Dear Journal,
Well, we’re off to Mantua with a brief stopover in Milan to change trains. In Mantua there’s an important (but small) Italian book fair where Shahram plans to make some good deals on some old Italian books and maps. From there we will go back to Milan on Saturday, and from Milan leave northward through Switzerland, with a stop at Zurich (I think), then on through southern Germany to Frankfurt and the Dusseldorf area (“Colonel Hogan!” [Klink on Batman!]). He’s also thinking of swinging by Berlin before we head up via Hamburg to Copenhagen, and possibly Stockholm if we have the time. Then we come back through the Netherlands to Gent in Belgium, and from there to Paris where we will part ways on the 26th.
Yesterday at that café in Piazza Vittorio Veneto we ended up sitting beside three young people, two women and a man, each with different accents—one girl had a sharply American accent (I never realized how abrasive we sound on our side of the Atlantic until I heard the accent spoken in contrast with the songlike Italian of her friends). As Shahram and I were about to settle in to some massive salads we got for lunch, I heard the American girl say “Toronto.” Without hesitation I chimed in,
“Did you say Toronto? We’re from Toronto!”
This sparked a series of introductions and discussions on where we all were from: the American was from D.C., the other girl from Switzerland, and the guy from here in Torino. They had all studied together in London at an international exchange program in their law studies.
“Oh really?” asked Shahram. “I studied in London too!” From there he related the story of his persecution as a Baha’i in Iran and his subsequent return to London once the revolution began in the late ‘70s. He naturally led into a brief introduction of some of the central concepts of the Baha’i Faith (the oneness of humanity, the oneness of religion), which the young man from Torino seemed to appreciate. The two girls he was entertaining, however, didn’t seem terribly interested and they were continuing on with the conversation they were having before. The young man from Torino, a dutiful host, had to return to them. Sometimes, Shahram reminds me of the opening of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, with the wedding guests who get stopped by this ancient seafarer on a train who tells them this whole story about a sea voyage... but I digress.
After the café we walked all over Turin again, grabbed dinner at the same restaurant as the night before (still no sign of the wallet), then returned to the hotel to exchange emails with back home.
We are now pulling into Milan in a rather temperamental rain storm.
Arrivederci!
Richard
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