According to our ideas, the word “Limited” as applied to the “Orient Express” was a misnomer; in fact the only “limited” qualifications of the train which we were able to discover were its limited speed and its limited number of up-to-date conveniences. And there is one thing peculiar about travelling through these countries: no matter upon which side of the train you may take your seat, whether the train goes east or west, north or south, whether it be morning or afternoon, your side will be the sunny side. I believe if we had crawled under the seats on some of the trains the sun would have shone up through the bottom of the car. Perhaps we were clothed too heavily, or, perhaps, we only travelled when the sun was exceptionally hot, but, whichever the cause, we sweltered and perspired through almost every railway trip we ever took in the Balkans.
Notwithstanding the “limited” features of the “Orient Express” we were always glad to have a chance to travel on it, if for no other reason than to enjoy our fellow-passengers and amuse ourselves by the humour of the signs, which are tacked up in conspicuous places in every compartment, to be heeded by the traveller. “Gentlemen must not go to bed with their boots on,” read one of these placards, and if the railway must needs have signs to warn its passengers against such a breach of travel etiquette, we thought what a delicate piece of business it must be for the porter or the conductor to enforce the rule; for travellers are apt to act in a manner just contrary to the notices of warning they see posted.
Another sign informed the passenger that “the conductor would shine gentlemen’s boots upon request.” Evidently the railway company had not anticipated the patronage of ladies, but, if they had, they hardly presumed that ladies would require a “shine” or that they would retire with “their boots on.”
It was on this train, too, that we saw the only Americans we had seen or were destined to see for many weeks, two jovial rug-hunters of New York, en route home from a business trip to Constantinople. Also included in the collection of passengers was an immaculate Englishman, with coat tightly buttoned and gloves on, who sat all day in one position for fear of disturbing one molecule of dust, and, owing to his efforts, becoming redder in the face as the train proceeded.
CHAPTER XI
SARAJEVO—THE SPIRED CITY
From Belgrade to Sarajevo—The Turkish Bazaar—A Bosnian Street Sprinkler—Horse-races at Ylidze—A Dervish Dance.
It is by no means an uninteresting nor an unpleasant train ride of seven hours and a half across the well-kept, fertile farm lands of Austria-Hungary; from Belgrade, in Servia, southward to the little junction town of Brod. This line continues through Agram to Fiume, Hungary’s solitary seaport, but if you would visit the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, nominally Turkish territory, you must change at Brod and take your compartment in one of the miniature cars of the little narrow-gauge train which, later, puffs and snorts its tortuous, labyrinthine way across, between and under the mountains, up grade and down to Sarajevo, Mostar and, finally, Gravosa on the Adriatic Coast.