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“Stupid Enough to Pay”: Tim Parks’ Italian Rail Adventures

Journey

To understand Italy, you must ride its trains. Tim Parks tells the story of when his first-class ticket turned out to be anything but.

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Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty

Verona Porta Vescovo, a tiny station in a sleepy cul-de-sac on my side of town, is the kind of station where you hear a bell ring out before a train comes.

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