Istanbul to Romania on the historic Danube Express rail line
Photo Credit: Interior of the Danube Express train. Flickr / Simon Pielow
Skift Take
A little taste of old Europe is never a bad thing, but you'll need to be almost as rich as a count to afford it.
It’s somewhere towards midnight, and I am hanging out of a train window, breathing in the sweet night air. The night is pitch-black and silent apart from the occasional oily creak as the wheels spark against the rails below. Beyond, out in the darkness, lies Romania, wild and unknown. Ahead lies Bulgaria; behind us the vast expanses of the Hungarian plain. We glide slowly through a village and I wave at two men sitting by an outdoor fire, bottles of beer glinting in the light from the flames. They stare at the train for a moment and then I am gone, carried along into the night as the coaches snake past the quiet streets.
There is something inescapably romantic about rail travel. Not the crammed-in-a-carriage commuter kind, but the sort of journey where one embarks in a glamorous European city, wearing Chanel and exchanging witty banter with a suave chap who later buys you a martini in the restaurant car, while the ivories are gently tinkled. Think Daniel Craig and Eva Green in
