Looking Orient Express pictures reminded me of one August night in 2010 I spent sitting in a fully booked TAP Airbus 320, flying from Lisbon to Helsinki. It was four and half hours night flight and for some reason I could not sleep, so there was lots of time for thoughts.

At the height of 10 000 metres over European continent my feelings about flying were not flying very high. Actually I dreamt about making that trip by boat. I don’t know how long it would have taken, maybe a week – anyway a lot of time with no hurry to anywhere, maybe reading a good book, looking at the empty sea. Eating and drinking slowly. Just letting the time flow. Very different way to move from one place to another, compared to flying these days.

Cramped seating, flavourless food, plastic cutlery, security checks with long waiting and unresponsive officers, dull and lousy terminals, long taxiing lines to runaways… Times has changed a lot from times of Super Connies waiting in front of TWA Flight Center (Probably the most beautiful terminal building ever built, deigned by Eero Saarinen.) In the era of budget airlines there is very little luxury left in traveling by air. Fast and effective it might be, but the real exlusivity is in traveling slowly.

And it doesn’t apply only on traveling, but the life as a whole.

Calling all Romantics Aboard the Orient Express, 1950 | Messy Nessy Chic