There’s nothing heroic about riding the length of Italy from north to south in a second-class seat; still, it’s good for you. A train compartment induces conversation, and the confinement of the place reveals a lot about Italy. American students, instead of spending a semester in foreigners-packed Florence, should board a train like this, and listen.
The mysterious disappearance of three carriages this morning, and the renumbering of the remaining ones, with resulting chaos in the numbered seating, would have caused a hysterical fit if the passengers were from northern Europe. Not so among the Italians, who today, here, in our presence, struggle to make up for the ineptitude of Trenitalia, dealing with double-booked seats and immense suitcases. They look at one another, they inquire, and they offer advice and console one another. “If you only knew, my dear signore . . . !” “Don’t worry, signorina. Let me help you with this.”
A pair of Neapolitans—mother and daughter—read Diva e Donna, a women’s magazine. They travel with flowers and shopping bags, tell me that they’re fans of Silvio Berlusconi, and decide to take responsibility for my nourishment: small panini appear with cubes of pancetta, focaccia with herbs, and tangerines. Outside, in the sun, the steep slopes of Liguria fall away as we near Tuscany. The conductor has a weary, philosophical expression. He confesses his undying love for these old compartments, but he’s perplexed by the geography of the railways along this coast of Italy: “The tunnels are small—they seem like they’ve been here forever. Every so often I look at them and wonder, will we be able to fit into them and get back out?”
I’m tempted to tell him that’s the same question that we all ask ourselves all the time, for the whole of Italy. Will we get out of the tunnel? But it’s best not to overthink it and just keep going.
Livorno–Perugia
Livorno is a city that is rarely given its due. It’s open to the sea and to political arguments, both of which are fascinating things. A taxi driver remembers when he used to climb on his motorcycle and set out for Trieste with a thermos full of ponce (pronounced more or less like punch), a beloved local alcoholic concoction; he comes close to tears. Livorno witnessed the founding of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. The city is leftist by personality and history, the perfect place to ask all those who don’t flee at the sight of a notebook, what do they think of Matteo Renzi, the wonder boy of Italian left-wing politics, born and bred here in Tuscany?
We walk into the station, where the Regionale Veloce no. 3114 awaits us. The first adjective (regional) is undeniable, because we’re going to Florence, which is in the same region; as for the second one (veloce, or fast), we might reasonably argue some of the finer points. Says a young woman who is an office worker and a commuter: “Matteo Renzi? The former mayor of Florence? The left wing I like is quite different, the left wing that doesn’t privatize a city’s public transportation system!” The second young woman, who studies architecture, says: “I don’t know if I’ll be voting for Matteo Renzi’s party, but I’ll vote!” The third young woman, age nineteen, works as a barista in Pisa, and she asks: “Who’s Matteo Renzi?”
We pull into the station of Santa Maria Novella. Standing in front of the departures board—nose in the air, hands in his pockets—is Signor Cornini. Impossible to miss him: floppy hat, rumpled jacket, he looks like a British country squire, just back from the hunt. He’s a banker by profession, and when we ask him his opinion about Italian politics, he snaps: “When it comes to failing state-owned companies, the left lacks courage!” Then he looks up to see whether the departure for his train is going to pop up, like a quail on a foggy moor.
Trains are a soft drug: you quickly get used to these temporary acquaintanceships, these people who confide without consequences, the mechanical and psychological pitch and roll. What the British love about trains is their predictability: they wait for them to go by at level crossings (they call it trainspotting); they study the timetables and appreciate the rituals (these are rail buffs). Nothing about an Italian train, in contrast, is predictable. No one ever does what you might expect. The shyest passenger, once prodded to speak, proves to be a motormouth; the toughest woman turns out to be solicitous and kind. Conductors don’t ask why I interview fellow passengers. Their expressions tell me: “Anyone who travels by train for ten days listening to anyone is a hero, a masochist, or a lunatic. In any case, he deserves our sympathy.”
