Orient-Express, or About European Influences on Everyday Life in the Nineteenth Century Balkans
Orient-Express, or About European Influences on Everyday Life in the Nineteenth Century Balkans

Summary/Abstract: Orient-Express was not the first agent of Europe in the Balkans.1 I use it here only as a symbol of European penetration. The destination of this train – famous not only from Agatha Christie’s novel – depends, in fact, on one’s point of view. The train was called Orient-Express because its “godfathers” thought of it as a connection to the Orient, to the exotic, picturesque and multinational. From the Balkan point of view, however, it was, in a sense, an ‘Occident-Express’, for its orientation was North- West: the railway station Paris-East was the final point of the two-days trip, while at the same time the express was one of the direct providers of everything European to the Balkans.

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