"The train of kings, the king of trains", the Orient Express, the first international luxury train, made its maiden voyage exactly 140 years ago on June 5, 1883.
At the beginning of the 1880s, high-speed trains between Paris and Vienna ran as far as Bucharest - via Budapest and Orsova - as a result, the idea arose in the Belgian banker Georges Nagelmackers that the International Railway and Sleeping Car Company (CIWL), which he founded, was for the aristocracy and adventurers of the time launch a luxury flight that meets all the needs of your financiers to the fabulous east, Istanbul.
During his travels in the United States, the Belgian businessman was impressed by the Pullmann sleeping cars with all the comforts, and he acquired similar dining and sleeping cars on a swivel frame made in the American model for his company.
The sides of the sumptuously designed, wooden-framed, wood-panelled carriages were decorated with the lion coat of arms of one of the main shareholders, the King of Belgium. One of the luxurious carriages used until the First World War can be seen today in the Budapest Railway History Park.
CIWL, whose name was added in 1884 with the term "Great European Express", invited its first guests on a trial Paris-Vienna round trip in October 1882. In addition to the luxurious accommodation, the passengers could also enjoy a gourmet menu.
The first Orient Express (the name was officially used only from 1891) left Paris on June 5, 1883 and, after traveling more than 2,500 kilometers, reached Gyurgyevo (Giurgiu) in Havasalföld two and a half days later. From here, the passengers crossed the Danube by boat to Ruse in Bulgaria, from where they took another seven-hour train ride to Varna, the journey ended in Istanbul after a 15-hour sea voyage. Including the boat trip, it took 83 and a half hours (three and a half days) to cover 3,186 kilometers, the train traveled 689 kilometers on the Hungarian section.
Only first-class tickets could be exchanged for the train, so adventurous, rich passengers had to pay a 20 percent surcharge on the 457 gold franc fare. The first trains consisted of two luggage cars, two six-compartment, 14-passenger sleeping cars in the middle and a 24-passenger dining car with a kitchen. Teawood was used for the wooden frame interior until the First World War, the furnishings consisted of monogrammed leather sets and richly decorated shiny copper objects. The carriages had simple steam heating, the nets were initially lit by candles, which were later replaced by gas lighting.
Traveling with the Orient was not only difficult because of the transfer, sometimes the train was delayed by Danube floods, landslides and snow obstacles. In 1891, robbers once attacked the luxury train and only released their prisoners in exchange for a ransom.
In the first five years of the express train, it ran on the Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Munich-Vienna-Budapest-Temesvár-Orsova-Bucharest-Varna route. By 1884, the Budapest-Zimony-Belgrade railway section was completed, and by 1888, the Belgrade-Nis-Szófia railway section. The first direct, non-stop flight arrived in Istanbul on August 11, 1888, the journey time was reduced to 67 hours and 35 minutes.
The express enjoyed its heyday until the First World War, rulers and politicians also used the magnificently equipped cars, such as the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand, the Montenegrin heir to the throne Daniló and Maharaja Ranai with all his wives.
After the First World War, there were already three Orient Expresses running: in addition to the traditional route, the Simplon Orient traveled from Paris through the Alps via Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Belgrade and Sofia to the Turkish capital, the Arlberg Orient, which started in 1930, had two final stops in London and Athens was, the train touched Paris, Zurich, Innsbruck, Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade.
The Orient Express lost its luxury character after the Second World War. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the communist countries also connected their own, second-class cars to the trains, whose routes became shorter and shorter. The train ran for the last time between Paris and Istanbul in 1977, by the end of the 1990s it went to Bucharest, then only to Budapest, from 2001 to Vienna, and between 2007 and 2009 it only transported passengers between Strasbourg and Vienna.
Over the years, the name Orient Express was used by several operators and railway lines. On the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, which has been in operation since 1982, it is possible to travel from London to Venice in luxurious conditions. The flight will be modified from 2024 due to the UK's exit from the EU (Brexit), eliminating the British section. The Swiss Intraflug company started the Nostalgia Orient Express between Zurich and Istanbul with the original CIWL cars from 1976, which ran until 2007. In 2017, the hospitality industry giant Accor bought a fifty percent stake in the Orient Express brand from the French state railway (SNCF), and last year they announced that they would restart the service on the Paris-Istanbul route from 2025. From 2024, another service called Orient Express La Dolce Vita will be launched, which will operate on eight different routes to cities in Italy.
The luxury train has become part of popular culture. In Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, the vampire chasers from Transylvania to England travel with it, and in the James Bond film From Russia with Love, agent 007 escapes from Istanbul with it. The luxury train also captured the imagination of Agatha Christie, the queen of crime fiction traveled on the luxury train in 1929 and wrote her novel Murder on the Orient Express in an Istanbul hotel. The work, published in 1934, was made into a film in 1974 by Sidney Lumet and in 2017 by Kenneth Branagh, starring the biggest stars.
MTI