Matteo Renzi is a good topic of conversation. In Tuscany, you need only say the name and you’re bound to prompt reactions: passionate or argumentative, full of support or sarcasm, never indifference. The most common sentiment, even among those who wouldn’t have voted for him, is regret—the election would have been more interesting with him in it. A great many say the same thing: he’s un bischero nuovo (a new jerk, using the distinctively Tuscan term bischero). Instead we’re condemned to the same old thing; and Tuscany is as allergic to boredom as cats are to water.
Perugia–L’Aquila–Pescara
I read in Michael Kerr’s Last Call for the Dining Car that a reader wrote to the Daily Telegraph in praise of late trains and justifying the high prices: “The purpose of railways is not to convey people as quickly as possible from A to B, but rather to recall modern man from his headlong rush to nowhere by providing him with a time-opportunity to consider whether his journey from cradle to shroud is worthwhile. As Mr. T. S. Eliot has observed: ‘You are not the same people who left that station / Or who will arrive at any terminus.’ The railways are one of the few remaining English institutions that provide such an opportunity for reflection—and who would begrudge an extra pound for such an invaluable public service?”
It would be interesting to read this quotation aloud at Perugia Centrale station, at eight forty-five in the morning, while the vending machine refuses to spit out the ticket (though it’s taken the money for it), and Signor Beniamino Cenci Goga, who introduces himself as “monarchist and Marxist,” inquires politely about my destination.
Maybe Italy will never change, but I’m certainly going to. Today: Perugia, Foligno, and Terni in Umbria; Rieti in Lazio; L’Aquila, Sulmona, and Pescara in Abruzzi. While waiting for my first connecting train, I meet Ernesto, twenty-three years old, parka and backpack, law student. He’s about to set off on a nine-hour trip to Brindisi, and his departure is already delayed by half an hour. “Trapani? By train? You’re nuts. You’d be better off hitchhiking.”
The problem isn’t just getting south: it’s getting across. Cutting horizontally across Italy, seated inside a railway car, is a form of heroism. The main railroads run along Italy’s length from north to south, and follow the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts. Between them lie the Apennines, the country’s impervious spine. But the diesel locomotive ALn668 with manual transmission offers plenty of consolations: it passes over the snowy peaks, skirts around sheer crags, and slips through tiny tunnels. Italy, between Umbria and upper Lazio, seems to be a model railroad. Aboard the minitrain, in the bright February light, there are six passengers, including me. A solitary Brazilian woman. A little boy who obstinately keeps trying to slam against the door separating the two train cars. His mother, who keeps trying to dissuade him from it. On the right side, colorful graffiti obstructs the view from the bottom half of the windows; anyone who wishes to look out and see Umbria sliding away toward Rieti, standing room only.
At Rieti a medical student boards the train, dressed as Beau Brummell and heading for L’Aquila. On Monte Giano, in the distance, the trees have been planted so as to form an immense sign reading DUX, a scary reference to Benito Mussolini. It’s a family-run little train; they even let us get footage of the driver’s compartment. We reach L’Aquila, heralded by the so-called “new towns,” set on cement legs, like colorful insects. Faithful to the railway inspiration of this journey, I won’t be leaving the station. I’ll stay here and ask about the earthquake of 2010, the reconstruction, and the recovery that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Roberto, bari
sta: “My grade for the reconstruction? An F. Nothing but a face-lift. Go take a look at what the ‘new towns’ really are—they’re full of cracks and holes.” Bruno, recently back from America: “We should bring back Berlusconi! They’ve had it up to here around these parts. Everyone’s stressed out. Where I live, there’s no work, not so much as a wheelbarrow in sight!” Mario, train conductor: “The first thing? Logistics and services. Otherwise this city is done for. There’s nothing left downtown.” Giovanna, maintenance worker: “Jobs for the young, or else they’ll all just leave. My grade to the government for the reconstruction? I’d give them a D.”
Another diesel-powered minitrain, the Maiella Mountains ahead of us, then the Aterno River valley, and Sulmona. Train station cafés shape travelers’ moods. Nothing can shake the equanimity of those who look on, under neon fluorescent light, as an Abruzzese finger sandwich takes a Ligurian name, or the other way around. But in Sulmona the female barista, queen of her domain of scratch-and-win tickets and chocolate bars, is in a cheerful frame of mind. A young man comes over and, for unknown reasons, swears. She asks him to shut up, and he does.
