Guo Jinghong
Turning over the history of world tourism, the "Orient Express" is quite eye-catching. It runs long, setting a world record. The bizarre experiences of all kinds of passengers are rare in ancient and modern times.
Murder on the Orient Express was created against its backdrop. On this luxurious train, how many sensational thrilling stories have happened!
You probably first learned the name "Orient Express" in the thrilling movie and novel Murder on the Orient Express? The Orient Express is a pioneering event in the history of world tourism. It runs across both continents of Europe and Asia and is by far the most famous train. Its legends are intimately intertwined with European history in the first half of this century.
On the afternoon of October 4, 1883, the Paris station in France was crowded, and in full view of the public, some luxuriously dressed dignitaries, accompanied by the stationmaster and surrounded by reporters, boarded a magnificently decorated train. The exterior of the carriages is polished and polished, which is in stark contrast to the old trains nearby. At 6:20, the first Orient Express made a long noise and left the station in a huge white mist to begin its historic journey. The train departed from Paris and headed for Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in Turkey. According to today's map of Europe, the Orient Express passed through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania. Finally, the passenger crosses the Black Sea by boat and reaches the final station. The train runs for more than 80 hours throughout the journey. Later, due to successful negotiations with Tsarist Russia, the luxury carriages of the Orient Express began to run on the trans-Siberian railway. Travelers along the route have been welcomed in different forms in various countries. In Bucharest, they were also received by the then King and Queen of Romania. The train was towed by a steam locomotive. Although the carriages are exceptionally heavy, the train can successfully complete such a long-distance operation, which can not but be said to be a miracle in the history of railway engineering.
The president of France who fell bruised
The Orient Express provided a convenient and comfortable direct access to Eastern Europe and Asia for diplomats, envoys on mission, couriers from various countries, nobles and upper-class people who traveled abroad. Because the train was luxurious, it immediately became a status symbol for the wealthy.
On May 23, 1920, the then President of France, Deschanar, took a chartered bus from the Orient Express to the vicinity of Lyon to unveil the monument. After the train had gone all night, at breakfast, the captain politely asked for a number of people, because he had just received a telegram saying that a man had fallen on the train 20 miles before. The captain counted the heads, and everyone was there, but they didn't see the President of France. But no one bothered about it, because everyone thought the president must be sleeping in his bedroom. When someone finally took the liberty of opening the president's bedroom, people were surprised to find that the president was missing. For a moment, everyone was at a loss, and the train continued to Lyon.
At this moment, the bruised 64-year-old president was shivering in his dirty pajamas. Not a single slipper was gone. The president stumbled to a railroad caretaker and stammered, "I am the President of the Republic." The caretaker unceremoniously retorted, "I'm still Emperor Napoleon!" It took a long time for the president to convince the worker that he was indeed the first citizen of France. Suddenly, telegraph connections between the railways were busy. Near Lyon, the unveiling of the monument took place as usual. In order to explain to the confused public, the government issued a special announcement that the president left the bedroom due to slight discomfort, and when he tried to open the window for ventilation, he mistakenly opened a door, and as a result, he was planted outside the car with his head down, fortunately not seriously injured. As soon as the announcement was issued, rumors spread, and people speculated about the real reason why the president fell out of the car, and some even suspected that international spies were trying to murder the president.
The end of the international female spy
There have been many spies who have traveled on the Orient Express, the most famous of which is Marta Hayley, who has been called "the most dangerous female spy in the world".
Marta Hayley was born in 1876 in a small dutch town. To make ends meet, she married an officer 20 years her senior and later stationed her husband on the Indonesian island of Java. Due to alcoholism, Marta's husband collapsed within a few years and had to take Marta back to the Netherlands to survive on a small pension. Marta was an ambitious woman. One day, she resolutely left her husband and broke into the world of flowers and flowers in Paris without a single life. She soon found a group of broad-knit men to be her protectors. Soon, at the instigation of some people, she went out to dance again. With a little knowledge in Asia, she boasts of her proficiency in Indian and Malaysian dance. But what really made her famous was not the Oriental dance, but because she was the first person in Paris to dance nude. In this drunken and dreamy world, her fame rose for a time, and she became acquainted with some of Europe's celebrities and rich people, including a German diplomat. This German was the head of the German secret spy organization, and through him, Marta was absorbed as a German spy. Marta was a regular on the Orient Train, which she always rode between European capitals. She was later arrested in France, and one of her worst crimes was to induce the French minister of defense to sell her military intelligence and pass it on to the Germans. Despite the intercession of many powerful figures, Marta Hayley was shot.
