Interlude: Train, river, tourism
Train from Venice to Rome
15:20 – 21:05, 20th Jul 1997
On the train south: after Bologna the countryside was uncannily like Maharashtra – green and hilly, the farms and houses more like India than England. Sunflower fields. The whole train journey was about 5.5 hrs, and I didn’t once fall asleep, alternately writing this letter and drinking in the scenery. After Bologna the train passes through so many tunnels, that it’s almost as if it’s an underground route to Rome!
Interlude – Rivers of Italy
The rivers I’d crossed on the way down were worth noting. Between Turin and Milan, we crossed what seemed like many rivers, but l looked it up to be a single one – the Po, which winds back and forth as though reluctant to go anywhere. Also seen in this stretch of the journey were many mountain streams from the snow-capped Alps – the tributaries of the Po, presumably. All rivers make my heart soar. Especially clean, fast-flowing ones. Something magical about them. From Milan to Venice, the Adige: swift and full-bodied, in the middle of her journey to the sea. The Tiber – the Tevere – is not what the Seine is to Paris or the Thames is to London. It is more like the Adyar to Madras or the Mula Mutha to Pune: tucked away in an inconspicuous corner, sadly ignored except for the occasional sunset photograph for tourist postcards.
A side rant on tourism
Yes, I notice the irony, being one of “them”. I wonder if our civilization were to be destroyed and thousands of years later, if some intelligent beings discover earth, what sense they’d make of us: will they ever piece together life as it exists today? Will this tourism craze leave a mark? Different disjointed cultures and objects… it won’t be easy piecing together a coherent story from excavated evidence.
