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Return to Central Europe |
...the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is back in style
All Aboard for Adventure! The train now departing is the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express – en route to Dresden. This magnificent, culture-rich destination joins Prague, Krakow, Budapest and other great central European cities on new itineraries.
This year sees the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express relive its 1920s heyday, extending its network of destinations within regions once cut off from the west. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, all are bursting afresh with verve, culture and style.
Agatha Christie and Assassins
In its most glorious era - the roaring twenties - the Orient-Express carried an intoxicating brew of passengers. Kings and queens, emperors and presidents, writers and artists, brigadiers and spies, mistresses and assassins – they were all aboard, clinking crystal in the dining car, applauding the gypsy bands that played under the Lalique chandeliers, and sashaying down the swaying corridors late at night in silken dressing gowns.
To and Fro in Central Europe
During this golden era, the appetite for luxury trains spawned many Orient-Express routes in central Europe: the trains became arteries of style, bringing sophisticated and wealthy customers to the new luxury hotels that sprang up to receive them. But then came World War II, swiftly followed by communism. The train was routed and re-routed to become a pale shadow of its former self. Meanwhile the cities it had touched were variously bombed, concreted, or fell into disrepair.
Now the pendulum is swinging back in style. For the last couple of decades the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express has run on its core route between London, Paris and Venice, with a once-yearly odyssey down memory lane all the way to Istanbul. But today, with an additional set of new itineraries, the train is returning to the once-familiar areas of central Europe, rediscovering the former stamping ground of its most glorious years.
Itineraries include cities such as Prague, Krakow, Budapest and now - Dresden, some of which have been miraculously preserved, and some of which have had to be painstakingly rebuilt – rather like the VSOE itself. | | |
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