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Daily Planet
Venice institutes "pee-pee tax"
If you want to pee in a public facility, you're going to have to pay.
By J.A. Getzlaff
[01/27/00]

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Party Gras
Tips for the last-minute Fat Tuesday trip, minimizing the walking segment of a French vacation and kicking off a South-Central U.S. line-dancing tour.
By Donald D. Groff
[01/27/00]

Burt Wolf
In vino veritas
What does Steve Case's choice of wine reveal about the AOL-Time Warner deal?
By Burt Wolf
[01/27/00]

Daily Planet
Attack of the alien ice balls!
The rain in Spain is frozen -- and a pain.
By J.A. Getzlaff
[01/28/00]

Travel Food Feature
Cheesy does it
Getting your hands on great cheese in the United States means circumventing an archaic FDA regulation.
By Steven A. Shaw
[01/28/00]

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Single car
When you journey unattached on a train to Vienna, possibilities soar.

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By Helen Elliott

Jan. 28, 2000 | The conductor who places his hand under my elbow as I step up into the train has such dazzling eyes that I have to lower mine in case he reads them too clearly. A few years ago I wouldn't have minded. Now I do. Very much.

I reflect on this as I find my compartment, open the minute bottle of Campari and contemplate the white sheets on the turned-down bed. It's not long after midnight and I've been waiting under the airy arches of Florence station -- Firenze Centrale -- for over an hour. One of the most perfect hours I've ever spent. Totally alone and totally unafraid, on Florence station waiting for the night train to Vienna.

As a child, I hated "Florence" -- it was the name of a battalion of old women in rusty black dresses, and most of all the name of that pious nurse, Florence Nightingale. I hadn't realized then that the glory of Florence had so affected Florence Nightingale's parents that they'd named her after the city. And I hadn't realized that the pious nurse lived up to her name by being one of the glories of her century. Possibly because she was single.

I slide into my crisp bed. Single women have so much more time to organize, to think -- to live by just pleasing themselves. Perhaps when you have only yourself to please you become the best possible version of yourself.

The handsome conductor wakes me just as I've drifted to sleep. He needs my passport, which, naturally, I can't find because I'm too flustered standing with my coat thrown over my elegantly indecent nightdress, wishing I were 20. Say what you like, but desire is so unseemly after a certain age.

I've discovered two crucial things about myself and travel over the past three years: I only like traveling alone and I am crazy about train travel. Not just any train -- I'm crazy about those luxurious beasts that sleek their way between the major European cities. Sitting in the end cars, there's a beautiful satisfaction in watching the curve of the engine and the front cars as they round a bend. It's living in a perfect déjè vu -- I'll be doing this again in a second, I think. And I do.

I always travel first class, although I can't really afford it. "First class?" my Genevan friends gently queried as I bought the ticket. "So expensive!" Meaning, so unnecessarily expensive. Yes. But some expensive things are necessities. It's not exactly about snobbishness -- more a pragmatic need for comfort and cleanliness. But most particularly it's about the people I meet there.

Coming up from Geneva there was the slender German woman whose English was as fastidious as her clothes. She'd learned it in England before the war. She had been visiting her friend, Isolde, in Geneva -- a journey she makes every year at this time. They'd been friends at school and used to spend their summers walking in the mountains. Now they were too old to walk but they still spent some weeks of every summer together. The seriousness with which the Europeans take summer used to amuse me. Now it impresses. My fellow Australians are far too casual about their easy weather.

Between Geneva and Brig, the woman and I shared a bottle of white wine and I discovered that she had known Jung, bought her exquisite green suede shoes in Geneva in 1959 and been in Berlin all through the war. She got off at Brig to catch her connection home and waved to me as my train pulled out. I never found out her name. As I raised my hand to her, I had a vivid picture of Anna Karenina -- the Garbo version -- and I remembered that Anna met Vronsky's mother on a train. When I was 16 I wanted a lover like Vronsky.

Train travel is a way of tricking time. There's an other-worldliness to having endless time -- as one does in a train -- in a world otherwise obsessed with having no time at all. There's great satisfaction in this, and in not being responsible for anyone else. No husband, no children, no dogs, no cats, no garden. Just me, an undomesticated creature full of high ideals and infinite hopes.

Next page | A young woman again