I took a 7-day trip from Paris to Istanbul on Europe’s newest transcontinental train

“So this is the great Orient Express,” says a character in Graham Greene’s 1969 novel Travels with My Aunt. “Maybe it’s real luxury travel…for people not in a hurry.”

That novelised version of the famed Paris to Istanbul train was a little run-down, and calamitously, had no restaurant car to sate passengers on its three-day journey. Titular Aunt Augusta bemoans the lack of caviar and champagne in which she’d indulged on…