On the Same Track

When a family wanted to reconnect after a long separation, they found a novel solution: an epic train journey through Italy and Switzerland.

- Megha Majumdar

AFTER SPENDING the pandemic on separate continents-my parents in Kolkata; me, my husband, and our newborn in Brooklyn-my family was determined to be together. Could there be a more beautiful way to do this than on a train journey? Our route was bold, linking places my parents had seen only in Bollywood movies and TV travel shows: from Venice to Como, then over the Swiss border to Zermatt, Wengen, and Zurich.

I had never dared believe I would set foot in these places until a few years ago, when I first visited Switzerland and knew I had to bring my parents there. We had waited anxiously for visas, submitting bank statements, flight reservations, even personal letters of invitation from my father-in-law in Slovakia, whom we would see at the end of our trip. Then, in some disbelief, we all arrived in Europe. It was my parents' first time on the Continent.

We spent a few days in Venice, which we found enchanting, from its green canals, despite their occasional smell of sewage, to the Rialto Market, where we browsed zucchini flowers and fresh octopus. When it was time to depart, we took a vaporetto to the train station. Immediately, the baby's stroller, too wide for the luggage racks, was a problem. We tried to park it in this corner and that, until an older woman beckoned and leaned it next to her seat. The train crossed a long causeway over the water to the mainland, where it sped past fields in which apartment buildings stood, looking out of place.