In the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows there’s a word that matches how I felt when I woke up aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. ‘Ambedo’, the book states, is a melancholic trance in which one becomes absorbed in vivid sensory details: raindrops on a window; clouds of milk swirling in coffee.
I observed both in my bijou suite while listening to sulky Chet Baker. Sad jazz helped me to tune into the period charisma this train swaddles you in. The carriage around me – all deco brass and glossy marquetry – has hosted a hundred years of hedonism. In that quiet moment, I could feel the echo of that merrymaking and it made me a bit sad.
