Regional trains, and the art of arriving late

The high-speed line skips the country. The slow one stops in it.

A fast train shows you tunnels and the backs of industrial sheds. The regional service — the one with the sun-faded seats and the window that actually opens — shows you the fields, the level crossings, and eleven towns you had never heard of.

Buy the ticket at the machine, sit on the side with the shade, and accept that it will stop for reasons nobody explains. In four hours you will pass wheat, then vines, then cypress, then wheat again.

You arrive slightly later and considerably more prepared. Somewhere around the third stop the trip stops being a transfer and becomes the thing itself.