From Budapest we took a 36 hour train to Istanbul. 36 hours! When Kate suggested it I thought she might be crazy. What would we do on a train for 36 hours? Overnight trains were one thing. You went to sleep at night and in the morning you were at your destination. Very civilized, actually, if you were in a sleeping car. They gave you sheets, a pillow and a blanket, and then, most often the seats folded down into a bed. Technically that’s called a couchette. Maybe I haven’t been in a proper sleeping car yet where the beds are there all the time. Anyways, it’s enough of a bed for me. You lay there as the train chugs along, rocking you to sleep. I think I’ve had the best sleep of my life on trains. And I like trains much better than planes. With a plane you get somewhere so fast that I don’t feel like it’s far away. And then, I guess it’s stupid, but I always worry that the plane is going to crash, and I have to concentrate very hard to make sure it doesn’t. But trains make me feel that I’m going far away, to someplace magical, new, and different. Sometimes I imagine the train is taking me somewhere like Hogwarts, or California to search for gold, or other places I’ve read about. You see why my mum said I read too many books?
Anyway, we decided to take the train. They told us that there was no restaurant car on the train, so we needed to bring our own food. So far, none of the trains I’ve been on have restaurant cars. I was really disappointed. I always imagine what a restaurant car would be like. It was august, so what could we bring that wasn’t going to smell funny at the end of 36 hours in the 40 degrees Celsius heat, I wondered. In the Hungarian grocery store we wandered around. Sadly, with the heat, cheese was out, as was meat. We got some boxes of juice and apples, bread, crisps, tuna salad weirdness (carefully avoiding the other very scary tinned meats) and some sweets. Oh, and lots of water, since there wouldn’t even be a place to get water on the train.
The car we were to go in was part of a train with cars going to Athens and to Romania. There was only one car going all the way to Istanbul. And, for the first and only time in my life (okay, it hasn’t been all that long, but still) I saw a car that was half first class and half second class. We were greeted at the door to the car by a guy. I guess he was the conductor, but he wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform or anything, just a white button up shirt and some gray trousers. I was a bit scared of giving him the tickets, but did anyways, and he put us into one of the first class compartments. Weren’t we supposed to be in second class, I asked. He told us it didn’t matter. And after a bit of snooping I realized the only difference was that the first class compartments had four seats and that the second class had six.
Ten minutes later, a girl and two guys got on the train. Then two more girls, and later an old man. The two girls and the old man hid in their compartments, but the girl and two guys examined the car. Then, the two guys got off, and the girl waved to them as the train pulled off. And the adventure started! Except that it wasn’t one of those dramatic beginnings I’d read about. We had no one on the platform to wave to. Only the promise of Istanbul 36 hours in the future.
Our first border crossing occurred at about two in the morning, from Hungary into Romania. There had not been so much exploring to do, as I had not been able to visit any car, and after it got dark I could no longer see out the window. The light didn’t work so well, so reading was out, and so Kate and I soon went to sleep. It was a rude awakening three hours later with these big scary guys in uniform asking for our passports. Romania had only just joined the European Union in January, but already they had changed their passport stamp, and had lots of EU flags at the station, light up by bright florescent light. I think they might have been proud to be in. Now days, if you travel between most EU countries, if you travel from, say, France to Germany, there is no banging in the middle of the night. But since Romania had only joined a few months before, there was banging and passport checking. Anyway, it took about an hour, and we were soon back to sleep in our beds that folded out of the wall, complete with sheets and pillows.
The next morning at around 11, the train stopped. Soon, the girl, Sam, who had been saying her goodbyes the night before came to visit us to see if we were going to get off the train. We’ll be here for three hours, she told us. As we got out we saw why. Our 
car was sitting alone on the tracks. Apparently’ we were sitting at this little tiny Romanian town, waiting for another train to come pick us up. It was like our car was sitting there, sticking out its thumb hitchhiking. It was really really hot in the train car, and only a little bit less hot outside. We stopped in the station café so Sam could get some coffee, and then went exploring. Only there wasn’t much to explore. The town was small and looked very poor. There were still farm animals, and it was hard to believe that we were in a country that was now considered to be on the same level as home in Scotland. My memory of the place is gray. Not gray as in I don’t remember, but gray the color. The people wore drab colors and shuffled around. The houses were gray. The sky was gray. Even the smell was gray. A bit later we went back to the train and found the other two girls, who were (still are) Australian. I love the way that Australians talk. It makes me dream of koala bears and kangaroos. Someday maybe I’ll get to Australia! We all sat at a picnic table in the shade eating the food we had brought, and discussing how funny it was to be with our hitchhiking train car. The tuna stuff we bought turned out to be as weird as I thought it would.