A bandit who disappeared like magic
On May 31, 1891, a special urgent telegram was sent to the Dojilong Company, the headquarters of the Orient Express, saying that the Orient Express had been hijacked and that the passengers in the first class compartment had been taken hostage by bandits. It happened in Turkey, 60 miles from Constantinople. It turned out that a gang of bandits had broken the railway in advance, forcing the train to stop. When the first-class passengers rushed to the window, they saw that the first few trains had derailed, and the passengers covered in blood were struggling to climb out of the window. A group of bandits armed with long and short guns blasted all the staff on the train off the train, tied them up, and then came to the first class compartment. Led by a man in his 40s, he shouted loudly to calm the travelers and proudly declared him "the leader of the insurgents." He walked up to the passengers and picked out 10 hostages, one of whom was British, and five german entrepreneurs and bankers who had come to negotiate real estate for the Baghdad Railway with the Ottoman Empire. Soon, the bandits evacuated the train and took the hostages on the road. Not far away, they released a hostage and asked him to send a message to the authorities that the German hostage's ransom was £8,000 and that he had to pay gold coins. The next day, a bandit brought a German banker to a small town. They brought with them two letters, one in German, stating that if the hostages were to be released, the Turkish authorities would need to send 200,000 francs or £8,000 and designate the place of payment for the town. The news immediately caused a sensation in Europe. Soon the incident turned into an international crisis. Kaiser Wilhelm II was furious at the abduction of his subjects in Turkey and threatened to send German troops into Turkey to eliminate the bandits. The Turkish authorities were helpless against these bandits, so they had to take gold coins from the national treasury and give them to the Germans to bring back to the town. Five days later, the banker, accompanied by a Swiss representative of the neutral country, followed the bandits who came to pick them up to get money. They walked in the wilderness for 4 days and 4 nights, and they had to go to great lengths to get rid of the Turkish army that they were secretly following, as well as the spies from other countries. They knew that if they did not throw off this burden and engage the bandits, the hostages might face bad luck, not to die or be injured, and they would provoke greater international disputes and create a pretext for the invasion of the great powers. Finally, the money was delivered and exchanged for hostages. The hostages were hungry and dirty, and each of them had 5 gold coins in their hands. It turned out that this was a gift that the chief took out of the ransom and gave them a shock. The hostages were released and rested overnight in Turkey before boarding the Orient Express for Belgrade. As for the bandits, the Turkish government has never caught them.
The SS blew up 2149 carriages
The 2149 carriage is the most famous carriage of the Orient Express, and it was built shortly before the First World War. In world war I, General Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces on the Western Front, requisitioned a Orient Express train as his office, and carriage 2149 became a conference room, and at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, on the special train of General Foch in the forest northeast of Paris, two German representatives signed a instrument of surrender in car 2149, marking the end of the First World War.
In June 1940, when the Germans invaded France, the Germans moved the carriage to the location where it was parked on November 11, 1918. Accompanied by Goering and other Nazi officers, Hitler came to the carriage and announced the terms of surrender to the French delegation. The whole process was made into a movie. Later, Hitler announced that the historic German carriages and souvenirs of Germany's victory over France would be transported to Berlin. In 1918, the tracks where the train stopped were about to be blown up. In this way, Germany's defeat in 1918 will leave no trace! The train was indeed taken to Berlin. When the Allies attacked the German capital, the trains were diverted elsewhere. The spies reported to London the exact location of the carriage. It is said that at the personal request of General de Gaulle, during the bombing of 1944, the location of the parked carriage was also listed as a target for the bombing, and the entire town was razed to the ground. But the cunning Germans guessed this and transported the carriages and other treasures beforehand to 180 miles southwest of Berlin. When General Patton of the United States led his troops to the south of Germany, Hitler personally ordered the blowing up of carriage 2149 so that it would no longer be a trophy of the Allies. A small detachment of the SS carried out this order, ending the magical, bumpy life of the carriage.
Bizarre social wonders
The people on the Orient Express are diverse, and together they piece together a bizarre spectacle.
There were Turkish princes who locked their veiled wives and concubines in their carriages, and not even the attendants wanted to look at them; there were princes of the Bulgarian kings, who hid in the toilets for hours to avoid assassination; there were Englishmen who were traveling and hunting, clutching his shotguns in their hands as if they were lovers; there were pale Frenchmen with tickets prepaid by their future masters to go to Eastern Europe or Russia as tutors; and americans with huge sums of money, ready to bribe officials of various countries to buy oil rights. In addition, there are smugglers, drug traffickers, secret detectives...
The Orient Express, a "luxury hotel mounted on wheels," also attracts a large number of thieves. A number of organized criminal groups are active on this line. Each of them consists of 4 to 5 people, and there is always a beautifully dressed girl in the middle, looking for a suitable object, usually a generous tycoon or wife who travels alone, and when they find it, they try their best to come forward and talk. At this time, two people in the group held the entrance and exit of the carriage, and the other person sprayed a potion on the passenger's face, making him or her unconscious. These thieves stole all the cash and jewelry and fled.
It is the bizarre and romantic history of the Orient Express and the variety of passengers it carries that has attracted many novelists, film and television filmmakers, using the Orient Train as the backdrop to their stories. Murder on the Orient Express is just one of the more successful of the many.
The resurrection of the Orient Express
The smoke of World War II hampered the normal operation of the Orient Express. By March 1938, when the Germans invaded Austria, the trains stopped.
In 1945, after the war, the first train that was restored departed from Paris to Innsbruck via Zurich. Other trains were then resumed. However, due to the establishment of highways after World War II, the aviation industry is developing rapidly, and the importance of rail transportation is decreasing. By this time the train, though replaced by an internal combustion locomotive, had to give way to faster, increasingly competitive jets. Due to the advent of civil aircraft and highways, the Orient Express finally came to a standstill after several struggles. At the same time, the passengers who ride it have gradually disappeared with the wheel of history.
The history of the Orient Express seems to end forever, but it is not. This train, like the phoenix in Egyptian mythology, is never dead. It turns out that in today's jet age, there are still many people who are nostalgic for this "sacred carpet leading to the East". As a result, many shrewd industrialists have made money on the Orient Express. The year before, a British company tried its best to buy a few cars of the original Orient Express, whitewashed them, named the Orient Express, and began to run between Paris and Venice, attracting a large number of people. Until now, the train has been successful.
Today, the main means of transport used around the world are cars and airplanes. Faced with the congestion caused by the congestion of airports and long-distance travel by car, more and more people are beginning to miss the train travel method represented by the Orient Express. That is why the Orient Express was revived.