Bearded and Maniacal Beggars On The Edge of Tuscany

I don't know where I am, maybe the edge of Tuscany.

Thin fog sticks like cheap toilet paper to rolling hills and now the train genuinely whizzes via ploughed fields and brick bridges.

"Grazis, gratzi, senor por favor," - no matter the language the maniacal beggar is the same - hollering snotty nosed gruff like three days of whiskey and late night TV. He's standing in front of me, pleading, no really freaking screaming at me. GRA ZZZ EEEE.

I shove my fists down in diagonals, nothing from me good senor. Castiglion Del Lago by the time the ticket inspector comes crashing through the carriage - "hey hey" and then two claps of his hands and nothing more for the bearded rainbow poncho but to stumble back from where he came.

All of this time I'm listening to the calmest of folk music, bells and banjos in my ears.

Terontola - three platforms, three police. The doors snap shut and the train shunts off the police aboard. I'm sitting across the aisle from my backpack and one officer returns to ask if the almost unattended baggage is mine - "sei senor," it's my best performance in Italian yet.

Now likely on the edge of Florence, blocks of low rise flats share streets with corn plots share streets with aching tractors. The sun is rubbed out like a bad high school drawing - the orange ocha blown across the skies comes from industry, itself fading into the middle distance.