An adventure on two rails. Step 1: Trieste (Italy)

Backpacks are ready, the InterRail tickets are arrived, enthusiasm fills us: we can leave for our travel which will make us “circumnavigate” Italy from the north, moving from Slovenia to France through Switzerland.
The Intercity train in 5 exact hours brings us from Firenze to Trieste, chosen as our first step because city on a borderline, full of history, culture and contradditions. The ideal to start a journey discovering past within present, to build a concious future.

The cosy B&B we booked for te first night is literaly placed between the roofs of the city: we are on the last floor and we can admire from the window of the room all Trieste’s tiles. A goldfish guards the living room from its ball on the top of the bookcase, made with two pallets painted in white. The owner, who wakes up with our call at 7pm, gives us, sleepy, a map of the city in German and tries to explain us something, but he doesn’t seem too much convinced about the city where he lives.

Arriving on the evening, the first day of travel ends quickly and we don’t have time to see a lot, but a walk on the promenade makes us already to appreciate this first step of our tour.

We spend the second day moving around the small villages of Slovenian coast (see the next article). The second evening we find out the local cuisine: an osteria with crosswords on placemats gives us the occasion to taste delicious dishes of fish, typical from the gulf of Trieste, with cheap prices, so thath we confirm the positivity of this step of the journey.

After an infernal night in a different B&B without air in the room, we use the third day to visit the capital city of Friuli Venezia Giulia (Trieste itself), after saying goodbye to the owner, who goes aroud the dark corridors of the B&B with sunglassis, in order to cover a black eye (we choose them intentionally stranges). Trieste is quite nice and from the beginning we are impressed by the kindness of people and from the disposability toward us, above all when we ask directions for the places to see.

We arrive to the cathedral after a stop to the castle, we descend the hill on the opposite side and we run into the set of a movie: the staff speaks a strange language, maybe Slovenian or Croatian. We sadly understand that the famous Bora wind blows only during the winter, and in this hot day of the beginning of august the city is a hoven. A walk on the promenade and on canal grande and we take the tram toVilla Opicina, where we’ll spend the night hosted by a couple with Couchsurfing. This old tram, which transforms in funicular for climbing the hill, is an experience to live, that makes you see from the top a breathtaking view on the gulf.

Valerio and Gloria – 9 months pregnant – welcome us with open arms! They are a very hospitable couple and they immediately make us feeling at home. For dinner they make us try Osmiza: here in Karst, when a family has own products (wine, oil, cheese, cold cuts…) can open a temporary restaurant at home. To find one of them we follow little signs with twigs along the street on the Italian-Slovenian borderline. Boiled eggs (the only thing they are allowed to cook) open a dinner based on different fresh cold cuts, cheeses and good wine, while many travel stories do as side to this original dinner. A particular experience that, as classical turists, we’d have never lived and that makes us to appreciate much more Couchsurfing. The evening ends with an icecream, a boar found in the middle of the street and a romantic stop on the hill, from where the illuminated gulf leaves without words, giving to the thoughts the opportunity to fly over the borderline.

Andrea Cuminatto

Foto di Eleonora Burroni

LEGGI QUESTO ARTICOLO IN ITALIANO: Un’avventura su due binari. Tappa 1: Trieste