Off the Rails

Informationen zum Autor Beppe Severgnini Klappentext In this witty and entertaining collection of travel tales, an acclaimed journalist explores his obsession with trains--and what his rail journeys have taught him about culture and identity. "I've gone around the world in installments. Every trip has been a revelation. I've watched regions, nations, and continents change moods and I've met more people on trains than in forty years of airplane flights. Every train trip has been a spectacle. Trains are stages, cafés, bazaars. The only talk show that will never go off the air..." Beppe Severgnini has spent his life traveling the world, and not just because he's a journalist; he's a passionate, unflagging train buff. Off the Rails recounts some of his favorite trips across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the United States, each journey bringing readers not only to a different place but to a different time, from his honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian Express (in a four-person compartment!), to a winding journey from Russia to Turkey during the last summer of communism, to a recent coast-to-coast trip with his son from Washington, D.C., to Washington State. Off the Rails is the perfect getaway for anyone with a touch of wanderlust, who dreams of escape or just likes to laugh. Filled with memorable characters and perceptive observations, it demonstrates--hilariously--what unites us. With the world in chaos and life in perpetual fast-forward, it's always the right time to hop on board with Beppe Severgnini and meet your charming, hapless, quarrelsome, romantic, shifty, quirky, endearing neighbors. Zusammenfassung In this witty and entertaining collection of travel tales! an acclaimed journalist explores his obsession with trains--and what his rail journeys have taught him about culture and identity. "I've gone around the world in installments. Every trip has been a revelation. I've watched regions! nations! and continents change moods and I've met more people on trains than in forty years of airplane flights. Every train trip has been a spectacle. Trains are stages! cafés! bazaars. The only talk show that will never go off the air..." Beppe Severgnini has spent his life traveling the world! and not just because he's a journalist; he's a passionate! unflagging train buff. Off the Rails recounts some of his favorite trips across Europe! Australia! Asia! and the United States! each journey bringing readers not only to a different place but to a different time! from his honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian Express (in a four-person compartment!)! to a winding journey from Russia to Turkey during the last summer of communism! to a recent coast-to-coast trip with his son from Washington! D.C.! to Washington State. Off the Rails is the perfect getaway for anyone with a touch of wanderlust! who dreams of escape or just likes to laugh. Filled with memorable characters and perceptive observations! it demonstrates--hilariously--what unites us. With the world in chaos and life in perpetual fast-forward! it's always the right time to hop on board with Beppe Severgnini and meet your charming! hapless! quarrelsome! romantic! shifty! quirky! endearing neighbors. ...

Auteur

Beppe Severgnini

Texte du rabat

In this witty and entertaining collection of travel tales, an acclaimed journalist explores his obsession with trains--and what his rail journeys have taught him about culture and identity.

"I've gone around the world in installments. Every trip has been a revelation. I've watched regions, nations, and continents change moods and I've met more people on trains than in forty years of airplane flights. Every train trip has been a spectacle. Trains are stages, cafés, bazaars. The only talk show that will never go off the air..."

Beppe Severgnini has spent his life traveling the world, and not just because he's a journalist; he's a passionate, unflagging train buff. Off the Rails recounts some of his favorite trips across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the United States, each journey bringing readers not only to a different place but to a different time, from his honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian Express (in a four-person compartment!), to a winding journey from Russia to Turkey during the last summer of communism, to a recent coast-to-coast trip with his son from Washington, D.C., to Washington State.

Off the Rails is the perfect getaway for anyone with a touch of wanderlust, who dreams of escape or just likes to laugh. Filled with memorable characters and perceptive observations, it demonstrates--hilariously--what unites us.

With the world in chaos and life in perpetual fast-forward, it's always the right time to hop on board with Beppe Severgnini and meet your charming, hapless, quarrelsome, romantic, shifty, quirky, endearing neighbors.

Échantillon de lecture
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From Washington to Washington: With Antonio Across America

I haven't been carrying him at all. He's been carrying me!

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Europeans Don't Live Here Anymore

The house is made of wood, painted white, and looks west. The front door is black, with a carved fan decoration above it, and there are three windows with the shutters nailed to the facade, on the off chance that some modest European might have the impulse to shut them at night.

But there's no danger of that now. The Europeans don't live here anymore.

In 1994 and 1995, I lived here with my wife, Ortensia, and my son, Antonio, aged two. I was the only foreign correspondent for a brand-new Italian newspaper, La Voce, and I was based in Washington, DC. My official title was "bureau chief," but to be honest, there was no bureau. I worked from home in Georgetown. It was a gracious part of America, full of talkative ladies and hyperactive dogs. Bill Clinton was in the White House-Monica Lewinsky, too, as it turned out-but politics was not the first topic of conversation. My neighbors talked mostly about the renovation of Volta Park and told me how to maintain tree boxes properly-they suspected that, as a newcomer, I'd be inattentive and possibly sloppy.

We left one morning in May 1995, after holding a yard sale that amused the neighbors and loading a moving truck that angered the wife of the senator from Montana. ("Move that truck! I'm married to the senator from Montana!") The truck carried away what was left of our furnishings, to be packed into a wooden crate and shipped to our house in Crema, Italy. Once it had been emptied and painted green, ventilated with a door and windows, and roofed with terra-cotta tiles, the crate went to live at the far end of the backyard, in the shade of the oak and the plane trees. A perfect playhouse.

But the two-year-old boy has now turned twenty; he'd be embarrassed to take his girlfriend into the playhouse, even if we, his parents, would find it romantic. The crate from our move back is baked by sun and drenched by rain. I tell Antonio these things, but he ignores me. He's looking at the American house where he was a toddler, amused rather than moved. "I remembered it as being bigger," he says, forgetting that back then he was smaller.

An evening in June, green leaves and blue sky: this time of year, Georgetown is at its best. We try to reenact a photograph snapped right here in 1995, on the sidewalk in front of the house: Papˆ kneeling, Antonio standing with a soccer ball in his hands. The difference is that, back then, even on my knees, I was still taller than he was; now I'm hip-high next to him. The new owners, Griff and Kathleen Jenkins, watch us with smiles on their faces. Griff busies himself with a pair of shears, enthusiastically trimming up and down the street, to make sure that no branches interfere with the Italians' photography.

We've become friends over the years. The Jenkins family-father, mother, two teenage girls-cheerfully tolerated the stream of reader…