My train is more than one hour late, and the only other man in the carriage isn’t happy about it. After cursing the train company, he keeps complaining to somebody over the phone about his bad luck: “This is just unbelievable! I bet such things don’t even happen in Africa! I’m sure Libya has better trains than this fucking country!”. 

While I’m pretty disturbed by the remarks, I find it conceptually interesting that the man has chosen a former Italian colony as a term of comparison, and I wonder if he’s aware of it. I prefer to focus on the landscape outside, observing the coastline, watching several gulfs placidly pass by one after the other.