I saw it, we were the most interesting people on the train.
Unfortunately, at 3:00 a.m., as I was finally starting to fall asleep, a non-English speaking conductor didn’t find us interesting at all.
What was supposed to be a simple ticket and passport check as we crossed into Germany almost had us thrown off the train. Our conductor was furious and wildly throwing his arms around, making it known this was not a compartment for us as he threw our baggage into the hallway. We finally understood; we were in a first-class compartment, and we most certainly were not first-class travelers. We followed him through numerous train cars until he finally stopped at one containing a young German who looked somewhat like a fellow traveler.
The remainder of the night went fast, with hardly any sleep. Early the next morning we entered the huge main train and switching stations in Munich, Germany. We had to exit the train with all our baggage for an eight-hour layover. After changing some money, we bought some food and walked around Munich for a while after we put our baggage in a rented locker.
Back at the station in one of its many cafes, having a regular beer in a glass that looked a foot tall, we met a student from Denmark. He was trying to decide whether to go back to the university or keep traveling. He’d been gone six or seven months. We were on our way to Istanbul; he had just been in Istanbul. His English was fair, sometimes hard to understand. But what caught our attention was his warning about traveling from Turkey east to India. India was great, he said, but watch out for Iraq and Iran; gun battles seem to spring up in every town. He also alerted us that because the conditions were so miserable in those desert countries, many of the gangsters were moving west to exactly where the Orient Express was headed next—Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.
We bought him another beer in hopes of finding out more about—I couldn’t believe I was saying this: “Gangsters!”
Before we could continue to give him the third degree, we heard an announcement over the public address system, luckily in English, that our train was going to be leaving shortly from track 27.
And again, we had no sooner picked what seemed to be a very nice and cozy compartment when a conductor was at our door asking to see our tickets, motioning us to follow him as he shook his head from side to side mumbling to himself in German. Many cars later, there was no doubt in my mind that not only were we leaving first-class accommodations, we were apparently not stopping in second class either. In each car, the compartments looked worse. Finally, he stopped and signaled us into a beat-up compartment already occupied by what appeared to be an elderly Yugoslavian couple with a ton of luggage.
Okay, I thought, we had gotten used to having the space to ourselves, but why not, this was more interesting. We could manage, we could do this, it was how the compartment was designed. Two people on one side, two on the other—but why did they have to have so much baggage?
As we got closer to the Yugoslavian border, the train started making many more stops. Doug and I scouted some other cars. Many of the compartments were filling up; some, it appeared, were too full. I started to wonder, could—and before I finished that thought, we turned the corner to our compartment. A new German guy was sitting on our side.
It was now kind of uncomfortable, but tomorrow morning we would be in Istanbul. We could manage this, even though now it had been thirty-something hours with very little sleep and sitting up the whole time. But in talking to the German guy, we discovered to our disbelief that no, not tomorrow morning, but not until sometime the day or night after tomorrow would we arrive in Istanbul. The feeling was indescribable. I laughed to keep from crying.
Another hour passed. The farm couple had opened some bags of food that seemed by their odor to be way past their expiration dates, assuming they even had such things in the small villages and towns where we stopped. By now, there was no room for many of the villagers, and they just dropped their bags in the corridor and sat next to or on them. Walking between compartments had become nearly impossible.
A hulking Turk suddenly barged into our compartment, very drunk and wanting to befriend anyone who would look his way. The German couldn’t take it anymore and fled.
Not long after the Turk also left, and we thought we had caught a break. But no. He came back with three of his friends, a teenage girl and two guys—and all had been drinking heavily.
Now we had eight instead of the recommended four people in our compartment. The girl sat across from us, and two of the more sinister-looking Turks bookended Doug and me, with the original Turk, Mehmet, sitting on a suitcase in front of the window.
“Swede…no, English,” remarked Mehmet as he cut pieces from a rotten-looking piece of fruit he had taken out of a bag. Was he cutting it with a knife? Nah, more a machete.
Confused, Doug and I looked at each other, and I answered, “No, American.”
“Oh, Americano,” Mehmet said with a sly smile. The two bookend Turks nudged us and nodded their heads and grinned.
“Tourists, how you say, para? Money? Tourists,” he said, rubbing two fingers together on the other hand not holding the very big knife. “Where you from?”
“Chicago and New York,” Doug whispered, hoping not to encourage this line of questioning.
Mehmet smiled. “Very much money. Tourists, I think.”
“No, no, we are just students—just poor students.”
The conversation continued, but I was starting to notice the young girl sitting directly across from me. Her body was swaying, and her hand frequently came up to rub her eyes or hold back belches, as if a hand could do that. She—we’ll call her Jane for lack of a better name—was starting to be in trouble. Her eyes were roaming, moving up in their sockets. She had been drinking, of course, but the odor wafting from our passengers and their food was enough to make anyone nauseous.
I thought, how can this be? This was not the prisoner train from Dr. Zhivago; this was the Orient Express! Where was Sean Connery; where was 007; where were the beautiful heroines or evil-but-gorgeous female foreign spies? This was the Orient Express; I should be having dinner in the club car, sipping expensive wine and listening to furtive whispered conversations at the other tables. And my dinner partner should be Greta or Ursula, not Mehmet.
And as I was starting to fantasize about Ursula—think Ursula Andress, the 1960s movie star—Mehmet changed places and sat beside me. He put his arm around my shoulder as he said, “You Americanos should come with us. We Gypsies. We take you for…I mean, we, bok”—that was clearly an expletive—“how you say… we show you a good time. No problem, we have money; you have money. How much money you have?”
At that moment, much to my relief, Jane jumped up, screamed three words in Turkish, and dove for the door, barely managing to slide it open before she heaved her guts into the hallway. The contents of her stomach landed between two huge Yugoslavian ladies, who seemed to not only not notice but not care. They continued arguing with anyone who would speak to them.
Somehow, one of the conductors cleaned up the mess. Before he could disappear, Doug and I begged him for relief, any relief. He motioned again with his fingers, as many Europeans seemed to do in our company, signaling, It’ll cost you, but get your bags and follow me. He took us to a sleeper with two English girls. Morning was almost upon us, and we were just falling asleep when a new conductor burst in asking for our passports and visas. The train was entering Communist Yugoslavia.
He stood in front of us, yelling and gesturing. “I know, I know,” I said. “No visas.” Having gained wisdom from recent experience, I thought it appropriate to hold out my hand and rub my thumb and forefinger together as I repeated the word “visa” in pigeon Yugoslavian. We walked into the hallway, the conductor negotiated payment with the border guard, and we were given two slips of paper with stamps on them—they looked official.
The conductor indicated we were lucky. We could have been taken off the train and even jailed: we were lucky to get that guard. As we were walking away, we heard the conductor talking to himself, “Bulgaria won’t be as easy, and I will not be here to help you; you’ll have another conductor.”