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All aboard the €3,000 train ride from Berlin to London

One imagines that there is more than one Londoner who has moved to Germany in pursuit of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin. Now they have the chance to travel like him, too.

All aboard the €3,000 train ride from Berlin to London
Hercule Poirot on the Orient Express. Photo: Arte/DPA

Well, not exactly like him.

One can’t imagine the penniless author of Goodbye to Berlin and Mr. Norris Changes Trains scarfing down lobster as he struck up conversation with fidgety masochists in a carriage steaming through the German countryside.

But for a snip at €3,050, lovers of the Weimar Republic and the glamour of the 1920s will be able to travel from Berlin to London this June in those very surroundings.

Photo: Belmond

The Venice Simplon-Orient Express will depart from Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) on June 4th for a four-day trip through Paris to London.

The locomotive will be hauling the original carriages of the luxury train, which first travelled between Paris and Istanbul in 1883.

While the train normally runs between various destinations in southern and central Europe, such as Venice, Vienna and Prague, it will be departing from Berlin just once in 2016, and then once again in 2017.

The first section of the trip is a two-day journey to Paris before a two-day break in the French capital.

Photo: Belmond

The train, best-known for its starring role in Agatha Christie's thriller Murder on the Orient Express, recreates “one of the finest luxury experiences the world has ever known”.

On offer are stewards who will hop to your every need and mosaic-tiled lavatories at either end of the carriage.

The train also has a champagne bar with Art Deco interiors and three dinning carriages where one can while away the day playing bridge or listening to piano.

Just watch out for the Belgian with the waxed moustache who is constantly trying to find the skeletons in your compartment's elegantly-designed mahogany closet.

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