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Into Le Drugstore. Wagons-Lits now runs and partly owns more than 40 hotels and restaurants in ten countries. Its 16,000 employees (specially trained in two Paris schools) staff restaurants or bars in most of Europe's railway stations, also cater meals for 33 airlines. The firm also retains a 25% interest in Thos. Cook & Son travel agency, shares quarters and billing with it in many cities. Having built France's first motel in 1955, Wagons-Lits feels that motels are the big business of the future in Europe, has already invested in eleven in seven countries, including one in the Italian Alps that is strategically located near the transalpine tunnels. The company has decided to go into le drugstore, a spreading phenomenon in Europe, by putting up half the $2,000,000 cost of a mammoth new one opposite the Paris Opera; unlike ordinary Parisian pharmacies, this establishment will sell everything from Scotch to Scotch tape.
* Two express trains bear the name Orient, but only one (the Direct-Orient) makes the 1,889-mile journey to Istanbul that links Paris and the West with the gateway to the East. Wagons-Lits still operates sleeping cars on this train, which goes along a southerly route that bypasses Bucharest.