I have quite the soft spot for trains and train stations. Must be the nostalgia of my backpacker days. It feels comforting to be on a real train and not just a subway car. That feeling of running past sites and sounds of a landscape as you head on a long journey flying past trees, hills, small towns and racing with cars.
Today it snows outside the train car's window. As we head west, the water drops slowly transform into slushy ice. And further out as we speed past Minneola, the sleet has transformed itself into a powdery snow that now blankets the platform, billboards and parked cars. It is the quiet peacefulness that the atmosphere outside invokes that reminds me of how trains were always my most favorite places to reflect on travels of the past, the present, and to build my future journeys.
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On our first long weekend in the Spring semester of 2005, I decided to take a solo journey from Florence to Palermo, Sicily. A ballsy move for someone who was still learning the language, I decided that the best way to delve into the culture was to step outside the bounds of my comfort zone (namely, a 4-villa estate filled with American students, most of whom had no interest in Italian culture beyond making out with Italians and getting drunk on wine), take a 13-hour ride on a midnight train to the depths of Italy where there was slim chance of encountering an english-speaking native.
That night, I ran to the Santa Maria Novella train station with my pre-bought tickets and hopped on the first car sitting on the via where my train was going to be--at least it said so on the printed schedule.
The train begins to move and I realize that it seemed far more of a commuter train than a sleeper train... but I didn't think too much of it... until the man who sat across from me asked me where I was headed in Italian, and in my spantalian, I replied "a train bound for Sicily".
Surprise, surprise. The train I was on was headed for the hills, quite literally. It was, indeed, a commuter train bound for the hills of Fiesole and completely chugging in the wrong direction.
I started to slightly panic, strode to the first conductor I could find, and told him my dilemma. He runs off to the engineer and talks some stuff that was beyond my 2-week Italian comprehension, and next thing I know, I was being left behind on a station platform in the middle of no-where-Tuscany hoping I wouldn't get mugged or kidnapped... and praying that maybe I'll run into some nun who will help me find my way.
The conductor said just wait at the platform and everything would be okay. They waved goodbye and started chugging off into the darkness... and boy, was it dark.
But no more than 5-minutes later, a train heading back to Santa Maria Novella arrived with the new conductor telling me I could catch my train for Sicily at the closer station one stop before the Florence city center... Turns out they communicated to find out where they would be crossing paths so I could quickly take my train back.
Thus began my most memorable first trip on my own and my love affair with Italy, its people, its culture, and of course, its gastronomic brilliance.
