Binari Notturni (Patreon)

As I was cycling home in the rain, I got a message from Aki: Yoyo, do you have anything planned for next week? I had some things to do, but I also really needed to get away. Yeah, I replied, but I can free up five days. What are we doing?

After brainstorming about destinations that were warm enough and didn’t require endless waiting for a train, we settled on Italy. From Bologna to Bari, the route I had wanted to take on my last Italy trip but couldn’t because of the floods. This time, it would work.

Aki left Vienna by freight, and I was supposed to fly to Bologna, or at least, that was the plan. But when I arrived at the airport, I was told that air traffic control was understaffed, and my flight had been postponed to the next day. One less day, and I already had so little time. I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to make something of the trip in such a short time, but I left the next day anyway.

When I arrived in Bologna, I got a notification on my phone: red alert for heavy rainfall. Flashbacks hit me instantly, memories of last year, when train tracks had turned into rivers and overhead line poles barely stuck out above the water. We had to get out of Bologna as fast as possible. We went to the catch-out and started waiting.

I had doubts about the catch-out. From what I saw online it didn’t look promising. A lot of un-rideable trains. My expectations were low, but after hours of waiting, I suddenly heard the hum of an electric locomotive slowly moving over the tracks, followed by a long snake of wagons. Gondolas. The journey along the east coast of Italy had begun.

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