Murmur on the Orient Express

September 2017, Orient Express, Venice, Verona, Vienna
  

It was two o’clock on a 21st century autumn’s day. After departing from London on the Belmond British Pullman luxury train, followed by the English Channel crossing on the ultra-modern mechanical conveyances of the “Chunnel,” we were in Calais, France.
What now stood before us was an apparition from a distant past – the elegantly restored and grandly appointed Orient Express. Its devotees call it the “King of Trains.” Each coach a gleaming royal blue and gold jewel, it consisted of kitchen and dining cars, bar cars and sleeping cars, and others whose purposes are shrouded in mystery.
As Dottie and I handed our carry-on luggage to the uniformed porter and crossed the gap onto the narrow steps leading up to our coach, we were engulfed by a cloud belched forth from a steam engine.
“That’s odd,” I thought. “The locomotive is a diesel.”
There was a slight buzzing in our ears for a few seconds, then the cloud cleared and we found ourselves walking through an elegantly-appointed, polished-mahogany paneled parlor, highlighted by cut glass art, tapestry and plush Victorian furniture. Smartly dressed passengers were scattered throughout, some in pairs sipping tea and chatting quietly, while others sat singly reading the Times.
One of the men, a strange looking fellow with black, well-oiled hair and a tightly waxed handlebar mustache, looked up, eyeing me suspiciously.
As Dottie continued to follow our porter toward our cabin, I felt a small hand grasp my left arm. It was attached to the slender bare limb of a beautiful woman with long red hair and deep blue eyes looking pleadingly into mine.
“You must help us, sir. My friend and I are in great danger,” she whispered in a sexy but desperate voice at least an octave below most women’s usual range.
Startled, I stumbled over the chair in front of me and felt her hand fall from my arm.
I turned back and she was gone.
“Had she ever really been there?” I wondered.
Behind me, the guy with the slick hair and mustache, mumbled, “It is possible that the impossible could not have happened, yet the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
“Huh?”
I dropped out of character to get my bearings and remind myself that try as I might, I’m not in the middle of a story by Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming or Alfred Hitchcock. I’m just a passenger on the 21st century version of the Orient Express.
Its roots date back to its first journey from the west to the outposts of the east in 1893. During those early days through the golden age of rail travel in the 1920s, the Orient Express was the world’s most elegant model of gracious travel, living and cuisine – complete with oysters, champagne and boudoirs fit for royalty. It captured the imagination of story-tellers starting as far back as 1927.
The fortunes of the original Orient Express rose and fell, then rose again through two world wars, the Great Depression and other challenges before finally starting a long decline in the 1960s, which led to its final demise in 1977.
Then the last of its elegant sleeping, parlor and dining coaches were auctioned off to collectors.
In 1982, the Venice-Simpson Orient Express was re-established as a private venture with beautifully restored carriages from the 1920s and ’30s.
Today it continues to attract train buffs and nostalgia addicts, prompting us to dress up and pretend we’re in a different century on a mysterious journey with Hercule Poirot, Mary Hermione Debenham, Colonel Arbuthnot, Princess Natalia Dragomiroff and company.
So here we are, tucked into a lovingly-appointed anachronism, dressing for dinner one at a time because our authentically decorated, but tiny, stateroom limits movement.
The wheels quietly rumble below the floor and the carriage sways as we roll toward the Alps.
I wonder if the beautiful Countess Andrenyl, with her long dark hair, captivating eyes, scarlet lips and long lashes, will be at our table.
Of course she will. She’s standing at our tiny little washbasin mirror brushing her hair as I lounge next to her typing the last sentence of this chapter.
“You look positively smashing, my dear.”

