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| Illustration by Christoph Niemann, from Anthony Lane's "Because the Night" |
In this series, I choose ten of my favorite New Yorker travel pieces, one per month, and try to express why I like them. Today’s pick is actually two picks. I originally intended to choose just one – Anthony Lane’s “Because the Night” (May 11, 2020), a wonderful essay on the pleasures of traveling by night train. However, as I was rereading it, I was reminded of another great “night train” piece that I’d read many years ago – Berton Roueché’s “Trans Europ Nuit” (December 28, 1981). The two pieces complement each other beautifully. I’ve decided to consider them together – a rare double combo. Here we go! All aboard!
Lane begins,
If on a winter’s night a traveller is about to board a train, a fortifying drink is of the essence. Thus it was that I stood in line at Burger King, on the concourse at Central Station, in Glasgow, and asked for a hot tea. The only reason that I wasn’t seeking out a dram of whiskey was that I had already done so, dropping into a pub on my way to the station. In short, I was well drammed up—as was the Glaswegian beside me, who leaned on the counter and inquired what I was up to. Taking the Caledonian Sleeper to London, I replied. He fixed me with a canny eye and said, “Are you not afraid o’ the wee virus?”
That passage makes me smile every time I read it. So many interesting elements. As an opening paragraph of a travel piece, it’s almost unbeatable. Lane’s next paragraph is equally good:
The answer, foolishly, was no. I was too excited by the thought o’ catching the wee train to be worried about catching anything else. It was late evening, on February 28th; the year would soon leap into the twenty-ninth, and that touch of temporal rarity added to the occasion. The departure of a night train—by definition, a humdrum event for the station staff—exudes, for all but the most jaded travellers, the thrill of an unfamiliar ritual. By day, if late, you run for a train; if early, you tut and sigh at having to tarry so long. At night, on the other hand, you saunter, and deliberately show up in good time. Why? Not because of security, passport control, or the other chores that affront the airline passenger, shortening tempers and sapping every soul, but because you want to settle in and enjoy the show. Patiently, the train awaits you, with a theatrical air of suspense, and the moment of its leaving is akin to the curtain’s rise.
Lane’s writing hooks me and reels me in. Part of its allure is his wit. Here’s his description of the interior of his sleeping compartment:
When turning from the window to the door, in my compartment, I had to revolve on the spot, as if roasting on a vertical spit, and, despite my being the sole occupant, both bunks had been let down, locked into place, and joined by a ladder. A printed notice offered advice: “Guests should use the ladders in the traditional manner, by always facing the bed as they climb up and down.” What other manner is there? Had the train recently hosted the cast of Cirque du Soleil, perhaps, who insisted on descending head first, arms outstretched, after crooking one knee over the top rung?
And here’s his description of the food:
No less baffling was the Room Service Menu. Pies, cheeses, broth, smoked venison on a platter, and a parade of wines and spirits: all these, and more, could be ferried to one’s bedside. Caledoniaphiles were urged to dine on “Haggis, Neeps & Tatties”—neeps meaning turnips, tatties meaning potatoes, and haggis meaning all your deepest terrors wrapped up in a sphere of stomach skin, then boiled. Precisely what you want to snack on, in other words, while passing through a tunnel at half past two in the morning. The entire feast could be washed down with a Ginger Laddie. Don’t ask.
At this point, as Lane begins a discussion of the history of the Pullman sleeping car, I think we’ll change trains and board Roueché’s Danish Express. He’s traveling from Copenhagen to Paris:
The train moved, was moving. It moved as silently, as smoothly, as naturally as a ship under sail. The platform slid away. In a moment, in half a moment, we were moving at speed, racing—out of the glare of the sheds and into a dusky daylight, through spreading railroad yards, past factories and warehouses, past blocks of apartment houses, past a deserted suburban station, past another spread of apartment s. Then we were in an open countryside of fields, pastures, hedgerows, an occasional mannered plantation of pine or white birch. Denmark is a small country, and Copenhagen is on two tiny islands, but I had a sense of space that was almost Kansan. There wasn’t a house as far as I could see. Then, suddenly, there were six or eight houses clustered together along a narrow street—little square houses, like doll houses, with steep, red-tiled, pyramidal roofs. American farmers live on the farm. In Denmark, farmers live in the village. The enormous countryside began again. It was a landscape made for snow, for blizzards, for raging winds. The dusk deepened. There was a spark of light in the distance, a spidery glint of water, and then it was dark.
Roueché’s trip is low-event, but if you want to experience the pleasure of night train travel, it’s perfect. He describes his compartment. He talks with the steward. He talks with another passenger. His train crosses the Baltic Sea by ferry. He describes having supper on the ferry. He observes other people in the ferry bistro. He returns to his train compartment. He sleeps. He wakes up around midnight. The train is in Hamburg. There’s joviality coming from the next compartment:
I thought I heard a guitar. I heard shrieks and roars of laughter. I heard glasses and bottles and what sounded like somebody dancing. I looked at my watch: it was almost midnight. I looked out at the station again. There were plenty of people about—walking, waiting, waving, embracing. And a variety of uniforms: brown, blue, green. Two youths were sitting on a bench, gazing at the train, eating ice-cream cones: it might have been noon in a park. They suddenly slid away. We were moving, but moving backward. We moved out of the station, past pillars, past stairs, past benches and people, past signs for Marlboro and Coca-Cola in German, and into a yard, past a string of freight cars on a siding. They were painted bright red, and on each, in white, was the name “Blue Star Lines.” The joviality next door continued. The train stopped, waited, and moved forward again. We pulled in to a platform—a different platform. A woman sat on a bench, slumped in sleep, a cat in a box at her feet. We waited, we moved, we slipped away backward again. I dropped onto my pillow. There were footsteps, running footsteps, in the corridor.
In the morning, Roueché gets up, shaves, and packs his things. He talks with the steward. He watches the French countryside fly past. And then he’s in the Gare du Nord in Paris. He leaves the train and has coffee in the station. Ho hum, you might say. Not at all. It’s total bliss. Lane says the same thing at the end of his piece: “Such was the non-event of the journey. Yet I relished every mile of it.”
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