A man realizes his dream of a lifetime: He travels from Grimma near Leipzig to Syracuse in Sicily and back again. Johann Gottfried Seume's account of his nine-month journey made the author famous overnight and remains as popular today as Goethe's Italian Journey. Initially apolitical, Seume sets off to leave behind his reclusive life as a lecturer and to forget an unhappy love story, but during the course of his travels, he becomes an enthusiast for Italy. He records what he has seen and experienced in his entertaining and engaging writings. In doing so, contemporary politics and culture, and especially the people he meets along the way, are more important to him than any educational enthusiasm.