By Anthony Carson

The train from Calais was plastered with names. Strasbourg — Basel — Innsbruck.— Salzburg — Vien­na — Budapest — Bucharest.

I stood outside my carriage and stared at the placard, thinking how timeless the Grand European Expresses are. The whistle blew. The train started.

I had a meal in the dining-car and returned to my car­riage. It was crammed with French people. They were reading "Paris Match" and "Paris Soir" and "Figaro".I fell asleep and woke up into night. All the French people had gone but one elderly man with an enormous ginger moustache. In the rack above his head was a huge wooden box. An undertaker? A florist? Did the box contain a body, a bomb, or begonias? However, he looked a sober, careful man, smoking a pipe. We nodded to each other. Somehow I was glad to see him, to fix my thoughts on him. After all, I thought, examining his beautiful moustache, I was a European, too.

"Where are we?" I asked in French.

He took out his pipe and shook his head.

I tried my lumbering German. "Are we in France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary or Rumania?" I asked.

"We are still in France," he said. "Shortly we will be in Strasbourg."

"Do you belong to Strasbourg?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I live in Douai. I am going to the Strasbourg Fair."

"But you are German."

"Yes. But that is another thing. It is in the past. Now I breed certain small animals for the Strasbourg Fair. The Strasbourg Fair is a wonderful thing; it must be seen to be believed. Particularly the section of the small animals."

I looked up at the box above his head.

He smiled and nodded. "Kaninchen," he explained. I didn't know the word.

I brought down my bag, opened it and took out my dictionary. "Kaninchen." Rabbits.

"Yes, yes," I said.

"Exactly," he cried. He was so pleased that he brought down the shiny, ancient box and opened it and out sprang the rabbits."

We fed them with lettuce and carrots and half an old sandwich, and then they were packed up in the box, the train slowed down and it was Strasbourg. "Good luck with the rabbits," I said, shaking him by the hand.

I slept again. Suddenly I was woken up. A stream of officials stood in the bright light.

"Where am I?" I asked in Spanish.

"Switzerland," said an official. "Have you anything to declare?"

"Nothing," I said.

"No cigarettes, spirits or silk?"

"No," I said.

"Is that your bag? May we open it?"

"Yes," I said.

They opened it and somebody whistled. "Kaninchen," he said. "A really first-class Kaninchen. So. Dutiable, Herr Kapitan?"

I jumped up and stared at the Kaninchen. "It's not my Kaninchen," I cried. "It's for the Strasbourg Fair." I explained my story.

"I opened the bag to look up the word," I said, "and it must have jumped into the bag under my shirt."

"You have a British passport?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then it is in order," said the captain. In the Grand European Expresses, if nowhere else, the Englishman is a gentleman above reproach.

"Thank you," I said. He gave me a sheet of paper and signed it.

DOCTOR AT LARGE