The train is the great survivor. It has changed its look over time, but the basic technology of metal wheels running on metal rails has endured over nearly two centuries; and in the age of the jet, the train remains the vehicle of choice for the discerning traveller who wants to explore unknown places and understand new people.
The insights it gives are unique. From the train window, you comprehend landscapes, climate and national qualities. You gawp at the vast wilderness spaces of Spain. You board the TGV in Paris under a leaden north European sky and disembark three hours later under an azure canopy, greeted by palm trees and exotic blooms.
You travel through Europe’s back yards: tidy gardens and rubbish tips. The graffiti reveals the local social issues. At the stations, there’s order or chaos. There’s the smell of doughnuts or baklava, of neatly kept flowerbeds or of heavy industry.
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Train conductors can be scruffy or immaculately uniformed, friendly or officious. There are local people to engage in conversation at the bar or in the buffet; or to be hooked in when you open your picnic, sharing food and wine with those in your compartment.
I experienced all this and more during my continental travels over the summer. They took me first to Greece, where I boarded the narrow-gauge railway that runs along the Pelion peninsula, with rolling stock like something from a cowboy film, enabling me to ride on the veranda at the rear of the last carriage. You don’t board this service for speed. For the first 1½ miles, I had the company of a lame dog running on the track behind the train, keeping up without too much strain.
The peninsula is formed by high mountains, which, according to mythology, were the summer residence of the 12 gods of Olympus and a stomping ground for centaurs. There are fruit trees along much of the route and I can lean out of the train, trying to snatch a lemon or an olive. We cross over beautiful stone viaducts that curve ahead of us, affording spectacular views over Pagasitikos Bay, extraordinarily blue, far below.
The train delivers us to Milies. A memorial at the station recalls how the men of the village were massacred during the Nazi occupation, and in the square I meet Michael, who as a child escaped it, but lost close family. He tells me that his first extraordinary survival had been at birth. The doctor thought he would not pull through, and when, miraculously, he did, born in the shadow of the local church of saints Michael and Gabriel, the doctor urged the parents to name him after one of the two angels.
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Michael visits that church every day. In a troubled life, it is in there that he finds comfort. In the 18th century, a single artist covered the walls and ceilings in frescoes and icons. It took him 33 years. But the beautiful vault is hidden from the outside, kept secret from the Ottomans who ruled here until the 19th century.
For centuries, there’s been a clear border between the Muslim world and Christendom, but it’s shifted wildly. Early in the 8th century, it ran near Tours, on the Loire. As recently as 1683, it skirted the walls of Vienna. Following the route of the Orient-Express, I discover it today outside the Turkish city of Edirne.
The old tracks of the express are in disarray. Running close to the Valley of Roses, in Bulgaria, there’s a huge reconstruction programme under way: if you follow in my footsteps, be prepared for a fragmented journey and even substitute buses. But at Edirne, the Selimiye mosque, masterpiece of the great architect Sinan and completed in 1575, confirms that running east we have left Christendom. Bare-chested wrestlers, their bodies smeared in olive oil, are proof of the exotic.
There are still 130 miles of Europe between here and Istanbul. In 1913, the Balkan nations, fighting for independence from the Ottomans and vowing to evict the Turks from Europe, narrowly failed; and the demarcation at Edirne has held good for the past century.
In any case, when it comes to customs, no line can be drawn. When I was lured into Thracian dancing in the wonderfully preserved Roman theatre in the Bulgarian town of Plovdiv, I felt the strong influence of the Middle East on the steps, music and costumes. The Greeks, who threw over their Ottoman conquerors, still drink a Turkish coffee, while their national dish of moussaka carries a béchamel topping that’s clearly French.
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If the railways of this region are currently a mess, they’re not the only ones. Another line now in turmoil evokes again a lost empire. Nineteenth-century Habsburg Vienna had a sort of coastal rival in Trieste. Tracks connected the imperial capital to the Adriatic. The line was the means of importing and exporting, fundamental to the empire’s prosperity, and the port was home to the Austro-Hungarian fleet. Trieste, as gateway to the empire, had to look suitably Viennese, which explains the superb waterfront palaces and squares that still grace the city.
With the dissolution of the empire at the end of the First World War, Trieste became part of Italy, while a slug of the line towards its southern end runs through present-day Slovenia. It’s no longer at all easy to use the train between Vienna and Trieste. Nonetheless, it’s a great ride from the Austrian capital down to Graz and through the Semmering Pass on Europe’s first standard-gauge mountain railway, completed in 1854. I disembarked and descended into a valley to admire the Kalte Rinne viaduct, a magnificent structure that combines stunning engineering with great elegance.
From there, I made my way to the Slovene capital, Ljubljana. There’s another story here of an oppressed people yearning to breathe free. The Slovenes, chafing under Hapsburg rule, made the most of an earthquake in 1895, rebuilding the city in a distinctive and innovative national style.
In order to enter Trieste by rail, I opted for the hybrid tram/funicular that runs in from Opicina. On the sheerest part of the slope into the city, the tram picks up a “tractor”, which mercifully slows its descent (and pushes it during the ascent). This highly unusual piece of technology makes up for a disjointed journey from former imperial capital to former imperial port.
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Other rail journeys over this past summer took me to Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca, encountering three indigenous languages other than Spanish in as many days. In Italy, I glimpsed what could be Britain’s future in high-speed rail when I travelled between Florence and Bologna. It takes 37 minutes to cover the 50 miles and, in this highly mountainous region, all but 2½ miles are in a tunnel.
Just in case I had any doubts that the train represents our future as well as our past, another rail journey took me to Germany’s University of Göttingen, where the next generation of ultra-high-speed vehicles are being developed on a miniature test track. They are more bullet-shaped than ever, but looking at those wheels and tracks, I could nonetheless clearly recognise them as direct descendants of Stephenson’s Rocket.
Michael Portillo’s latest series of Great Continental Railway Journeys is on Fridays at 9pm on BBC2