Halkalı is a suburban station on the edge of a city of sixteen million, and the international trains stop there because the old station at Sirkeci is a museum now. So you arrive in Istanbul at a place that could be anywhere and take the Marmaray under the Bosphorus, which is a commuter train that happens to cross a continent.
You come up at Sirkeci. And then the whole city hits you: the call to prayer from six directions at once, a tram, a man selling simit from a cart with a bell, the smell of the sea and of grilling and of something sweet, and Hagia Sophia at the top of the hill, absolutely enormous and absolutely not surprised to see you.
I'd had a plan for the first morning. The plan lasted eleven minutes. I sat on a wall by the Golden Horn with a tea in a tulip glass that cost less than a Warsaw tram ticket and watched ferries cross for an hour, and that was the morning, and it was the right morning.
The Orient Express story got written, eventually. This is the one I'd have written if they'd let me.
