3/31/2006
Trains, part 8
My wife, Alice, and I went to Italy in 1999 to visit our son, Brody, who was living in Florence for the summer. We planned to spend a few days in Rome and then take the train north. Everyone suggested we take the bullet train; it was comfortable and quick, they said. But I wasn't in the mood for a bullet train.
Four years earlier, I spent five weeks in southern India with a Rotary exchange team, and I was delighted when I heard that we'd be traveling the breadth of the country by rail, from Mysore to Madras. But as it turned out, it was a high-speed train, equipped with seats in rows resembling a jetliner. The trip lasted all of three hours, and we saw almost nothing of the countryside - just a blur through windows caked with muddy dust.
So given a choice, I chose the slow train to Florence. It was June, and quite warm, so all the window in the car were open, and it was difficult to talk over the noise of the tracks. With remarkable regularity, we plunged into total darkness as the train entered long tunnels, and then the car was blasted by the blinding light of midday as we emerged on the other side. Gradually, Rome gave way to farmland and the rocky hills of Tuscany. Leaning my forehead against the vibrating window glass, I stared as this pastoral scene and, despite, the noise, began to nod off toward sleep when suddenly I was lifted from my seat by the concussion of a bullet train passing in the other direction. This happened several more times during the trip, and each time the shock wave (or perhaps just the noises of several thousand tons of steel passing a few feet from my open window at about 200 mph) rocketed me six inches off my cushion and set my heart to fluttering.
Damn those bullet trains!
