The 18:37 train from Paris was clearly not what the trainspotters at Chaumont were expecting. At the approach of the Golden Eagle’s Danube Express, they turned like a brace of ducks, and began snapping away at the handsome blue wagon-lits. Spotting me at the open window of a carriage, one lowered her camera and shouted out “Où vas-tu?” ("Where are you going?"). I poked my head out the window, into the soft, whispering rain, and replied that we were bound for Istanbul. A look of bemusement flashed on her face as she said the words “L’Orient…” before the train’s whistle and iron squeal overtook her words. And then we were away, leaving them in the rain.
I understood her reaction; I was pleased as hell to be making tracks on this storied route – only don’t speak the namesake of Agatha Christie’s famed novel, an ever-popular craze which is now improbably focused on Italy, yachts, and stationary hotels.
The voyage between France and Turkey is one as strange as fiction. The great European odyssey connects one antipode of romantic mystique to another: the clotted Seine to the frenzied Bosphorus, the boxy Notre Dame to the curvaceous Blue Mosque, croissant to ay çöreği.
There were thirty-five of us passengers making this inaugural week-long journey with Golden Eagle. It was a good, companionable crowd who found their way through conversation: everything from politics, travel, grandchildren, and the proper way to prepare an omelette were urgently discussed. They exchanged indulgent smiles, played cards, and sang with Gábor Viczián, the train’s resident musician, who performed on piano and saxophone in the bar car each night. I found much to admire in their keenness for travel, their appetite for information, and, often, their unashamed brashness.
I cherish the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Hargrave, from South Carolina, dancing to Gábor’s pinwheeling Hungarian czárdás. And the scene of Mrs. Helen Bernard, a German whose spry wit belied her nearly 90 years, ordering Champagne as we chuntered through Austria’s Semmering Pass.
It took a day to leave France (stopping to visit a Champagne house in Epernay slowed our progress), and another to reach Vienna in time for supper at the Burgtheater. Our first morning aboard, I awoke to a green Austrian valley between two pine-covered hills. Morning fog was clotted between the trees. The last of the Alps, dusted with snow, were behind us, and the maypoles were out. How lovely the morning spring light was, seamless and soft.
We spent the entire day on the train, an anomaly on a journey that otherwise made a daily stop to indulge in a tour custom-fit to our rail schedule. Nothing was compulsory – some passengers remained on the train to drink or sleep, others went off on their own – but the excursions were varied and informative: a dessert masterclass with Rebeka Krupa, the on-board pastry chef; an orchestral performance in Vienna; a guided visit to Postojna Cave in Slovenia.
There was a cadence to the train’s movement that shook something loose within us all. There were moments when I felt we were engaging in a different way of being alive. I lost sense of my life beyond my little compartment, the bar car, and lunches of roasted quail and salmon. I daydreamed of staying aboard, travelling onward through Turkey, and beyond to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, India… (I had fallen asleep with the Golden Eagle brochure folded over my chest). It felt possible to become a part of all that lay beyond the window and within it, drifting and dissolving in the warm light that filled my cabin each morning.
The train afforded us time for such indulgent thoughts. There were no latecomers, no one rushing to disembark, no connections to make. All we had to do was sit back and enjoy things, listen to each other, and make it to the dining car in time for supper. When we wanted privacy or quiet, we had our compartments, which were brassy, en-suite, and spacious, with reading lights, ample storage, and comfortable beds (two singles in the deluxe cabins, one king-size in the superior deluxe) perfectly made for holing away, reading or sleeping.
The next day, in the bar car, Mr. Hargrave sat looking out over a passing village. It was a muddle of mud-red houses, broken roofs, mule wagons, and hayricks. “Looks rough,” he said, adding, at the sight of the proliferation of backyard corn and cabbages, “They’re awfully good gardeners, though.” Mr. Breen, who came from Santa Barbara, turned in his seat and said, “I think we’ve seen more green on this trip than we do over a year in California.”
Even the cities were green. The Serbian capital of Belgrade was grassy, if a bit battered. Among our stops in that city, after the Michelin-starred Langouste restaurant, and the medieval fortress overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, was a beat-up railyard on the outskirts of the city. This is where, within a cavernous warehouse, the Blue Train, presidential carrier of erstwhile Yugoslav President Josip Broz, aka Tito, is kept. Preserved in its sagging, velveteen glory, as it was when Tito died in 1980, it was like a testament to the plush luxury we had on the Danube Express. A cadre of Serbian dancers, and a troupe of cosplaying Tito’s Pioneers, a kind of perky Yugoslav youth group in blue caps and red neckerchiefs, welcomed us, their right fist to the temple in the customary greeting. We were each given a dram of whisky — Chivas Regal’s 20-year-old was allegedly Tito’s preferred — in the conference car, and toasted to our trip.
The best moments in travel are never preordained; they emerge from a perfectly timed joke, a lifted eyebrow, a small gesture of kindness, the unexpected delight of a beautiful stranger. Looking back, the best trips are remembered like a series of perfect flukes. What is better than sharing those jokes, meeting that curious gaze, passing on that act of kindness, or staying up nights, drinking Champagne with a stranger, all while some alien landscape slips by the window? And where else but on a train is any of that so natural, let alone possible?
As we neared Istanbul, people scooted about exchanging small gifts and addresses, a way of stretching these last few moments together. Casting backward, we tried to relocate the details we would keep, and the feelings behind them. We all agreed that rainy day in Paris felt like a lifetime ago, that we had eaten too much, that we were due for a wake-up call of fluffing our own pillows and making our own coffee.
It was lovely to arrive at Sirkeci Railway Station, our last stop. We disembarked into the sparkling sunshine and the sounds of the Bosporus, honking boats and crying seagulls, and men screaming about stuffed mussels and simit bread. I tried to keep this new scene at bay a moment, to hold on a moment longer this week of music, laughter and joy.
Golden Eagle’s seven-day Paris to Istanbul seven-day journey starts from £14,295 per person. The next departure is September 11 – 18, 2025.