few who need no visa, but Eve was travelling on a UK passport. It had taken ages, using a tablet computer, to enter the information, correct the spelling errors introduced by predictive text and double-check that everything was perfect. In the morning I had opened the e-visa so it would be ready to show at the border and found Eve's name was misspelled, despite all our care. I thought it likely that money would change hands at the border to remedy the defect, but I confess that I did worry a little about what would happen if we were refused entry. My disquiet was unnecessary. We were simply handed back our passports with new stamps in them. The problems were for the five travellers with no visa at all. This must be a common problem, because the bus driver collected the visa-less five and confidently marched them off to where visas are dispensed.
All this took time and it was well after 3am when the bus moved on with its cargo of sleep-deprived travellers. In Turkey the first thing it did was to force a way through the line of cars headed in the opposite direction into the grounds of a hotel. Then we threaded our way through lanes of parked trucks, whose drivers were presumably asleep in their cabs. Beyond this was - a railway station! And parked beside it was a Turkish bus. So once again we hauled our bags into a new vehicle.
Eve and I both thought that we would get no proper sleep that night, but the Turkish bus must have been more comfortable because we both managed a couple of hours or so. As far as we know, this bus did not leave the main road. Certainly it made good time into Istanbul. We were deposited at the terminus at about 6:45am.
I wonder if anyone has ever surveyed the accessibility of taxis by time and place. If they have, I should imagine that going on 7am outside a boarded up, defunct railway station would rank pretty low down the list. But Istanbul is awash with taxis and there were actually two of them sitting on the rank waiting. We showed one of them the printed name and address of our hotel and off we went.
There was a slight glitch with the GPS navigation system in the cab (I later found the same imaginary street on our electronic map), but we were delivered to Mint Residence at about 7:15. This has to be one of the nicest hotels on the planet. The porter hurried out to claim our bags, confirmed our booking, gave us the WiFi password and made us a cup of coffee, all the while apologising for his poor English. When the receptionist came on duty he checked us in and, since the room was vacant, invited us to occupy it straight away, making this the earliest of early check-ins. We asked if we could buy a breakfast and were told to help ourselves from the buffet. The offer of payment was refused.
The reality in 2015 is a far cry from that romantic picture.
We could not make reservations over the Internet, so we presented ourselves at Sofia station, where a pleasant woman speaking good English explained that the choice of sleeping accommodation was simple. There were no berths of any class. We would have to sit up all night. Well, we'd managed that from Budapest to Sigisoara and it hadn't killed us. We could cope. "And" she added, "there is no restaurant car. You will have to take your own food." Blast!
"The train goes as far as the Turkish border, arriving at about 2am. You will go by bus from there." This last factoid wasn't a surprise because earlier Internet researches had revealed that the Turks have been doing major work on the tracks and we knew that the final part of the journey would probably be by road.
There was a tram from outside our hotel directly to the station so that part of the journey was simple enough. We surveyed our takeaway food options. Sofia had not been a gourmet experience until then and the station offered nothing to change our opinion. The least worst option seemed to be large slices of pizza and a giant bottle of beer. To kill time we opted for a coffee from the tobacco-and-spirits shop that boasted a few tables and chairs. Not only was it the cheapest coffee in Europe at about 60 cents for the cup, it was the best coffee we'd encountered since leaving Germany.
The effect of this cheering jolt of caffeine was to make me study the shelves of spirits. None of the labels was familiar, and, since we were in Bulgaria, they were mostly in cyrillic script. I selected a green bottle with a friendly-looking label. "Schnapps", explained the tobacconist-cum-barrista lady. The 200ml bottle set us back $3.50.
The electronic departure board signalled that we would be departing from platform 12Ѝ. Now Sofia station boasts the worst signage in Europe. We found platform 12 without difficulty, but there were two trains sitting there. Which portion was platform 12Ѝ? There was no hint. So I walked along the nearer train looking for a coach with the right number on it (we had reserved seats, remember). The first several were unlabelled. Then a conductor appeared on the platform. "Istanbul?" I asked in my best Bulgarian. She pointed to the coach immediately behind the locomotive. "This coach. Only one through coach." So the famous Orient Express is reduced to a single, ageing 2nd class coach behind a workaday electric loco.
