One of the great fantasy novel beginings of all time

Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there.

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, c. 1958