One of the best things about going to Trento is the ride there. If you take an early morning train, your ride will start in darkness. Eventually the sky begins to glow pink, and the mountains crack across the horizon. There are tall, snow-blanketed peaks in the distance and emerald fields of grass running along the train tracks. Barren trees and turned-dirt and farmhouses in varying stages of disrepair come and go along the way.
Italy is beautiful and moody in the morning, especially in the north where the mountains are king. The orange and pink sky eventually becomes green, and then blue, and then the mist along the ground starts to burn off. The sun, when it comes, is a shaking blast of tangerine and its light bounces off the metal surfaces of the train.
My parents sleep. Italy passes. And the mountains we're riding past are so very far from the flatness of Illinois. By the time we get to Brescia the mystery has turned into morning and everyone is awake.
Part of the pleasure of our ride was certainly due to the scenery but another large chunk can be credited to the ladies with whom we shared our train car. These two Italian women, both well into their lives, each had something about them that made our ride more than just a ride.
One of the ladies channeled her sadness over the recent loss of her husband into a guided tour of what hides in the mountains... She would grip our arm with one warm hand and point with the other - look over there! (There's a small church set in the rock that she and her husband had once visited.) Could we see it? Right there on the cliff. (They took a car and then a bus to reach it.) And then over there, on the other side of the train, could we see the memorial to the fallen soldiers...
And the other woman, the older of the two, was so delightfully vivace. All clad in fur and orange with a solid set of Persols keeping the sun out of her eyes. She had lifted her own suitcase high and strong into the luggage rack without a second breath and had won my admiration early on by stating that the train car was cold - my dear - because it had been sitting in the train yard all night. No more. No less. A beautifully matter-of-fact response from a culture that usually likes a bit more narration with its answers.
When the older woman asked if I'd graduated and I told her that I was already working, she pronounced me "in gamba" and said that she too had been a working woman who traveled the globe for her career. I couldn't have pictured her doing anything else.
We all got off the train in Trento and double-kissed goodbye in the station. Each of the women was being picked-up by some conglomeration of relatives and we had sight-seeing to do. But the sights were already there. As soon as you get off the train you can see that Trento is ringed by mountains.
At the center of town, alongside the Piazza Duomo with its wide open space and Neptune fountain, stands a very handsome Duomo. Inside is a dramatic marble baldacchino modeled on Bernini's larger and more famous work in Rome's St. Peter's. Two long and eerie flights of stone steps crawl along the sides of the church leading up to the rafters from where, I'd imagine, the views of the mountains are incredible.
More than a few buildings in town are fronted with crumbling frescos. And apparently there's a wonderful chunk of the old Roman city that you can visit called "Tridentum." However, we wouldn't be able to confirm its existence because, as often happens in Italy, Tridentum was closed during our visit.
The food is a force to be reckoned with and seems to have drawn its strength and heart from nearby Austria. In fact, until 1919, and the end of World War 1, Trento was Austrian territory. So here there are no timid pastries and no namby-pamby lunches. There are donuts, sweet breads, and cakes, and incredible meals drowned in butter and draped in cheese. Have the dumplings, the polenta, and the gorgonzola - and then make an afternoon of walking along the river trying to repair the damage.
At the end of our day we piled back into the train for our three-hour ride home. There were no interesting strangers to meet and for most of the ride back to Milan I was the only one awake. But that's ok, the mountains kept me company.
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