We pull out. Abruzzo rolls past, as we descend toward the Adriatic, and the country changes its mood. The eastern, Adriatic side of the Italian boot may not be as spectacular as the western, Tyrrhenian side, but it’s jollier. Gangs of eighteen-year-olds head to Silvi Marina. When I ask them to confirm the name of the station we see approaching, they shout in chorus: “Pescara!” As they get out under the station’s bright lights, they seem content. And they’re right: it’s an Italian Saturday night, after all.
Pescara–Foggia–Benevento
Boarding the Frecciabianca no. 9803 for Foggia, after two days of back and forth aboard regional trains between Livorno and Pescara, is like going from a rowboat to a cabin cruiser. A tray table! A spacious seat! Only limited noise! A clean window! Stunned by all the luxury, in the calm of a railway car on Sunday, I open my newspaper and read about political corruption, scandals, sentencings, escapades of all sorts. Then I look at the faces around me in second class: everyone knows about this state of affairs, but they don’t look angry about it. Not good.
We left the station at 12:40 p.m. There were no trains available earlier in the day, and that proved to be an advantage. Pescara is worth exploring, and Sunday morning is the ideal time for that. It’s a city on the sea that never forgets it’s on the sea; a city aided by geography and inclined to fantasy. Two great, unusual Italian writers, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ennio Flaiano, are both from here. Pescara is a charming “P Town”; like its alphabetical sister towns—Perugia, Pisa, Pistoia, Parma, Piacenza, Pavia, Padua—it has known its ups and downs, and yet it has everything it needs to be happy. Low profile, medium size, high potential. A good place to visit if you want to know Italy. Pescara offers the right mix of mild unpredictability and sensory reassurance that is Italy’s trademark. A town like this is far from perfect—some of the new housing on the seashore is pretty ugly, to be honest. But it represents the stunning, ordinary charm of the country better than our world-famous art cities. Rome, Venice, and Florence are unique and breathtaking: they intimidate you. Pescara takes you by the hand and slowly teaches you what Italy is about. It’s smiles and waterways, lush greenery and lighthearted conversation, seafood served by old, ceremonious waiters, and lovely breakfasts in Corso Umberto.
The train rolls down the Adriatic coast; it enters Molise, Italy’s second-smallest region. The sea is blue-gray; the empty white stabilimenti balneari, as the paying beach clubs are called, await better days. Sirena Beach, Bagni Blutur, then the city of Termoli: another T in this trip from Trieste to Trapani. Dunes, beaches, maritime pines. Everything becomes more spacious, calmer, different. Around here, invisibly, we cross the border to the South.
The Gargano Promontory appears through the mist, beyond flat fields and vineyards. We arrive in Foggia, which I recently visited as a guest of a high school. I think of the impressive students I met and the strange fate of the Italian South: unless these cities clean up and change, the young people won’t stay; if the young people won’t stay, these cities won’t change. An odd Mediterranean catch-22, a trap we should try to find a way out of.
I decide to buttonhole the entire carriage no. 7 of train no. 9354 for Benevento for an impromptu opinion poll: how’s Italy doing? The level of tolerance for this unasked-for buttonholing is high; the percentage of abstention is low. Nicola, age thirty-six, believes that the real gap isn’t between generations, but between well-informed people and uninformed people. Francesca is traveling with her husband and two children to Rome, where she goes periodically for medical treatment. She hopes things will pick up, but she’s not counting on it. When she talks about her family’s problems, with her daughter in her arms, she doesn’t feel angry. She feels sad. “I don’t want to give up,” she says.
We enter Campania, the twelfth region of this trip, and pull into Benevento, midway between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. In the station, policemen and nuns in the wilderness of Sunday. Just outside the station, posters that seem to have been there forever. “The Economic Downturn Is Extinguishing Nightlife in the Center of Town,” announces the local edition of Il Mattino. “More Bankruptcies and Fewer Divorces: Blame It on the Economic Downturn” is the headline in Il Sannio. Business is shaky and more people are staying married because they can’t afford to split up, in other words. Not good news for the battered Italian South.
