Sleeper to the Most Serene Republic.

Imagine the anticipation of stepping on board a train, all aglow, as the brisk winter’s evening has just fallen.

Budapest, the neglected beauty on the Danube, is a city of friendly people, opulent buildings, golden domes, thermal baths and opera.  A foreign city robs you of your prejudices about different neighborhoods—you look at everything with fresh virgin eyes.

Keleti pályaudvar, Budapest's Eastern railway station, does not rank among the world's greatest termini. It has neither the presence of Grand Central Station, New York, the imperial thrust of Milan's homage to the Roman Empire, nor the glamour of London's St. Pancras. Yet, not withstanding its deja vue look it conjures up a spirit of bygone era adventure.

For it is from here that Hungary connects with the outside world. Daily the trains depart for Moscow, for Bucharest and the Black Sea, for Thessalonika and the warmth of the Greek isles, for Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, stretching still further to the Baltic States and onwards into Scandinavia. And it is from here, around five-thirty each afternoon that the overnight train for Venice departs.

I departed Budapest thinking of these two quotes by Thomas Szasz: “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget” and “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”

Although designated 'Inter City', complete with 'Wagons-Lits' and 'Dining Car', this is no express. For the first two to three hours it meanders slowly southwards, a stopping train for the resorts of the Balaton, Hungary's 'sea' and the largest inland lake in Europe. But what spectacular scenery as the sun dips down over a sheer expanse of water.

As night falls the train passes over the border and into Croatia.  Gone midnight and we are in Zagreb. Student backpackers, mostly Italian, homeward bound, jostle the corridors and gangways seeking seats. In the early hours we reach Ljubljana. Then a peace descend and the train slides into Italy, on to Mestre, and finally to its destination, the Queen of the Adriatic, Venice.

A brief ride on the Vaporetto delivers me to my home away from home in the Sestiere Dorsoduro.  Sandwiched between two side canals and affording direct views onto the Grand Canal, and rarest of all a courtyard garden. A shady bower, vine hung, edges the water, the quiet disturbed by no more than the splash of a gondola oar and the chirping of sparrows. Perfect. Whilst behind the palazzo a lawned area, surrounded with perennial borders and palms, provides all the seclusion one could possibly require.

I ask for nothing more. A short walk and I am at the Gallerie dell' Accademia renewing a friendship with Bellini. A step further and I am at the magnificently restored Ca' Rezzonico, it too with a shady garden, home to the English painter Robert Browning and one time studio of the American portraitist John Singer Sargent. Two steps on and once more I am in heaven, for is there anything more wondrous, more uplifting than the Scuola S. Rocco with its accumulated works of Tintoretto? I think not.