Murder(ous) on the Orient Express

With a tear in our eye and a bottle of the local spirit in hand we set off sadly for Sofia (That's alliteration, and while uncommon in booker prize winners, it always goes over a treat with high school English teachers. Some of you may want to give it a try.) aboard the alleged Orient Express, which, as it emerged was neither the luxurious icon we had imagined nor, technically an "express". Christina, whose patience with transportation is not legendary, took this news particularly badly, and unceremoniously evicted everyone from our (8 person) cabin with an angry glare and some broken German (long the language of forced dispossession). The upper class English gentlemen (attired in suit pants and a dinner jacket, the bill for the drycleaning of which Orient Express Co will certainly soon be receiving) who appeared to have been sold a bill of goods spoke for both of us when he turned away from the guard who was explaining what our tickets meant and said, loudly "there is no fucking first class is there?".

In the end the trip wasn't too awful, and we were amused by the spectacular quantities of cigaraettes the (six, chain-smoking) Turkish Bulgarians who (eventually, and only for the last hour thank god) shared our cabin smuggled into Bulgaria, and the hilariously lax efforts of the Bulgarian customs office to catch them at it (but not so lax efforts to reject bribes from said Turkish Bulgarians - the euros were first passed to Customs "discreetly" folded into passports and then, ultminately, more directly, straight into the inspectors' hands - that's the beauty of a common currency: bribes are much easier to give border police). Given the cigarettes cost about $1 a pack here in Bulgaria it's hard to imagine that it was worth the effort.

We write now from Sofia, which, unlike other allegedly dull capitals, more or less lives up to it's billing. Still, Christina has found handbags, and we have more or less recovered from our battle with the Orient Express. Expect more posts with less content in the immediate future, or at least until Tuesday night, when our second round with the "Express" kicks off...

[Suggested caption: "the left leg merely does a forward aerial half turn every alternate step"]