London to Istanbul
The route ahead
One of my first posts on Substack charted an eccentric journey to Helsinki, by boat. Eleven months later I’m here to warn you that this is the first in a mini-series of newsletters that will chart my journey from London to Istanbul, by train. So, if you hate trains, or travel blogs, or Istanbul, then step aside.
On Sunday 18 February pianist Mark Knoop and I will set out for Istanbul: we have a performance there of Øyvind Torvund’s Plans for Future Operas, as part of the New and Newest Music Festival at the Arter contemporary art museum. I’ve never been to Istanbul before and I’m pretty excited. We’re going by train because a) the environment and b) the adventure. (I’m flying home so don’t call me Greta.) Today I want to try and get you excited by outlining the route and also try to remember, for myself, why I get excited by travelling in this way.
THE ROUTE
Firstly, I hope that all of you know about the man in seat 61, which is basically the holy bible of international train travel. The Man tells us that there are two main routes from London to Istanbul and that, whichever way you go, it takes 4 days.
Becaue it’s off season we have to follow the blue route. What excites me especially is that we get to take THREE sleeper trains. (Being middle-aged artistes we have naturally upgraded to a private couchette, eking out as much luxury as possible whilst riding a bone-shaker.) What excites me especially equally is that we get a night in a hotel en route, to get a break from one another, a hot bath and, hopefully, a good night’s sleep. Here’s the plan:
Day 1: London-Paris; Paris-Stuttgart; sleeper Stuttgart-Budapest
Day 2: wake up in Budapest; explore; sleeper Budapest-Bucharest
Day 3: wake up in Bucharest; explore; go to sleep in a real bed in a hotel in Bucharest
Day 4: Bucharest-Dimitrovgrad; sleeper Dimitrovgrad-Istanbul
Day 5: wake up outside Istanbul and take the metro in; rehearse; collapse
Day 6: explore Istanbul; soundcheck; perform; paint the town red
Day 7: explore a bit more; fly home
Here’s our route in Google maps:
THE WHEREFORE
I’ve never been a trainspotter. No cagoule. No timetables. I don’t think I paid trains all that much attention until one day I totted up how many short-haul flights I was taking for work and gulped. So, in 2019 I made a new year’s resolution to halve my airmiles; in 2020 I upped the ante and set about writing to all the promoters for whom I was performing asking for their help:
One of my new year’s resolutions in 2019 was to reduce my airmiles by half. I recently tallied the number of international train journeys I took for work vs the number of flights I took for work: even with a firm commitment to this resolution, which included train journeys from London to Bologna, Berlin to Basel and Montreal to Moncton, I made 29 journeys by train but a whopping 24 journeys (one long-haul, the rest within Europe) by plane.
In an effort to further reduce my carbon emissions and improve our industry’s awareness of and engagement with issues of sustainability and the climate crisis, I am writing to all organisations and individuals with whom I may be working in 2020. I am pledging to cap the number of flights that I take this year to 10 (that’s five return trips, and only one of those can be long-haul). I am asking all festival directors, programmers and promoters to partner with me in this endeavour by accepting what may be slightly increased travel costs as I elect to travel by train or to cover the cost of carbon offsetting if air travel is deemed essential. I will bear the cost (and benefits!) of working days lost to a slower means of travel.
I kept my new year’s resolution that year and have never looked back. I do fly very occasionally but I am pleased to say that most promoters have responded positively to my requests to travel by train. Some of the time I need to cover the extra expense myself, which exposes this as a privileged enterprise, but since I can claim partial refunds on nearly every journey with Deutsche Bahn (eye roll) I am rarely that much out of pocket. What began as a challenge has become a happy habit, and here’s why:
THE ADVENTURE
It’s slower, and that is good for me. When I travel by train I feel more like a wayfarer than a ‘transported traveller’ (as Timothy Ingold writes in Lines: A Brief History).
I have come to relish these long, slow travel days almost as a day off or ‘reset’ day between projects. I can process the performance I’ve just given, let it settle, and ready myself for whatever’s next.
People behave better on (continental) trains — staff don’t bark orders at you and there’s less hanging around under fluorescent lighting.
There’s none of that bollocks about liquids and laptops.
The food is better. Especially if you can pop in to Café A when hopping between Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est or the Funkhaus when inevitably delayed in Köln or Vækst in Copenhagen en route to Malmö.
You collect great stories. I’ve witnessed a magical dawn from my bed on a train to Sicily and a wintery sunset reflected in the fjords between Oslo and Bergen; I’ve suffered cockroaches on a sleeper train in Sri Lanka, and a terrifying late-night passport control on a sleeper train to St Petersberg; I’ve drawn incredulous looks from normal Americans by taking a train, well, anywhere; I’ve tried to do yoga — and been tempted by the sauna — on a gently rocking ferry.
So, let’s see what adventures unfold on the way to Istanbul. Mark’s in charge of morning coffee; I expect I may take charge of the evening picnics. I’m now researching restaurants in Budapest…