Henry Poggi’s return to the U.S. from Italy last month, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in that country, was a meandering journey that has all the makings of an adventure movie.

It involved three Americans, a couple of Italians, an official police-endorsed permission to travel, empty trains that were late or didn’t show up at all, a long bus ride that finally got them to Rome, and a fortuitous encounter with an English-speaking Bosnian basketball player who found all of them lodging because most hotels had closed.