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station of Cairo, they were all Made in Germany. They were quite new, we saw the dates of production, but looked as if they came straight out of a museum. The sand-dust from the nearby desert had rubbed off the gleaming polish of all the metal parts like sandpaper. The way of travelling - passengers sitting in the open windows, one leg in, one out, and standing on the steps on the outside of the doors clinging to the handles - was also different from what we know and do in this country!

When it comes to travelling by train in Italy, I don't know where to begin and where to end,
hardly a trip without something to talk about! Delays are all part and parcel for the Italians (I looked up that expression, in German we would say: It's their daily bread'). What can cause a delay in Italy? Well, Italy is so long! A minute more in this station, two minutes more in that, they all add up and when the train coming from Sicily arrives in Rome or coming from there, at the Austrian border, it simply can't be on time any more. Then the strikes! The two main railway lines run along the eastern and the western coast, it's very easy to cause chaos in the whole country, one small independent union of locomotive drivers can do that by just blocking traffic in one of the cities on these arteries.

Once I came from Florence and was forced to wait in Bologna for seven hours sitting in the waiting room of the station where in 1980 85 people were killed and 300 injured in a fascist bomb attack. That was a weird feeling; when finally a train came at 2 a.m., I had stared at the memorial for such a long time that I nearly knew the names of all the casualties by heart.

But I also think of my Italian fellow travellers. After being together with Southern Italians for some hours, they know more about me than my colleagues with whom I've worked for 20 years. How come? They ask! They ask why I'm travelling in Italy, why I can speak Italian, what my marital status is, what I think about the political situation in Italy and in Germany, what I do for a living, how much I earn - an absolute no-no question in Germany! (Don't know why, I'm a civil servant, anyone who'd like to know about my salary could find out anyway)

Once I read a funny short story about travelling in Italy: a single, young, good-looking Italian happened to be in a compartment together with an Italian family with a still unmarried daughter. When they finally arrived in Sicily he was nearly engaged to her and could only save his skin

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