They are 85 lucky and wealthy travelers to have embarked in Paris on August 26 for a journey that took them to Bakirköy station in Istanbul, reports the online media Newspaper Wall. After five days of travel through France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, the train reached its terminus where it was greeted with great noises by the sound of mehterthe traditional Ottoman military band.
Like the novelist Agatha Christie, or the spies Mata Hari or Lawrence of Arabia, many travelers took the mythical train from 1883 until 1977. Nowadays, it is a new luxury train, the “Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express”, launched in 1982 with refurbished period carriages, which provides a Calais-Paris-Venice route in normal times and Paris-Istanbul once a year.
“The trip was wonderful, the meal, the service everything was perfect, it was great to discover all these countries on board the train”, enthused a Mexican traveler. The Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express prides itself on maintaining the luxury of the original train, known for its lavish art deco interiors and quality food. An ultra-luxurious service since it takes at least 15,000 euros to be able to embark on this annual trip.
A new train planned for 2025
It has been three years since the train’s most famous route was interrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like a reminiscence of the cholera epidemic of 1892 during which the Orient-Express was blocked at the Turkish border and its passengers placed in quarantine. Only the diplomatic courier, whose envelopes had been disinfected, had been authorized to continue on their way.
Taken by storm in 1891 near Çerkezköy in Turkey by looters who kidnapped five German travelers before releasing them for ransom, the train will also be blocked in the same region for six days in the blizzard in 1929 and its passengers forced to eat wolf hunted by one of them. A meteorological episode that will inspire the novelist Agatha Christie, who was traveling on the train the previous year, for her famous Murder on the Orient Express.
A sign that the Orient-Express has not finished exciting the imagination, a new luxury train, the “Nostalgia-Istanbul-Orient-Express”, which will have 13 refitted original train cars, should criss-cross the Europe from 2025.