Unit 3
This story is set on
the Orient Express, a train that travels
through seven countries in Europe to go from Paris, France, over the Alps to Istanbul, Turkey.
Running from Paris to Istanbul, the Orient Express is a first-class hotel on wheels. Once a year, travelers can ride the luxury train across Europe just to enjoy the journey, but it's hard work to make the grand train run smoothly. Who is responsible for the train's success? What unique difficulties do they face?
I. The Orient Express. Read the paragraph. Then match each word or phrase with the correct definition.
The legendary Orient Express became well known in a bygone era as it carried Europe's wealthy and royal passengers between France and Turkey. With its luxurious d閏or, the Orient Express evokes images of elegance, romance, and mystery. While the routes may be different now, passengers aboard this luxury train can still be pampered with delicious, first-class cuisine and excellent service as they travel through the varied terrain of Europe. 1. bygone era _F __ A. the natural features of land; the landscape 2. royal ___G___ B. the art and science of cooking 3. dacor ____D__ C. bring out a feeling or thought
4. evoke ____C__ D. the decorative environment of a place
5. romance __H____ E. spoil; take more care of than is necessary 6. pamper ___E___ F. a period of time in the past
7. cuisine ___B___ G. related to or appropriate for a king or queen
8. terrain ___A___ H. a feeling of excitement, adventure, and happiness
II. Working on a Legend. Read the definitions of the types of jobs found on the Orient Express. Then label the pictures with the correct underlined words. 1. maitre d’ 2. bartender 3. chef
4. cabin steward
SUMMARY
The Orient Express is a train that has captured the hearts and imaginations of people from royalty to writers over the last century. The train still makes its historical journey from Paris to Istanbul once a year, maintaining the quality of service and ambience of a bygone era. For most travelers, it is a once- in- a- lifetime dream come true. For the staff who work on the train, it is an exciting, challenging, and fulfilling job to keep this five-star hotel on wheels operating smoothly. Warming up
Teaching NOTES
1. To introduce the topic, ask students to look at the title and the cover picture and try to guess the answers to the following questions about the Orient Express:
1) Which continents does the train travel on? a. Oceania and Asia. b. Europe and America. c. Asia and Europe. 2) Approximately how old is the train? a. 5 years old. b. 25 years old. c. 100 years old. 3) How many times a year does the train make a tour? a. One. b. Nine. c. Fifteen.
2. Ask students to discuss what they think the train’s nickname ―the Train of Kings and the King of Trains‖ means.
3. Ask students whether they have ever heard of the novel Murder on the Orient Express. Introduce Agatha Christie to students. Encourage them to read the novel or watch the movie. The Orient Express
To most people, the Orient Express is more of an abstract concept than a tangible reality. Most people are familiar with its life in works of fiction and movies: Hercule Poirot solved his most famous case on it, Alfred Hitchock’s lady disappeared from it and James Bond rode it from Istanbul to London.
Originally, the Orient Express was the name of a long-distance passenger train established in 1883 that used various routes. Its first formal journey started on October 4, 1883 when the train set out from Paris to Istanbul, going through six countries. Many journalists traveled aboard to publicly marvel at the train’s luxurious facilities and beautiful environment. Aboard the train, the enchanted passengers felt as though they had entered one of Europe’s finest hotels; they admired the elaborate wooden paneling, deluxe leather armchairs, soft silk bed sheets and wool blankets. The original Orient Express offered regular international railway service, but because of its passengers, who were often diplomats, royalty, or government couriers, and its five-course French meals, the name has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel. It became the train of choice for Europe’s rich and high-class, and a rolling symbol of the economic contrasts of its age. It came to be called ―the King of Trains and the Train of Kings.‖
In 1977, having operated for nearly a century, the Orient Express service was terminated. It was immediately replaced by an overnight service from Paris to Vienna that ran for the very last time from Paris on June 8, 2007. Since then, the route, still called the ―Orient Express‖, started from Strasbourg instead and was much shorter. On 14 December 2009, the Orient Express ceased its operation and the famous route disappeared completely from European railway timetables, becoming the victim of high-speed trains and budget airlines. The Queen of Crime
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was an highly popular British author and playwright best known for her murder mystery and detective fiction. She was very prolific, who write an amazing amount of work in her lifetime, has sold over two billion books around the world and has been translated into at least 103 languages. She is best remembered for her 80 detective novels. Her works, especially those featuring detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, have earned her the title ―the Queen of Crime‖ and established her as an significant writer in the development of
the genre.
Agatha Christie wrote more than 30 novels featuring Poirot. Among the most famous were The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and Death on the Nile (1937). Agatha Christie’s last published novel,?Sleeping Murder, featured her other world-famous detective, the shrewdly inquisitive Miss Jane Marple.? Miss Marple appears in twelve novels, and twenty short stories. Both Poirot and Marple have been widely dramatized in feature films and television series.??Murder on the Orient Express?(1974), Witness for the Prosecution?(1957), And Then There Were None?(1945), and Death on the Nile?(1978) are some of the successful films based on her fiction.??With over one hundred novels and over one hundred translations into foreign languages, Agatha Christie became the best-selling English novelist of all time by the time of her death. Although her novels were in the crime fiction genre, their breadth of themes is quite diverse and extraordinary. This makes Agatha Christie one of the best-loved writers of all time.
Iron Curtain
―Iron Curtain‖ was used to define the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries from the NATO countries from about 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. It was a symbol of the military, political and ideological boundary splitting Europe into two separate regions. To the east of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were under the influence of the former Soviet Union. This included part of Germany (East Germany), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. The other countries to the west of the Iron Curtain had market economies, and with the exception of some periods of dictatorship in Spain, Portugal and Greece, were ruled by democratic governments.
Physically, the Iron Curtain took the shape of border defenses between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall, which was erected by the Soviets in 1961, gave this longtime symbol of the Curtain some physical presence. video SCRIPT
Narrator: With its famous boulevards, historic buildings, and elegant atmosphere, Paris is a city that the world often associates with romance. But there are also people here looking for something else: romance from another time. They want to return to an age when simply getting somewhere was an adventure, a time when Paris was the departure point for the world’s most famous train: the Orient Express. Tourist: ―Good Morning. How are you?‖
Narrator: This tourist is checking in to board the train once known as ―the Train of Kings and the King of Trains.‖ In every detail, including the beautiful décor, the Orient Express evokes the elegant images of a golden age. When it began operating at the turn of the 20th Century, the train carried members of Europe’s royal families and rich business leaders from Paris to Constantinople, or Istanbul, as the Turkish city is now called. These days, this luxurious train makes the journey once a year—and it’s a six-day journey some wait a lifetime to take.
Eli Gershovitch, Orient Express Passenger: ―What I really wanted to get out of the Orient Express was the feeling of going into a . . . stepping into a time machine. The
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