When planning my forthcoming European trip I have realised that I am going to live out a childhood dream of mine. To catch trains across Europe. I love trains - not the crowded, smelly city types, though. I'm talking about long train rides where you can take 3 magazines and 2 books and read them cover to cover and listen to some vibey tunes (or even, maybe not), and look out the window and marvel at a world rushing by in a watercolour blur. The train down the South Coast of Australia is one of the most spectacular I've ever been on. Amidst masses of countries - of cattle and sheep and spindly eucalyptus trees - suddenly emerges this azure blue sea, sparkling and shining. It's spectacular, to say the absolute least. I've always wanted to catch trains across Europe. To hop on the 8:00 at Gare de Lyon and end up in Geneva in time for lunch. It's that great brown land thing - it's remarkable to me that you can travel for 3 hours and end up in another country. In Australia you can travel for three hours and still be in the same state.
Whenever I think about trains I think about this editorial from Vogue UK December 2005. It was the first editorial that I ever loved, the first one that I ripped out and pasted on my walls, the first one that I looked at and thought - this is what fashion is all about. Telling stories, conjuring up moods, exotic locations and that aspirational quality that takes fashion beyond mere photography. When does a photograph of a girl in clothes become a fashion one? When you see that girl and you want to wear those clothes, be that girl. I wanted to be Rie Rasmussen - oh! I really did - and travel the trans-siberian express and eat caviar on toast every day and wear scarlet head to toe and play football with kids during a cigarette stop. Who knows where I'll be getting trains from when i'm in Europe this february - or where to. Maybe Venice, maybe Zurich, maybe Florence, maybe Copenhagen. To tell you the truth, it doesn't really matter. Because the minute I stand at that ticket booth I'll know where I want to go. And the train will take me there with just enough time to sit and think on the way.
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