Orient Express - London to Istanbul

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Finally, I'm heading West and aboard the Orient Express - not the expensive American Tourist version, rather the cheap local version, no red velvet curtains, lino rather than carpet and a surprising lack of female travellers. I'm not sure why this is...?

Following a VERY full 5 days in London including ingesting amazing amounts of food and drink, catching up with as many people as possible (Helga only got 8 minutes between buses on Monday...sorry!), a fight with the bank who kindly informed me that they'd closed my Visa account rather than canceling my lost card, a 4 hour wait at the Chinese embassy to have it close when I was 10th in line, a Turkish bath experience to finally get rid of the Camino dirt and an amazing sun-drenched festival, I left myself about 1/2 an hour to actually pack and carried my bodyweight in luggage to the Eurostar and Paris!

Ah Paris. Unfortunately due to lack of foresight and much downloading of photos I managed to have zero camera battery for my 24 hour action packed adventure. It was sunny and even more beautiful than I had remembered, however there are no photos of me testing my remaining fitness by climbing the Eiffel Tower, climbing the Arc de Triumph and the Sacre Coeur. This is probably a good thing because it was a HOT day, and I was wearing jeans and a bright red face by the end of the afternoon when I got on the fast train to:

Cologne, Germany. Due to recent overexposure to German people and the German culture, I had planned an extensive 20 minutes to change trains. Which was luckily just enough time to indulge in a speedy Bratwurst, as German trains are never delayed!
Except my train.
So I had an extra hour to glance at the Cathedral, convieniently located just outside the station, check out the Euro 2008 game and have another Bratwurst ( I did look for other food, but the first one was so good!)
Eventually my train turned up I spent the evening curled up on my comfortable couchette, listening to the couple below me tearing their bags apart looking for a lost Eurail pass and watching the Danube glide by. I headed down to Vienna and because I'm picky about my European cities and don't like Vienna much I went straight across to:

Bratislava! Yes, it is a real city - and a beatiful one. Full of random art and a UFO bridge. I would recommend it over Vienna. They don't make life deliberately difficult for you, and the people are very friendly and chilled out.

Because the information people in Vienna told me that I had to - I headed back there to get my train to Belgrade. They had also kindly sold me a reservation for a seat in a carriage that didn't exist (I'm sure that I'm doing Vienna and its inhabitants an injustice but seriously).
About an hour after departing, the train went through...Bratislava again. YAY! Then through to Budapest and on to Serbia.
When I was travelling in 1995 I remember my passport being taken from me at the Hungarian border by armed (machine-gun) guards and kept for about 3 hours while I sweated and hoped that they weren't going to kick me off the train or arrest me. They didn't even ask for my passport at all in Hungary this time, and when we had the passport check going into Serbia they handed us a leaflet in English telling us how to make a complaint against the police if we felt that we'd been mistreated.

I was slightly apprehensive getting into Belgrade after dark, since the directions to the Hostel I had chosen included 'turn left at the second street where you will see two bombed out buildings', but it seemed better than staying in the boarded up building that the English couple I'd met on the train were staying at (I don't care if it was only 5 Euros, I'm not on that much of a budget). However, Belgrade has proved to be the highlight of this section of my trip. The people are friendly, there aren't very many tourists and it is very pretty. I've been hanging out here for 3 days, having a great time finding lavish and cheap restaurants to frequent and buying lots of fruit. I am also taking full advantage of the cheapness of the Eastern European rail system by getting a sleeper to Sofia tonight! Then on to Istanbul...

Cheers

Katie

PS: If you want a postcard, email your address (or message it through this site to me). Cheers!

Camino photos here by the way - I ran out of time to upload them to this site. 😊
www.flickr.com/ktps
Warning - apparently the 'toe' photo kinda creeps up on you.

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Comments

[Mother]

are you remembering to clean your teeth and go to the toilet before you go to bed? Luv, Mum XX