Benevento–Bari–Taranto
I’ve developed a certain dislike for Uncle Giuseppe, continually mentioned in the phone calls that my across-the-aisle neighbor is conducting from Benevento to Bari. Audio spammers such as this guy are everywhere among us. They call five relatives, four colleagues, all sorts of old friends. These aren’t urgent phone calls, just a way of passing the time and annoying one’s neighbors.
Better mannered and far more interesting, it turns out, is Pablo, a toy poodle bred-in-the-bone native of Bari. The trip proceeds loquaciously—if Uncle Giuseppe is in need of a biographer, we’re certainly up to the task—and Bari awaits us in the sunshine. Palm trees, the ocher yellow train station, dark-haired, quick-stepping women, the usual policemen everywhere. Standing on the platform, erect and solitary as a figure by Magritte, is a gentleman named Enzo. He introduces himself as an advertising executive with offices in Milan, London, and Padua, an expert in “Jungian psychometric processes.” I cannot bring myself to tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about.
My next train departs from the “truncated Taranto track” situated between Track 3 and Track 4. A sort of Track 3½. In order to know that, though, you’d have to be Harry Potter. The directions are vague; the suitcases are bulky. I get there just as the conductor starts waving his arms and yelling, “Come on! Come on!”
After Acquaviva delle Fonti and Gioia del Colle—“Live Water from the Springs,” “Happiness of the Hill”; the place-names of Puglia are poetic—the regional train no. 3163 heads down to the Ionian Sea through olive groves, vineyards, deep skies, and flat roofs. The train is short, clean, colorful, and efficient; at the center of each car, it offers charming seating areas complete with bow windows. It was purchased with funds from the European Union, a young man informs me.
The immense Ilva steel mill in Taranto suddenly looms up on our left. It is Italy’s—and Europe’s—largest steelworks. It employs eleven thousand people in the area. But it turned out to be an environmental nightmare. It has long been suspected of killing off local people by belching into the air a mix of minerals, metals, and carcinogenic dioxins. Shut it down or keep it open? A young lawyer explains: “It’s like being asked to choose between your health and your job; no one is willing to make that choice.” An out-of-towner who works in the city: “Ilva is a harmful presence here. But shutting it down would do even more harm.” A voice rings out from the back of the passenger car: “Around here, nobody talks about anything but Ilva!” Rosa Salemme listens to
us: “I’ve been breathing the air of Taranto for twenty-seven years. We consider Ilva to be something inevitable, but we need to start imagining an alternative. Go to the Tamburi neighborhood—it’s right at the foot of the smokestacks: the whole place is orange.”
Tamburi is in Taranto; we’re arriving from Trieste and heading for Trapani: the T-junctions are starting to become quite numerous.
Taranto–Reggio Calabria
In eight days the train has carried me from Trieste all the way here, on the Ionian Sea, right under the sole of the Italian boot. Metaponto, in Basilicata, is proud of its new train station: five tracks, a renovation project that received financing to the tune of eighteen million euros from the European Union. But only one train comes through here a day, the Intercity for Rome: it drops me off at 8:21 in the morning, and from then on, it’s my tough luck—or rather, my tough bus. If you want to travel farther south, to Calabria and Sicily—as I do—you have to take a replacement bus.
But who says that trains are indispensable to the successful operation of a railway station? In the bar of Metaponto railway station, I meet local farmers, who produce magnificent artichokes, spinach, and eggplants, vegetables that might reach central and northern Italy by train, the way they once did; instead, they contribute to traffic jams on the highways. Not even this is enough to change the mood of the clientele. This morning they are talking about taxes. They have a sense of humor in Basilicata—they refuse to admit that tax evasion is a serious problem in Italy. Actually they would like the proposal to liberalize the use of cash. “If money doesn’t circulate, blood doesn’t circulate!” says Mario, a farmer.
Off the Rails Page 15