Yesterday’s post was about travelling by train in rural Ireland some fifty years ago. Yesterday I was actually travelling by train across Austria and into Slovenia.
A journey that conjoured up The Lady Vanishes, the wonderful film that Hitchcock made in 1938. The threat of war hung over Europe and the film mixes comedy with grim foreboding of what lay ahead.
Yesterday I saw a lame, bare-footed refugee escorted onto a train and locked in. There were police and army at every station monitoring passengers. They never asked Robert or me to show our papers – a trilby from Lock’s says more than a passport. What could or should we have done about that refugee? What would I have done in 1938 if I had seen a Jewish family locked into a train?
Let’s move on. It is a delight to use the railways in Europe. Austrian second class is as good as UK first class, although I’m no expert on the latter. Slovenian second class use their old first class carriages – my guess. The Austrian dining car might not be the Orient Express but there are linen tableclothes, a comprehensive menu, a drinks and wine list and proper glasses; as it happens superior to buffet cars in Norway.
The train climbed across the Alps amid beautiful scenery. The peaks were dusted with snow and the stations we passed through had piles of snow on the platforms. Then, quite suddenly, we emerged from a tunnel into sunshine and from autumn into summer. Slovenia is beautiful and Bled specially so.
