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Sirkeci Station is Istanbul's
terminus for trains from Edirne and
Europe.
This is where the famed Orient
Express ended its
run from Paris, at the 19th-century
Orientalist station near Seraglio
Point beneath the walls of Topkapi
Palace, right next to Eminönü,
its ferry docks,
and Galata
Bridge.
You can go by suburban
train (banliyö treni) between Sirkeci
and Istanbul's Atatürk Airport.
Whether you take a train or
not, it's worth it just to stroll
through the station and imagine
the famous 19th-century luxury train
pulling into Sirkeci with its eminent
passengers being met by uniformed dragomans (guide-interpreters)
from the great European embassies.
You may even see Whirling
Dervishes here! "Contemporary
Lovers of Mevlana" organizes
a Mevlevi sema (whirling
ceremony) each Sunday, Wednesday
and Friday evening at 19:30 (7:30
pm) for about US$15.
Buses and airplanes now
carry more passengers between Istanbul and
Europe than do trains. The conflict
in Bosnia during the 1990s further
reduced train traffic, as the trains
couldn't run through the war zone of
dismembered Yugoslavia.
Several trains still run between Sirkeci
and Edirne each
day, and a few others head off to Central
and Eastern Europe, but except
for the Friendship Express to Thessaloniki,
Greece, they mostly are slow, somewhat
scruffy, and sometimes
even dangerous (thieves)—for
adventurers only.
As for Edirne,
it's much faster to go there by bus from
Istanbul's Büyük
Otogar (main bus
terminal).
If you ride trains in
Turkey, they'll most likely depart
from Haydarpasa
Station on the Asian shore
of the Bosphorus,
reached by frequent ferries from Karaköy (Galata),
at the northern end of Galata
Bridge.
Haydarpasa
Station
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