Stories

Routes by train and ferry across Europe, written up one notebook at a time by Elif Kaya.

Eleven hours, one border at three in the morning, tea from the conductor and Sofia at breakfast. The route that started the whole thing.

The most beautiful railway in Europe that nobody books: eleven hours of gorges, viaducts and a tunnel that opens onto the sea.

A bay that behaves like a fjord and a walled town you can learn by heart in an afternoon. Three days, no car, one very steep staircase.

Bar to Bari on the overnight ferry: a reclining seat, a deck full of lorry drivers, and Italy appearing pink at dawn.

White towns, olive groves and the slowest trains in Italy. A week on the Bari to Lecce line and its little branch lines.

Alberobello and the Itria valley on the little Ferrovie del Sud Est line: conical roofs, dry-stone walls and a train that waits for you.

Palermo by overnight ferry from Naples, then round the island by the trains that run along the sea. Ten days, one loop.

Where the rails run out. The last night train from Madrid, Santa Apolónia at dawn, and the walk up to the Pantheon.

The best waterfront in the Balkans, seen from the night train from Sofia before the city has properly woken up.

Twenty minutes from Kadıköy to Eminönü, every morning I am home. Tea, simit, seagulls and the city arranged along the strait.

Yellow cobbles, a gold-domed cathedral, mountains at the end of every street and the cheapest good coffee in Europe.

Volos to the Sporades and back: three islands, four ferries, one very small notebook and no timetable that survived contact with the sea.