Bruxelless express^{57’00’’}

Zagreb, the capital of the youngest member of the European Union, was for decades passed through by the Orient Express, the legendary train connecting Northwest and Southeast Europe. The direct train from Paris to Istanbul set off on its first journey exactly 130 years ago. Zagreb was the halfway point of its 3000-kilometer-long route.

Filming a travelogue, we take the historic route from Istanbul through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Trieste, Venice and Milan, to Paris; then continue on to Bruxelles, the seat of the European Union. We pass through eight countries, switch nine trains, and spend a total of 54 hours in them. We stop in all 10 cities and uncover a piece of their daily lives.

Our guide through Istanbul is Zoran Rosandić, a Croatian pilot who has been living and working there for several years. We discover Zagreb through Ludo Beaurain, a Belgian construction engineer and the former head of the restoration project on the Jakuševac landfill, who today works as a distributor of Belgian beer. In Bruxelles, we are welcomed by Turkish actress and singer Sibel Dinçer, who has a successful career as an artist in that multicultural city. The passengers are the ones who take the floor in the trains, on the way to their stations. Somewhere in Europe.