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...
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