You know you are in for an unusual train ride when you are welcomed on board by a man called Attila. And then, while you are relaxing with a drink, you are serenaded by a piano player who calls himself Apollo. This is not your average crew on a commuter train. But then the Danube Express is not your average rail service. Launched by Howard Trinder — former owner of Great Rail Journeys — the Express is his attempt to combine hedonistic rail travel and serious tourism with some relaxed entertainment. It is an ambitious goal, to say the least, and well worth testing. So, two weeks ago, I traveled by Eurostar from London to Paris, and then by Deutsche Bahn sleeper to Berlin, to experience the Danube Express on its maiden trip to Budapest.
It was an incongruous first encounter. There in Berlin Ostbahnhof, amid the clamor of the morning rush hour, stood eight gleaming coaches in blue, gold and white livery with uniformed staff and managers standing to attention on the platform. This was my introduction to Attila and Apollo, not to mention Andras, Gyorgyi and the train’s other personnel.
Their names betray the train’s key influence, of course. The Danube Express is Hungarian to its axles. Indeed, Trinder — working with his Budapest-based partners MAV Nosztalgia — has specifically created his hotel-on-rails to follow routes used by the old Royal Hungarian Express while also aiming to combine modern comfort with some middle European retro-chic.
The train itself is of mixed vintage: some carriages once belonged to the official train of Hungary’s communist government, while its saloon car (plus piano) and spacious dining car were originally built in East Germany. Some carriages have classic, two-bunk sleepers while three coaches — previously used by the Hungarian postal service — have been completely revamped and fitted with deluxe compartments, each with an en suite shower and toilet, air-conditioning, wood-paneling, deep-pile carpets, and enough space to swing a fairly substantial mammal.
There are no bunks in deluxe, only two ground-level beds, which are made up by stewards while you are at dinner. The shower water was hot and plentiful (although the taps were fitted with timers) and even if one or two features still require a bit of attention — my shower tap was stiff, for God’s sake — it would be a churlish traveler who could not wallow in such luxury.
And there lay my problem. The Danube Express has spoiled me for all future rail travel. I thought sleepers such as the Cologne-Copenhagen and the Oslo-Trondheim were luxurious but they couldn’t hold a cabin light to this sybaritic excess, with its wardrobes, butler service, and plush upholstery.
Then there was the food and drink. From the moment we boarded, champagne, wine and beer were being thrust down our throats. By the time we had reached Dresden (200km to the south), I had gone through a wide range of beverages as well as a lunch of sweet and sour soup, pork in green pepper sauce, Hungarian dill cheesecake, and most of a bottle of Szemelt Riesling.
Dresden itself was an eye-opener. The city was devastated on the night of Feb. 13, 1945 when a massed Allied bombing raid destroyed its center, killing more than 35,000 people in an act of warfare that remains controversial to this day. Four thousand tonnes of high explosives were dropped on the Florence of the Elbe, creating a firestorm that turned it into a pile of rubble. And that was what I expected to find: the pitted remains of a handful of baroque halls and mansions.
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