Not long after departing Attilia’s, we came across one of the most unusual crossings of our entire journey. To reach the other side of the Oglio River, one of the main tributaries of the Po, we had to walk over a bridge made entirely of boats, tightly linked together to form a floating structure. Every step felt slightly precarious. The whole bridge shifted gently beneath our feet, rising and falling with the movement of the water. Cars passed carefully beside us, their weight adding to the wobble. It was fascinating and slightly surreal—a reminder of how adaptable the human world can be when it works with nature rather than against it.
Crossing that bridge felt symbolic. It was a brief but vivid encounter with impermanence, a moving surface leading us forward. Just like the journey itself, the bridge was unstable but passable, strange but necessary. And we kept walking.
We continued walking for a few days along the long, flat paths of the Po valley. The sun remained fierce, the landscape repetitive. The kilometres behind us had begun to settle like layers of sediment. Our steps were steady, but something inside was stirring.
And then, in the distance, we saw them. The Colli Euganei.
I stopped. They were only a faint silhouette at first. Soft waves against the horizon. But I recognised them immediately. Hills I had seen as a child. Familiar shapes that had once framed my view of the world. Their presence moved something in me that I cannot fully describe.
After all this time, after all these days of walking through unfamiliar places, here was something I knew. Something that belonged to me, and to which I somehow belonged. The Colli Euganei were not grand or dramatic, but they were known. And that made them powerful.
We stood in silence for a while. No words were needed. The hills did not announce our arrival. They simply waited, unchanged, like old friends who have nothing to prove.
For so long, the journey had felt outside of time. We had stopped counting days. But seeing the Colli brought everything back into focus. The return was now real. And with it came questions. Would home be the same? Would I?
