What a slow train teaches you about a country

The fast train from Milan to Bolzano takes a little over three hours. I took the slow one, with two changes, and it took nine. I would do it again tomorrow.

The regional trains stop everywhere: in towns you have never heard of, at halts with one bench and a vending machine, at a station where the only other person on the platform was a man delivering a single crate of apples to the stationmaster. You see the country from the back, the way the people who live there see it. Allotments, washing lines, a football pitch with one goal, a bell tower that leans.

The practical case

Slow trains are cheap. The whole journey cost less than a third of the fast fare and needed no reservation. You can get off wherever you like and get back on an hour later. And because nobody is in a hurry, there is always a seat by a window.

What to take

• A paper map of the line, so the station names mean something
• Water and lunch, because the vending machine will be empty
• A book you do not mind putting down every twenty minutes
• No plan for the evening, because you will arrive late and happy

The Dolomites guide starts with this journey, with the connections that work and the one that does not.