The Way to Florence

I went on the world's slowest train to Florence. It limped across the landscape like a runner with a pulled muscle, and it had no buffet. At first it was crowded, but as afternoon gave way to evening and evening merged into the inkiness of night, there were fewer and fewer of us left, until eventually it was a businessman buried in paperwork and me. Every two or three miles the train stopped at some darkened station where no train had stopped for weeks, where grass grew on the platforms and where no one got on and no one got off. Sometimes the train would come to a halt in the middle of nowhere, in the black countryside, and just sit. It would sit for so long that you began to wonder if the driver had gone off into the surrounding fields for a pee and fallen down a well. After a time the train would roll backwards for perhaps thirty yards, then stop and sit again. Then suddenly, with a mightly whoomp that made the carriage rock and the windows sound as if they were about to implode, a train on the parallel line would fly past. Bright lights would flash by — you could see people in there dining and playing cards, having a wonderful time, moving across Europe at the speed of a laser — and then all would be silent again and we would sit for another eternity before our train gathered the energy to creep onwards to the next desolate station. It was well after eleven when we reached Florence.

(after B. Bryson)