 Part II  
The Orient Express, this elegant rolling anachronism, simply cannot be enjoyed to its fullest without transporting oneself from present reality into a romanticized, cinematic, but not necessarily realistic, version of the past.
While it was the most preferred choice for travel in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it is no longer. Airplanes and modern high-speed trains get you there faster and a lot cheaper.
Passengers on the early Orient Express donned their best apparel for their journey while today’s travelers on fast modern conveyances dress for comfort.
Therefore, when boarding the 21st-century version, a mindful shift in attitude is required. Time must slow down, better yet, the clock must be turned back, disbelief suspended, and imagination tuned to the twilight zone. We are, for the next 36 hours or so, acting in a fantasy of our own making.
Our destination is Venice, but for now, we are in a moment from a time long ago.
I lounged on the lower bunk, while the countess finished brushing her hair. When she was finally ready, I stood up and slipped on my tux jacket. She straightened my tie.
“After you, my dear,” I said, allowing her to squeeze by me to exit our cabin. Although the tiny mirror over the equally tiny cabin sink didn’t offer much of a view, I thought we looked pretty spiffy as we strolled toward the Orient Express bar car for a before-dinner cocktail.
The train, restored to its early 20th-century elegance, is like a palace on wheels, all polished brass and chrome, etched glass, gleaming marquetry and plush fabrics.
The bar car was crowded with women in cocktail dresses and men in black tie. We found some standing space just in front of the grand piano.
There was a guy in a white dinner jacket telling the piano player, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…”
“Excuse me sir,” I said. “I think you’re in the wrong movie.”
The man ignored me, and the woman with him turned to the pianist and said “Play it again for me, Sam.”
The piano player’s name tag read “Siegfried.”
Giving up, I ordered a martini, “Shaken, not stirred.”
We can be whoever we want to be, whenever we want to be, for this evening.
Later that evening, as the Orient Express shook and stirred us in our bunks on creaking vintage train shock absorbers, I dreamed I was back in the Navy, but Sean Connery was our captain and we were riding out a storm on the South China Sea.
It wasn’t the most restful night’s sleep I’ve ever had, but as the morning sun’s first rays hit our cabin, we were greeted by the magnificent view of the Alps rising steeply on both sides of us. Then our cabin steward brought us steaming coffee and fresh croissants on a silver tray and we sipped and munched our way as the trained wound its way along a very trouty-looking, glacier fed river that tumbled down the steep pass toward which we were climbing.
“I bet there are some nice trout in that river,” I said to the countess.
“Hmn,” she responded, her thoughts clearly not connected to my fantasy at all.
And so we rolled along, in and out of our dreams, breaking only for an elegantly presented lunch in the “Etoile Nord,” one of the coaches of the early 1920s brought back from the previous century

Part III - Sinking in

Alas, the spell was broken in late afternoon when we pulled into Santa Lucia train station in Venice and saw the crowd of 21st century tourists wheeling their bags toward a fleet of diesel spewing water taxis.
It is very hard to imagine yesteryear in today’s Venice.  It is proof that people can love something so much they squeeze it nearly to death. Unless you enjoy shuffling back-to-back, belly-to-belly with mobs of strangers, there are places in this most romanticized, ancient Italian city that you simply should not venture into. Unfortunately, some, like Santa Lucia train station, are unavoidable.
Our adventure on the Orient Express brought on us here, but upon our decent from 19th Century fantasy to early 21st Century reality we felt like we’d been dumped in the middle of a forced evacuation zone.
The once scenic Grand Canal was so thick with diesel-fume-spewing water taxis and ferries that an agile rock hopper could cross to the other side by jumping from boat to boat.
Confused and frantic new arrivals wheeling bags across the cobblestones dodged grim-faced soon-to-be ex-visitors departing through the same portals.  If you could read their minds, the common thought would be ‘Get me out of here!”
This was not the Venice I remembered from our last visit 20 years ago. 
Then, I was in awe of the grand palazzos, their lowest floors stained by lapping water,  and rising elegantly on both sides of the canal, knowing most were centuries old.  There was water taxis then too, just not so many.  The pace was slower, the people more serene. I could hear music.
So this time, like everybody else, Dottie and I escaped the chaos of Santa Lucia Station as quickly as possible on one of those water taxis. Fortunately, our destination was the Palazzo Abadessa, a former 16th Century abbey and sanctuary for orphans, restored now as a museum-like boutique hotel, well away from the noise and crowds of the Grand Canal.
And that’s the thing about Venice.  You can find the quiet side canals, narrow streets, and the small hotels and out of the way restaurants that still make it the city that has beguiled visitors for centuries.
Our room had 20-foot frescoed ceilings.  The walls and floors, marked by time, accented by paintings, ancient rugs and decorated with antiques, held tales of mystery and romance. Nights were so quiet and the air so fresh we slept with the large windows wide open.
Excursions would often find us temporarily lost, but we’d eventually find our way through narrow back alley’s, across old stone bridges to restaurants recommended for their crowd-free location and excellent cuisine.
Only once did we venture toward Piazza San Marco so that Dottie could return to a table linen store she’d visited long ago.  Huge gaggles of tourists from scores of cruise ships moved shoulder-to-shoulder in every direction following their designated flag bearers.  All we could do was press ourselves into doorways until they passed then scurry ahead until the next gaggle appeared.
Dottie found the store, but it took several stops at other shops around San Marco before she found the exact tablecloth she sought.  Then, as quickly as possible, we escaped through side streets to the serenity of our hotel’s neighborhood.
Nighttime in Venice is not nearly as bad.  At least half of the cruise ship folks are back on board and you can actually move around without being jostled.
Venetian guide Alessandro Schezzini, an effusive advocate for the local vino sfuso, led us on a delightful twilight tour of small, out-of-the way bars. We also took in a concert performance of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” in an ancient palazzo alongside the Grand Canal.
Our next stop was Verona.

