Basho’s “washing my feet” – haibun – June 5, 2015

Here I am, writing a post from my son’s garden in Padua. It’s still cool in the garden but yesterday the temperature hit 40°C.  It’s going to be a hot historical reenactment I think.

The trip was to say the least, tiring … my bus from Bolognano arrived 20 minutes late due to the influx of tourists that blocks all the roads every year, going to Lake Garda. I just made my train, which was perfectly on time, as one would expect an Austrian train to be, until it reached Verona.

The stop-over which should have been for five minutes turned into 150 minutes.  No explanation was forthcoming, either at the time or later, except that there were some “technical problems” at the next station.

I sat and watched as a few  trains, all of them the Italian high velocity “Freccia” crept past us on another track.  Then a Freccia from Venice flew past us with its whistle blowing starling many of my fellow passengers.

The gentleman in front of me was navigating on internet and was caught up in what he was reading.

“Well this is about the third or fourth train coming from the station that’s blocking us!” I quipped.

He replied: “That’s impossible!  On the Italian train company’s site they say all trains are blocked for technical reasons in Vicenza.”

Funny, I thought, people will believe anything they read, even when physical evidence gives the lie to the written word.

By the time I arrived at my son’s it was nearly nine o’clock instead of five thirty..

summer travel
falling asleep in a chair
without a shower

© G.s.k. ‘15