Italian Man Walks 450 Km To Cool Off After Arguing With Wife

• Police spotted the 48-year-old man in Fano and stopped him because it was already 2 am and way past curfew.
• The man has already walked for week after leaving his home in Como, which is in the north of Italy near the Swiss border.
• The wife has reported him missing and she went to Fano to pick him up.

After a row with his wife, an Italian man got out of their house and took a walk to calm himself down. There’s nothing unusual about it, if only the man didn’t walk a shoe-breaking 450 kilometers (280 miles).

Police spotted the 48-year-old man in Fano on the Adriatic coast and stopped him because it was already 2 am and way past curfew. He was wandering aimlessly on a coastal highway, on a cold night.

So the police took him in and learned that the man has already walked for week after leaving his home in Como, which is in the north of Italy near the Swiss border. The man looked cold and tired and said that he didn’t realize how far he had already reached because he only wanted to walk to clear his mind.

“I came here on foot, I didn’t use any transport,” the man said.

“Along the way, I met people who offered me food and drink. I’m OK, just a bit tired.”

He averaged 60 kilometers a day during his epic walk.

Upon checking the man’s ID in the database, they discovered that the wife has reported him missing. They contacted her and then she went to Fano to pick him up. She confirmed the man’s story of him walking out of their house in Como after they had an argument. She was made to pay the fine and his overnight hotel bill in Fano.

Because the man violated curfew rules (Italy is currently under strict lockdown measures due to the coronavirus), the man was fined €400.

“Had there been no police checks, who knows where he could have ended up,” said the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

When the news broke out on social media, Italians have nicknamed the man “Forrest Gump,” after the movie and Tom Hanks’ character who ran thousands of miles across the U.S. for no apparent reason.