Traveling by train in Europe is an incredibly unique experience. Inside these comfortable
steel tubes speeding through the countryside, the outside world becomes vague and
blurred as it rushes past the windows. Whether lost in a book, or in good
conversation, time takes on a different form while on a train and journeys of
several hours and hundreds of miles can pass by in matter of moments. Most
often however, this small bubble in the time-space continuum is shared with a
complete stranger. This forced intimacy can easily be ignored with the help of ipods,
books, computers, etc. or it can be embraced as an opportunity to get to know a
random stranger.
But what
kind of relationships can be formed from the crossing paths of random strangers?
Francesco, the main protagonist in the book “Inter Rail”, by Alessandro
Gallenzi, discovers just this when he boldly buys himself a rail pass to travel
Europe.
