Madrid in August; the dry heat and dust of it. Flying over the great plains of central Spain that afternoon, peering down, I had never felt so far from the sea.
After the chaos of the last few days, the journey to Spain had been blissfully smooth, the 0732 train from Siena bringing me to Florence in a little under ninety minutes, the journey slow but pleasant past great vineyards and
Then into Florence’s rush hour, and an altercation with a staff member about the return of my property, conducted in over-enunciated English.
By 0920 I was in possession of my passport, my wallet, my phone charger, my tablet. I hugged them to me, whole again. In the station café I found a corner near a socket and sucked up electricity and wifi like a swimmer coming up for air. No Iberia flights to Madrid from Firenze or Pisa, but a 1235 flight from Bologna. Where was Bologna? Depressingly it seemed that the Apennines stood between that flight and me. But wait — thirty-seven minutes, the timetable said. What kind of miraculous train was this? I could make it with time to spare. I purchased my Madrid flight online, a window seat, hand baggage only, and boarded the Bologna train. In the toilet I coated myself with deodorant stick as if papering a wall. I brushed my teeth, and have never enjoyed the sensation more.
The trick to crossing the Apennines was to burrow beneath them. Much of the journey took place in a remarkably long tunnel, emerging now and then into light as if curtains had been hurled open to a view of wooded mountainside against bright sky, then whisked shut again. Almost too soon we were in Bologna, one of those cites where the airport is disconcertingly close to the centre, so that you might comfortably walk there with your shopping. But I had learnt my lesson in Florence and took a taxi. My guidebook sang the city’s praises, but the taxi skirted the old town on the northern ring road and what I saw was squat, modern and pleasant, with a fragment of an ancient wall in the centre of a roundabout then the dull warehouses of the airport. Never mind, we’d come here again another time. For the moment, I was happy to find myself in the terminal and checked in with an hour and fifteen minutes to spare. Air travel had never seemed so glamorous, so thrillingly efficient, so full of hope.
We took off on time and I craned to look out of the window like a child. Everything was sharp and clear, the air pure, no hint of cloud, and I noted how new this experience was for humankind, the ability to see the earth laid out like this, and how complacent we were about it. Why were people reading magazines when there was all of this to see? Here were the mountains that I’d burrowed beneath just two hours before, there was Corsica, crisply outlined, a mossy green on blue. Then the Mediterranean was left behind and the desert plain unrolled; a desert in Europe. Spain seemed vast to me. No wonder they had once filmed Westerns there. What did it look like at ground level, I wondered, and would I ever find out? Now that I knew my journey was almost complete, the ability to travel seemed exciting again. I was not sure that I wanted to go home, even if I could.
