5th of January

2002

Sent a brochure for Venice, as we regularly are, in which the Orient Express figures prominently,

emphasising the luxury side of the journey and its huge cost.

What it isn't anymore is an adventure.

Venice, by train, used to feel like life,

crossing the channel, boarding the Paris train at Boulogne,

getting a seat in the dining car,

before going round Paris on the

centaur and finding one sleeping car. It was an international train, headed, I think,

for Istanbul, but overnight transformed and in certain sections into something much more

domestic.

I went first, thinking, rightly, that this meant luxury.

But venturing further down the train, one found humbler passages spilling out into the corridor,

along with their belongings, in bulging cardboard boxes, hens, and on one occasion, a goat.

When one eventually arrived in Venice, where I'd never been, in the late afternoon,

it did seem like an achievement.

One came out of the station to find the canals not sequestered away in some tourist area,

"'but there on the steps of the station itself.

"'Venice the only place that lived up to its publicity.

"'On the vaporito, one passed the fire station, "'the gleaming boats ready arrayed, and that seemed

wondrous too, that here even the fire engines were in boat form. I stayed two or three times

...