At least we departed on time. And then stopped at every village along the line. The first call was still within Sofia, where a band of young men, apparently going home from work, boarded. There was plenty of room in the coach as we trundled through the Bulgarian countryside. The young men chattered and we ate our pizza. The cardboard and paper wrapping was a surprisingly efficient insulator so it wasn't completely cold, nor was the beer completely warmed. We sipped at our ridiculously cheap schnapps. It was OK.
Dusk turned to night. A conductor walked down the coach. "In 45 minutes, off train onto autobus. In Plovdiv." His English wasn't up to explaining why we were being transferred to a bus, but the message was clear enough. Plovdiv is Bulgaria's 2nd largest city and, Wikipedia tells us, is an important economic, transport, cultural, and educational centre. We saw nothing of importance as we carried our luggage across the tracks and waited at the kerbside. Our Orient Express experience was over.
The bus quickly left the city and settled onto a motorway. This, I thought, may save us some time. It is actually quicker (and cheaper) to travel from Sofia to Istanbul by bus, but they don't have on-board toilets, which is an important consideration for the mature traveller. More fool me. It seemed hardly any time before the bus had to turn off the motorway to call at the next train station. And on we went through the night. I got the strongest impression that we called at one station twice. Maybe the driver missed one and had to double back. And towards 2am, as promised, we arrived at the border with Turkey.
If I'd thought much about it I would have guessed that the border would be a single, half-asleep customs officer stamping passports like an automaton. In fact there were thousands of people lining up to enter Turkey. Trucks have their own lane. I swear they were backed up for two kilometres. Buses and cars at least got within sight of the border control buildings before they had to queue.
Leaving a country is normally the briefest of formalities, but the Bulgarians took aside one lady. She was part of what we took for a family group. The husband was, I think, Canadian. The wife was notable for wearing a formal evening gown for an overnight journey on public transport. What was the matter? Why should she not be allowed to leave Bulgaria? Whatever the problem was, it got sorted out and the whole party re-boarded the bus to advance to the Turkish side.
Nearly everyone needs a visa for Turkey. It's a nice little money-spinner for the government, with a computer somewhere in Ankara collecting fees and despatching e-visas in pdf format while the traveller enters all the information. New Zealanders are among the chosen few who need no visa, but Eve was travelling on a UK passport. It had taken ages, using a tablet computer, to enter the information, correct the spelling errors introduced by predictive text and double-check that everything was perfect. In the morning I had opened the e-visa so it would be ready to show at the border and found Eve's name was misspelled, despite all our care. I thought it likely that money would change hands at the border to remedy the defect, but I confess that I did worry a little about what would happen if we were refused entry. My disquiet was unnecessary. We were simply handed back our passports with new stamps in them. The problems were for the five travellers with no visa at all. This must be a common problem, because the bus driver collected the visa-less five and confidently marched them off to where visas are dispensed.
All this took time and it was well after 3am when the bus moved on with its cargo of sleep-deprived travellers. In Turkey the first thing it did was to force a way through the line of cars headed in the opposite direction into the grounds of a hotel. Then we threaded our way through lanes of parked trucks, whose drivers were presumably asleep in their cabs. Beyond this was - a railway station! And parked beside it was a Turkish bus. So once again we hauled our bags into a new vehicle.
Eve and I both thought that we would get no proper sleep that night, but the Turkish bus must have been more comfortable because we both managed a couple of hours or so. As far as we know, this bus did not leave the main road. Certainly it made good time into Istanbul. We were deposited at the terminus at about 6:45am.
I wonder if anyone has ever surveyed the accessibility of taxis by time and place. If they have, I should imagine that going on 7am outside a boarded up, defunct railway station would rank pretty low down the list. But Istanbul is awash with taxis and there were actually two of them sitting on the rank waiting. We showed one of them the printed name and address of our hotel and off we went.
There was a slight glitch with the GPS navigation system in the cab (I later found the same imaginary street on our electronic map), but we were delivered to Mint Residence at about 7:15. This has to be one of the nicest hotels on the planet. The porter hurried out to claim our bags, confirmed our booking, gave us the WiFi password and made us a cup of coffee, all the while apologising for his poor English. When the receptionist came on duty he checked us in and, since the room was vacant, invited us to occupy it straight away, making this the earliest of early check-ins. We asked if we could buy a breakfast and were told to help ourselves from the buffet. The offer of payment was refused.
No comments:
Post a Comment