Italy from a Backpack. Mark Pearson

much sleep,” she said. “I spent most of the night talking to this hot guy named Francesco. We’re supposed to meet up tonight at the Trevi Fountain. Talk about romantic. Boy, do I love Italy!”

      The five of us who had worried all night and all morning looked at each other in disbelief. Now each of us wished we were the “lucky” one who had gotten lost.

      GLORIA FALLON is a travel and humor writer, and co-author of the humor book, I Hate This Place: The Pessimist’s Guide to Life. An anglophile since studying abroad in London during her junior year at Siena College in New York, Gloria frequently visits in-laws in England and France. Since their European vacation, Gloria and Patty have traveled together to Germany, Wales, Ireland and Iceland, and neither has gotten lost.

       Rome to Syracuse

       Masters of the Southern Italy Night

      brandy fleming

      it was almost midnight when I rushed from my train through Rome’s central station, looking for the train that would carry me to Syracuse, on the southeast corner of the Mediterranean’s largest island, Sicily. That was my final destination, after a whirlwind weekend at Oktoberfest in Munich. Four minutes to catch the train, my mind buzzed. I was hungry. In the rush, I had forgotten to eat dinner.

      Confusing signs. Must practice my Italian, my mind chattered as I ran past the platform for Naples. Three minutes to find my train. Last night’s world-famous German brew had affected my normally clear mind.

      That was a good thing in the crowded Munich festival tents, where I had jumped up on long wooden tables to dance many a jig. But it wasn’t very helpful now, when I needed some good judgment to find my way through the crowded train station. Why is this backpack so heavy? Must get sleep.

      There are risks and rewards to budget globetrotting. Even a cursory review of the safety tips online and in European guidebooks reveals that southern Italy is not the best place for a lone female to travel, let alone thread her way through the Italian capital’s main train station in the middle of the night. Where is my train? I’ve only got a minute left!

      I was on my seventh month of solo backpacking around the world. After swimming with whale sharks in Australia and hiking volcanic craters in New Zealand, I was making my way from Scandinavia south through central Europe. I had pretty much dumped the safety advice because, with my intuition and natural chatter, I’d found the people and places of the world to be quite friendly. Also, my budget at this point was on a financial version of the Atkins diet. So, when I purchased my ticket to Sicily, I was far more concerned about economics than safety.

      My two challenges now were to make the train before it departed, and to make sure I boarded the right carriage. The 20 carriages of my train would be splitting before dawn, half continuing southward to Reggio di Calabria on the boot-shaped mainland, the other half crossing the narrow Messina Strait to Sicily. A few nights earlier, on an overnight train from Denmark to Germany, I had shared a cabin with a Brazilian lad who’d stored his backpack in a separate carriage. He awoke in the morning to the startling news that, while he had arrived safe and sound in Munich, his pack had split in the middle of the night for Frankfurt. I had to be careful, or I’d end up at the wrong destination, too.

      The upside of backpacking is that all of life’s necessary material possessions fit with liberating simplicity into one bag. The downside is that such simplicity can disappear at once if that bag is lost or stolen.

      Relief! There was the carriage. I could feel my breath and pulse slow as I chose a six-seat compartment, already occupied by an elderly Italian man. He looked worn, and I wondered what life events had peppered his hair gray and deepened the laugh lines around his dark eyes. As I heaved my pack into the overhead luggage rack, a younger Italian joined us. He looked to be about my age, and he spoke just a little English. The men exchanged greetings, and the younger turned to me and asked if I could speak Italian: “Parla Italiano?” I responded apologetically, “No, sono Americano.”

      If we had boarded a day train, we would have been able to see the Italian countryside passing outside our windows, dotted with sunflowers and vineyards—one of the finer treasures in a budget traveler’s trek across Europe. Instead, the bulk of my 10-hour ride would offer occasional glimpses of deserted, dimly lighted village train stations. I decided to pass the first few hours practicing my recently acquired knitting skills. My fellow travelers looked interested, so, using family photos, my dog-eared Italian-English dictionary, and several rounds of charade moves, I finally managed to convey to them that I was knitting a scarf for my young nephew back home. They smiled acknowledgement and continued chatting as they watched me knit row after row.

      When a tall, uniformed Trenitalia attendant leaned in the doorway to punch our tickets, he exchanged a few words with the men, and they all laughed heartily. Learn to speak Italian, pronto, I chided myself. The attendant nodded toward me, and then made a motion across the door as if to indicate that the men should close it. This aroused my curiosity. What were these men talking about, and what did the gesture mean?