Passenger numbers are rising, but competing with budget airlines will take work on ticket prices, infrastructure and integration

Last August, I took the train from Trieste to Ljubljana, following a route once used by the Orient Express. Along the way, I admired the Adriatic coast, discovered that Prosecco is a now abandoned railway station dating from 1857, and felt the shift in geography as the train climbed towards Villa Opicina on the Italian-Slovenian border. Crossing into Slovenia now means little more than a change of crew.

I had with me Alma, a novel by Federica Manzon set in Trieste and the former Yugoslavia that explores the region’s strong and complicated connections, frozen by the cold war and rattled by the Balkan wars. As the train crossed into Slovenia, I thought about the shared history and geography of two places that were kept apart for decades.

María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain