First Person
NIGHT TRAIN THE THROWBACK ROMANCE AND INTRIGUE OF LONG JOURNEYS BY RAIL.
BY JEN ROSE SMITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY COOKIE MOON
EARS AGO, ON A NIGHT TRAIN FROM BANGKOK, I WATCHED a full moon rise over bristling rice fields. I was traveling toward Vientiane, a city of gilded stupas and crumbling French architecture at the edge of the Mekong River. My porcelain teacup trembled as the car swayed over the rails. Though it was late, and the steward had already made up my white-curtained bed, I lingered between cars to savor the night air. When the train flashed across a narrow stream, I saw a fishing boat below me, nosing away into darkness. I could have flown. Like every traveler, I wish for more time to explore each place I go, and it’s tempting to book a quick flight and subtract hours – or even days – in transit. But an overnight train suspends that impulse to hurry on. Once on board, the urgency dissolves. And spending the night on rails turns the journey itself into a thrilling destination, one with rituals and pleasures that I yearn to revisit. So when the midnight line glides by my house, I wake dreaming of faraway places, of reading paper timetables in the cozy solitude of my compartment. Sleeping in a private berth rouses sensations nearly forgotten: Trains have an ambling, back-and-forth sway gentle as a cradle. For breakfast, I wish for nothing more than an unknown place spooling past the dining car window. That first early-morning glimpse beyond the curtains reminds me of the French concept of dépaysement – literally to be “out-of-country” – which captures the exquisite disorientation of finding oneself surrounded by the unfamiliar. Air travel affords scant time to savor that sensation. It’s just a quick hop by air from Vienna to Venice, for example, an hour of flight time that takes you from stolid Habsburg palaces to canalside cafes. The two cities may as well be on different continents, the places in between blank as an unfinished map.
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