Italian man walks 450 km to calm down after fight with wifeBuzz

Team Udayavani, Dec 15, 2020, 4:13 PM IST

An Italian man, who was frustrated by an argument with his wife, stepped outside his house to calm down himself and ended up walking 450 kilometres.

Italians have nicknamed the unnamed 48-year-old “Forrest Gump” on social media, after the hero of a 1994 movie of the same name who ran thousands of miles across the United States.

The man who lives in Como, in the far north of Italy on the Swiss border, managed to walk all the way to Fano, a small town on the Adriatic coast, about 450 kilometres (280 miles) south.

The Italian police stopped his epic walk at 2 am in Fano for breaching lockdown rules and fined him €400 (Rs 35,700), a week after he left his home in the north. They could not believe that he could have walked so far. However, when they checked his ID, they found out that his wife had reported him as missing a week ago.

“I came here on foot, I didn’t use any transport,” he told the police, local media reported. He said, “Along the way, I met people who offered me food and drink”. “I’m OK, just a bit tired,” he said, having walked around 60 kilometres daily.

He admitted that he did not realise how far he had gone during his long walk to cool off his mind.

The man’s wife travelled to Fano to pick him up. The reports did not mention how the wife reacted after learning that he was fined €400.

Netizens said that man was heroic and criticised the fine. One user said that he should have been rewarded with a pair of shoes instead of being fined. Another user praised him for walking off to cool his anger instead of resorting to violence.

Italy has imposed a nationwide curfew from 10 pm to 5 am in an effort to curb the second wave of coronavirus infections in the country.

Times Now