Tanja Raich: A Summer in Northern Italy

Writing about northern Italy is associated with mixed feelings: Northern Italy is the country I left when I was 19 and to which I have returned regularly ever since. I have traveled the same route hundreds of times, from Vienna via Innsbruck over the Brenner Pass to Lana-Burgstall station. Here, I get off to return, here, I get on to leave the country again, sometimes happily, sometimes melancholically. So the platform is the most central place for me. It's an in-between place. Here, I have not yet arrived and not yet left.