Part III - Spectacle in an ancient arena

Two rivers run through or around Verona, an hour’s train ride west of Venice.  It would be just another lovely, formerly Roman village in Northern Italy were not for William Shakespeare.
The rivers have trout in them, but they were very high and cloudy when Dottie and I arrived. Any thoughts I had of fishing were blown out.
But Shakespeare didn’t write about the rivers or fishing. Instead, he took an old Italian tale about star-crossed lovers from two opposing families in Verona and wrote his most famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliette.
The characters were fictional, possibly based on the internal politics of medieval Italy during the 12th and 13th Centuries. Within the city-states, locals had to chose to support the Pope (the Guelphs) or the Holy Roman Emperor (Ghibellines). Feuds between the two groups were fierce and bloody. 
Verona has been cashing in on Will’s play ever since.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors are drawn to Verona every year believing Romeo and Juliet were real people. 
Dottie and I visited what was touted as Juliet’s home. This fictional house of a fictional character was a multinational mob scene. A young woman on a balcony yelled out for Romeo but was drowned out by the din made as hundreds of tourists jammed into the small patio. The romance was lost on us.
But Verona has a lot more to offer.
It is also the site of many well-preserved remnants of the Roman Empire, including a coliseum built in AD 30 that is said to be the model for the one built in Rome years later. In its gladiatorial days, it could accommodate 30,000 bloodthirsty fans. 
It is still used today, but for safety reasons, gladiators are banned and the maximum crowd allowed is 15,000. Instead of battles to the death, the entertainment includes a world-renowned summer opera series and popular concerts in between.
We managed to reserve tickets for a Friday evening concert by the “Father of the Italian Blues,” Adlemo Fornaciari, more commonly known as Zucchero (Sugar). His four-night series in the ancient coliseum was sold out.
Not knowing anything about him or his music but wanting to experience a concert in the ancient Roman arena, I purchased for Dottie and I and our Sonoma friends, Fred and Pam Gilberd (through Stub Hub), four of the cheapest tickets in the nosebleed section high up in the coliseum. We assumed that we would stay only as long as our eardrums could stand it.
While we were in transit from the USA to Italy, I got an email from Stub Hub offering to upgrade our tickets at no additional cost. I accepted the offer and was told to meet a guy named Max at a bar near the arena two hours before the show. 
The dingy little hole in the wall where I met Max had a sinister feel but the transaction went smoothly and we got our upgraded tickets.
Joining the thousands of fans entering through ancient gates, we expected to be directed to some spot midway up in the steep seats above us. Instead we were directed down and forward toward the stage.
Much to our amazement, our upgraded seats were in the front row.
The Italian guy seated next to Dottie wanted to know how we got such fantastic seats.
“We’re friends of Max,” I told him.  He blinked. Said, “O.K.”  No further explanation necessary.
It has been decades since any of us had been to a rock concert, let alone one in an ancient Roman ruin.
It was a 21st Century spectacle in a 1st Century setting. All across a huge stage that could accommodate all the bands in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, were banks of huge speakers, giant video screens, spotlights, klieg lights and whirling, flashing gizmos of every color.
When Zucchero finally came on stage the crowd went crazy, but what was even crazier and totally surprising was he was good.  In fact, he was great.  His music, clearly inspired by gospel, soul, blues, and rock with some heavy Latin influence, was more like something you’d hear in New Orleans.
We stayed for the whole show and the several encores.

Dottie spent the last five days of our trip alongside the Danube, in which live more than 100 species of fish, but for which almost nobody fishes.
In fact, I had a very difficult time finding out if there was any place to fish nearby.    Laws regulating fishing in Austria appear to be very strict and individually administered region by region.  Access to fishable water also seems to be limited; so much so, that I gave up trying and concentrated instead on the best that Vienna has to offer – great food and wonderful music.
Vienna is said to be the birthplace of classical music. It was home to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss and so many more. No day goes by without their music played live somewhere in the city
We also enjoyed an Italian opera, Puccini’s “La Bohéme,” at Vienna’s magnificent state opera house.
The highlight of our experience though was a concert at the Musikverein, Vienna’s gilded concert hall, where Vienna’s Mozart Orchestra took us back to the 18th Century with a delightful program that one could call the “greatest hits” of Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss. 
We followed that concert up with a half-day-long self-guided tour of the Haus der Musik, a high-tech museum featuring all of Vienna’s greatest composers.  We could have spent another full day there just listening to their music.
Vienna is a pretty compact city, but getting around was made even easier by its extensive and pedestrian-friendly public transit system that includes trolleys, a subway and buses.  They operate on an honor system that assumes riders will purchase the inexpensive passes sold everywhere.
Vienna is a city we want to re-visit, perhaps next time I will be able to go fishing.