Recently I have completed a long-time wish of mine. I travelled by train from Paris to Istanbul (ofcourse stopping a lot along the way!). This route has been dubbed the Orient expres, but in fact there is not one route that is the one true Orient expres route. The trainline has had different routes throughout the years.

Anyway, this leaves some room to make your own decisions, but before it was clear that my final route would go through Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia and ending in Istanbul. Backpacking my way through Europe I met a lot of people in hostels. Chatting away some people adviced me to avoid Bulgaria. They had some problems there with customs and criminal activities. As I was travelling alone I decided that it wouldn´t hurt me to try a route through Greece.

So, from Budapest I did take the train to Belgrade. But from there I went to Skopje, planning to take the train to Thessaloniki in Greece. In Skopje I was told that the train to Greece hadn´t been going for about 2, 3 years! But the lady behind the informationdesk at Skopje station told me I could go with the train to the Greek border, and take a bus from there to Thessaloniki. I took the train...and no bus! The only way to cross the border from Macedonia to Greece was by taxi... bye bye 50 euro

From Thessaloniki I took the train to Alexandroupolis. There used to be a train from there to Turkey, but ofcourse that didn´t exist anymore! So I spend the night there and took a bus across the border. Since it was important for me to arrive by train in Istanbul, I decided to get out in Tekirdag. The next morning I took a bus to the trainstation in Muratli. You have to walk a short distance on the track to reach the trainstation, from the main road. The train arrived on time in Muratli!

The trains in Turkey arrive on time... an upside. They are also relatively clean, and very comfortable. The only downside of trains in Turkey... they go EXTREMELY slow! I timed the average speed of the train... 50km per hour. So the train isn´t the best way to get around, but it is an adventure! And if you want to do the Orient Expres... just go through Sofia...

Years ago I took the train from Stockholm to Istanbul. I don´t know if it is possible any more. I never needed to change the train, they just politely adviced me to change the vagon now and then. Unfortunately I can´t remember how long it took, days anyway, and I was travelling uncomfortably in the second class. When I finally arrived at Sirkeci Garı I was so tired and miserable I almost fell down under the weight of my rucksack.

Ne günlerdi o günler.

There is another story here about someone who took the long distance train to Istanbul but this happened after the first world war (my trip was a little bit later):

http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/26313/mika-waltari-finland-turkey-membership-europe.html

Well, you shouldn´t do such a trip in one go. The whole idea of travelling by train is not the destination, but the travel is part of the adventure. I got off in a lot of major cities. I saw a lot of great cities along the way. Some trains were comfortable, some a bit less I spend about 3, 4 weeks travelling. Ofcourse I could have done it faster, but it´s good to take it slow. Wish I took it even slower!