traveling in style

In his book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Paul Theroux retraces an epic trip taken 25 years earlier when he set out from London to travel overland to Tokyo and back, a loop that roped in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Indochina on the way out and Siberia on the way back. The journey is described with wonderful vibrancy in The Great Railway Bazaar. I finished reading this book a few weeks ago and couldn't ward off a feeling of deep nostalgia. For all the lively encounters and authentic details, the book described a long-forgotten past. They just don't do railways like this anymore.

In the newer book, Paul Theroux confirms this, deploring the demise of the dining car. This was always his favored place on a train. It was there that he met the characters that enlivened his book, which would otherwise have been little more than a dull succession of place names and countries, soulless and repetitive. The dining car rescues the book and turns it into a fantastic read. Now it is on its way out, apparently because rail travelers are worried about their belongings and afraid of leaving their bags alone in their compartment.

This morning, I flew from London to a regional Austrian airport with nothing more than could fit into the soft sleeve of my Eee given shape by a book of appropriate dimensions: passport, MP3 player, cell phone, wallet, a Moleskine and a pen. The Eee itself stayed at home.

The trip didn't begin auspiciously. In the first rays of the morning sun gleamed an Airbus that, according to the captain who had mysteriously hijacked the PA system at the gate, had never been on a commercial flight. It had only been delivered from the factory the day before. Our flight was supposed to be the maiden voyage. However, the uselessly chirpy captain informed us, one of the doors had jammed and the machine was unusable. When problems happen with aircraft, it's usually with new ones, he claimed. We had to be ferried across the airfield to the South Terminal, where some old beater with functioning doors had fortuitously been located. We arrived at our destination nearly an hour late.

The delay, though compounded for me by a missed connection, couldn't throw my plans off. I was on the way to a job interview scheduled for that afternoon and arrived with enough time to spare a little for a walk around town. Austria is beautiful, with lush meadows, rugged mountains and a love of the rural architecture of the past. Some curious quirks and the adorable accent aside, it is also very close to Germany in its appearance and vibe, almost too close for comfort to me. Working there would almost be like coming home, I realized with a queasy feeling as I walked through the gate.

I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn't come to work, only to present myself for consideration. The three hours of interviews, a presentation followed by a friendly but intense grilling and the lab tour passed well, though everything started tense. The HR person in charge started with a professional stiffness that scared the hell out of me but surprised me with correctness and clarity. His 90-minute interrogation was tough but fair and free from meanness or spite. There were no questions of which color my wings would be if I were a butterfly, which areas my boss, if called, would say I should work on improving in, not even what five of my weaknesses are. What exactly they think about me I don't know yet, and the ramifications for Flucha remain entirely unexplored. But there's something to think about.

I could have used the time on the train back to the airport for exactly that, but traveled on a EuroCity, a type of train without the swishness and speed of the ICE but – at least in my case – a dining car separating the first- and second-class cars. When I noticed, I could almost hear Paul Theroux rejoice in the back of my head, and goad me on. I have never traveled in a dining car; it always seemed too decadent for a modest man like me. But that afternoon, someone else's memories of distance and adventure combined with my good spirits because of the interview and a sense of entitlement resulting from 13 hours awake already and seven more to go. I pulled the glass door open, entered and sank into a wonderfully deep brown leatherette chair by a panoramic window. A little while later, a glass of beer materialized in front of me and all the burden of traveling fell off. I let my eyes wander.

Delightfully cheap-looking wood-paneling covered the walls above the windows and on either end of the car, giving it a decidedly old-school appearance. There were twelve tables, some seating two, some seating four. All were dressed properly with heavy tablecloths and adorned with little white lamps hovering by the windows and only just above the surface of the table. The lamps were off; the day was still too young for artificial light. Instead, the glory of Austria passed by outside: meadows in full bloom, floral explosions in red, white and yellow; a whitewashed village church every two minutes, surrounded by picture-perfect hamlets of immaculate beauty; brown cows in herds so small they should properly be called flocks; and to either side the crests of the Austrian Alps rising in imposing grey.

Only a few tables in the dining car were occupied. There were two old ladies sipping their afternoon filter coffee with milk. A quartet of business travelers with laptops and cell phones shared beers and occasional boisterous banter. A group of lads fresh off their bikes refueled with chicken curry and rice. But there was no bar, and there was no mingling. Sociability would probably be asking too much on a train in Germanic lands.

In front of me, next to my beer, was the menu with a title – the train continued to Budapest – like the beginning of a postmodern poem. Ételek és italok it said, and that the beer cost less than I'd pay in a pub in London. The goulash soup and veal schnitzel made me regret not being hungry and dread the moment when I would be – probably later at the airport where I'd have to shell out twice for comparable fare.

Getting drowsy from the beer, I could better appreciate the leisurely pace at which the train trundled along. The mode of travel and the mood were in perfect synchronicity. I leaned back and enjoyed a luxury that seemed to come straight from the past. But about an hour in, I had reached my destination for that leg of the trip and had to get out. As I changed into the overground to the airport I wondered why anyone would travel any other way.