From Calais to Constantinople.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1922, Page 4

From Calais to Constantinople.

(By Tracy Philipps.) I 1<( ' I be i SERBIA', November 30. J - i Wo have been rushing across Europe j os '-for, three days, through France, under j 5- • the Swiss Alps, and. out into 'the J bf - Lombard plain. j \ France was cold- and) misty; Switzer- j -> tland white-frosted with clouds hanging . 6 ‘low about, her. mountains; Italy held 1 1 (snow in her hedges and furrows. The £ Lakes of Geneva and Garda were C lif ringed, with ioe. We were before time at Milan. It is i lalways a dreary, barrack station. Here 1 is the connection from Rome and Ma- i 1 dl'id, and: a heavy, over-heated' sleep* j ing carriage from Germany Is coupled j i 1 on to the front of our train. i < [ i Between Venice and' Trieste we skirt j < 3 ithe Adriatic. I was last her© in 1917 j ] 1 .“after. Caporotte.”' * 1 * • The Have itself alonet .seems re■l cognisable now. Elsewhere in Italy the 1 external scars of war seem to have j T been almost obliterated by the heal- , 8 ing energy of- man. The devastated i g region is wonderfully restored, more so e than that of France or even Belgium, t , q'he Northern Italian to a hardy : g worker. Here he has accomplished a e real constructive task. 2- the heavy sleeping cars are hauled le up out of Trieste a light snowstorm 1t (sweeps- over, us and clouds out the '}' 1 moonlight from the windows, a- j. One wakes to find the express run- ©- j ning through North Croatia towards r- j Zagreb (Agram) with a Croat soldier re in each corridor. "d At Zagreb an attempt to buy cigaxal ettes fails for unexpected reasons. L There are cigarettes in the buffet, but i® :not enough, dinars to givo change for e < ja £1 note, ty , No Frenchi or Italian, wines can now re l je bought in the restaurant car. These ie “imports” are sealed up successively in t’s separate, cupboards, as each frontier, Its crossed’ by the Customs guards who board the train, and only Serbian produce can, now be served till the train .enters Bulgaria to-night, when the process is repeated. Serbian white pines sy and jams are pleasant, but the- beer ct tastes like some noxious chemical proxl duet.

It is a fine, moonlight night. The pace begins to slacken. We travel slowly, parallel with the Danube, oyer- the Save, into Belgrade. It is a terminus and tho connecting Vienna-Buda-pest train steams alongside lie within five minutes. We have over an hour here and is just time to drive into the city to see a Serbian friend now a professor at tho university. , , The people ate quiet and 1 well-man-nered, the town ill-lighted and illpaved. Wo have dropped at Vinkovee a coach for Bucharest and here another for Athens. We are compensated with a baggage oar from Berlin and a “sleeper” from Buda. The long, heavy train pulls out from Belgrade at midnight. We pass Laporo about & a.m. We axe travelling at about a maximum of 20 m.p.h. J»ut still the train rocks terribly- It is difficult even to undress. Awake at 9 a.m. to find the train at a standstill in a dull, rainy landscape, the engine in a ploughed field and the hind luggage wagons in a small village. The single-track stretches straight before and behind us in the Morja.va pai!n. We face south-east towards Nish and due south, one can just see the hills which bound the old Sanjalt of Novi Bazar. There is great barking of dogs; children run out of neat, white-waslied houses with barred windows and from their herds of pigs to see the great train de luxe, which has rushed from in sight of Dover cliffs for days and nights across a continent, and now stands immobilised in a Balkan village at their doors.

In the dining-car one learns that two goods trains—surprised to see each other in these days of infrequent traffic —had forgotten to stop upon the single track and met disastrously in thd early hours qf this morning. We are now 29 hours late. Debris and bodies are arriving from ,tho south and we hope to get off in another three hours.