Bored, we went back to the café, deciding that when on a long train ride, it’s never too early to drink a beer. Except we had no Romanian money. Sam used some euros, and probably paid about three times what we should have paid. And we sat, under the 
blue plastic awning, waiting. The conductor came up, and we all sat there together, waiting. Eventually, the train did come, and we watched as it picked up our car, and then we were off again. We went over the longest railroad bridge in the world as we crossed the border into Bulgaria. The Bulgarians too were super excited to now be in the EU. Bulgaria was beautiful – lots of mountains and forest. It reminded me a bit of home, except the mountains were bigger, and the green was a darker shade. In Scotland I think our green is brighter.
Once again, in the middle of the night we were awoken to cross the border into Turkey. On the Bulgarian side, the guards came on the train. But on the Turkish side, we had to get off. There was mist, and it was really spooky following everyone else down the platform, down the stairs, and under the tracks, to go back up the stairs on the other side. I felt like a ghost would jump out, or that my soul would get sucked away. But no. We just had to buy visas – 10 pounds for a sticker. Not the kind of visa that’s hard to get. Then we stood in another line to have a grumpy guy behind bars stamp us into Turkey. Back on the train we thought we were done, and so got back into my train bed. But oh no, now there was a guard that came through the train, to make sure that everyone had indeed come off, braved the mist, and gotten their passport visaed and stamped. They also poked around in the ceiling with a knife, just to make sure. I was really glad that I didn’t have to sneak across any borders after that.
We woke up early so we could see Istanbul in the morning. Kate was really excited to be back again. Ever since I met her she had been telling me about Istanbul, and how much she loved it and how much I was going to love it and blah blah blah. She had told me she spoke Turkish, but I had never actually heard her speak. We got off the train and stepped into chaos. There were so many people and so many cars! And the cars seemed to have no idea where the road ended and the sidewalk began. It also looked like they were completely unaware that there were lines on the road at all. And the people! The stopped to chat, or they yelled out, or they were running across streets, or walking arm in arm and blocking the sidewalk. Cars kept honking their horns, expecting that this would magically make the cars in front of them run the red light and hit the people, and vendors stood on the 
sidewalk hawking their wares. I could smell trash, and meat cooking, and sweaty people, and car exhaust, and somewhere in there I thought I just might be able to smell some cheese. And along with the car horns, the yelling vendors, and the chatting people was the rumbling of cars, the honk of a boat, the slamming of doors, the footsteps, and a child crying. This was the city I was supposed to love? How was I supposed to love it, much less maneuver myself and my backpack without running into the person in front of me, and then having another run into me from behind, while avoiding the trash and other random stuff on the sidewalk and keeping an eye out for a renegade taxi. Taxi drivers kept yelling at me, men kept making suggestions, “lady, have a cup of tea” “this way pretty lady” “buy a carpet lady” “I saw you in my dreams lady” and women stared at Kate.
Walking up the stairs for a pedestrian bridge across a busy street (thank goodness) I got my first real glimpse of the Bosporus. But I couldn’t stop for long because the bridge was as crowded as the sidewalks. And the smells: something frying, something stinky, and something baking.
“We’re on the European side now,” Kate explained to me. “We’re going to the Asian side by boat.”
The crowd getting on the boat surged when they opened the doors, carrying us with them. We sat outside on the boat along the side, and Kate bought me a small glass of tea, and a big bread ring covered in sesame seeds. A simit she called it. The boat pulled away from the dock, and away from all the crazy cars, and rushing people, and as we came round the point I saw the skyline. In what seemed now to be dead silence, although it was probably noisier than the train, Kate pointed out buildings: the blue mosque, Hayasofya, Topkapi palace, Galata Tower, the New Mosque, Sulimaniye. The water sparkled, the sea gulls looked longingly at my simit, and I caught a glimpse of why so many people love this city.