Last days in Italy

From Sapri in Southern Italy, we took the train back to Salerno and the next day boarded a high speed train to Firenze in the Tuscany region of Central Italy. The train, moving well over 100 miles an hour at times, covered the 400 or so miles in about 3 hours of travel.

It was a delight to be in Firenze, the famous renaissance city, for a day and a half. We spent time walking the narrow cobblestone streets and admiring art work and old plazas, churches and towers constructed during the renaissance period that florished here already in the 13th century.

From Firenze we took the train another 2 hours north to the city of Reggio Emilia to visit the Loris Malaguzzi International Center dedicated to implementing the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. This approach emphasizes organizing a curriculum focused on the chidren's interests and fostering children's creativity. The exhibits at the center explored the historical context of approaches to childcare and children's education in Italy and demonstrated some of the successful examples of this kind of approach.

The next day we took a morning train to Milano,where we changed trains to continue on to Como. Como, only 35 minutes by train from Milano, lies by a beautiful lake at the foot of high, steep mountains near the Swiss border. In the late afternoon we took a pleasant walk around the lake shore and walked back through the old city.

The next morning we boarded the 6:55 train for the short ride to Lugano, another city by a lake with towering mountains in Switzerland. There we had about three minutes to catch our train to Basel. This train wove its way over and through snow capped mountains that tower over narrow valleys and rushing rivers and waterfalls, and past small picturesque towns and villages. Soon we were out of the Italian language area and into German speaking areas and train announcements reflected this change. We also noticed how the style of the houses changed as we moved from the pastel colored houses with tiled red roofs to the Swiss chalet style houses.

Around mid-day we arrived in Basel, near the German border, where we had to change trains again. About 4 hours later, we got off that train and had 4 minutes to get to another track to board our final train of the day which would take us all the way to Dresden. On that train, we sat for a long time in our compartment with several other passengers without any interaction. However, after a few hours we got into a conversation, first trading small talk and then quizzing the businessmen about the health care situation in Germany. They were quite satisfied with the public health care system here but seemed resigned to increasing costs that have been instituted and expected some deterioration in the future.

In Germany everyone is covered with adequate health insurance and the payments are extremely low by U.S. standards. Having health insurance is mandatory. Wealthy people have the option of paying for private health insurance.