London to the Black Sea… by train

Every five years the choir I sing in (the London Bulgarian Choir) tours Bulgaria. The tour has come round again, and this year things are kicking off at the Black Sea resort of Primorsko. When fellow singer Bernard, ever mindful of his carbon footprint, suggests travelling there by train, I don't hesitate. My first job in London was working for an international train company and I can't think of anything more fun than reliving the days when I'd criss-cross Europe by train in my time off. 

The train crew

The first leg of the journey is Eurostar to Paris, where I'm meeting the other five singers who are joining the overland adventure. I find them at the end of the platform.

All aboard at Gare de l'Est

The second leg is a fast train from Paris to Munich. We while away the hours playing Scrabble and watching Germany whizz by from the bar car. Following a slap-up meal of Bavarian carbs, washed down with giant glasses of beer, in a great restaurant inside Munich station, we go off to find our overnight train.

Sleeper to Zagreb and the gymnastics begin

The third leg is from Munich to Zagreb, Croatia, in a six-berth couchette. It's a bright, clean space, with bed linen provided for the three fold-down bunks on each side. But it's incredibly cramped, so it's one at a time as we sort out our bags, extract nightwear and toothbrushes and take it in turns to slot ourselves in. It's like a game of human Jenga. Since Zagreb is around the halfway point, in time and distance, we've booked an apartment for the night. But it's early in the morning so we cram our collected baggage into some lockers and head off in search of breakfast. 

Zagreb old town

Zagreb turns out to be a delight. The civic buildings have the feel of central European capitals with expansive cobbled squares and grand facades, while the churches feature onion-dome steeples and patterned roofs and remind me of Vienna. 

Getting high

I climb the tower for a view over the pretty red-tile roofs of the city centre and we all meet up in the Museum of Broken Relationships, a stylishly curated collection of mementos provided by contributors from all over the world, with the story of the ending of the relationship alongside. Visiting the museum is quite a journey – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but often heartbreakingly sad. 

The Museum of Broken Relationships

We lunch in a vegan cafe – yes, really – and in the evening dine in a highly recommended place in the old town where we are hilariously entertained by the banter between the dry-witted waiter and our friend Slaveia, who ends the evening with an invitation to visit the old lady who supplies the restaurant's outstanding olive oil, on her Croatian island.

Croatian coffee waiter

The fourth leg is from Zagreb to Belgrade, Serbia, the next morning, and the most eventful journey so far. Luckily we've reserved seats because the train is heaving. Much to our dismay, we have to turf out an old Serbian lady in a headscarf, but we find her another seat and she makes our day by donning mirrored Elvis sunglasses and twinkling at us from behind them for the rest of the journey.

Forever young

Two doped up pickpockets try to embark on a thieving spree along he carriage  but are blasted out by an eagle-eyed fellow passenger, and by our Bernard, who bravely fronts up to one of them. Meanwhile, the rest of the chaps are being given a severe dressing down by a female border guard for not having their passports to hand. They're secretly thrilled.

Our ticket office, Bernard 

And as we roll on through Serbia, we sing the only Serbian song we know, Aide Jano, and the rest of the carriage quietly joins in. One woman, her curiosity peaked, starts asking questions. She's sings a bit herself, she says. When we ask her to give us a song, she says she will need a minute or two to prepare. She comes back and begins to sing – something classical. Oh boy, she is good. Her clear voice resonates throughout the carriage and when she finishes everyone bursts into spontaneous applause. What a welcome to Belgrade.

Exploring Belgrade

We have a few hours to kill here, so we stash our bags and go off to explore. If the station feels a bit down at heel, the park outside resembles a refugee camp. Syrians, someone says. But it's before the overland migration hit the headlines so we're really not sure. Belgrade is being called the new Berlin and it's certainly got the edgy street art, the hippies in harem pants, and the stylish bars set in crumbling buildings. It has an iconic landmark that everyone gravitates towards, the castle, and we sit in a bar inside the old walls watching the sun set. We grab delicious filled pittas on the main drag, a long pedestrian street heaving with pavement restaurants and Saturday night crowds.

Alley cat 

King of the castle

The fifth leg is from Belgrade to Sofia, overnight. Back at the station, we wheel our luggage to the platform and wait for the graffiti-covered heap of junk that's sitting there to pull out. Then we realise it's not going to pull out, because it is our train. 

All we can do is laugh

It's worse on board. The compartment dimensions seem to have shrunk, the ladder is broken so we can't reach the top bunks, there's a massive hole in the ceiling, and all the curtains are hanging by a thread. The toilet is worse than anything I've seen at a festival, with a noxious gas in the air that has clearly been created by all the waste matter that is never cleaned away. Ugh. On the plus side, the train is so decrepit that the windows don't close, which means a cool, relatively refreshing breeze blows through the carriage all night.

More human Jenga

The next morning we wake up expecting to see the outskirts of Sofia. Slaveia talks to the guard in a hybrid Serbian/Bulgarian and we learn that we're still in Serbia. In fact, we're only a couple of hours out of Belgrade. The train had broken down in the night and by the time they fixed it, all the slots on the single-track line had been missed. Worse still, we'd been expecting to breakfast in Sofia, so have nothing to eat. Slaveia charms the guard into brewing us coffee, and parting with some of the fizzy drinks in his private fridge, and we survive on those, along with Eleanor's gluten-free snacks. 

Slaveia's hard-won coffee

Dreaming of breakfast

As we cross the border into Bulgaria, a whopping eight hours behind schedule, we sing Hubava Si Moya Goro, a Bulgarian anthem that goes, How Beautiful My Forest. 

Canine welcome at the border

The sixth leg is from Sofia to Burgas. There's a flurry of activity at Sofia station as we run around buying food, finding cash, purchasing new tickets. This train is clean and relatively contemporary – even the loos – apart from the door that keeps spontaneously slamming open. It's late when we pull into Burgas, past a vast and eerily illuminated chemical plant.

Health and safety be damned

Night lights near Burgas

The seventh and final leg is by taxi from Burgas to Primorsko, where we find showers, clean beds, the lovely friendly faces of the London Bulgarian Choir and, the following morning, a symbolic paddle in the sea. After four days, six trains and a distance of almost 1,800 miles, I think we've earned a rest.

Dipping my toes in the Black Sea