Madness in Motion: Trains and Rental Car
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2007
1
4
5
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Arezzo,
Italy
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Traveling on our own during our first trip to Italy was madness in motion. We laughed and kept moving.
After our first night in Roma, we called a cab rather than rolling our bags down the cobblestone streets to il posteggio dei taxi. The ride to Termini was quick, but when we saw the rivers of people flowing through Rome's central train station, we were worried.
Termini has three main levels and two Metro levels. The ground level includes shops, broad passageways and trains. The mezzanine has a few shops and a large bar, and the lower level includes shops and a small bar. The WC is left of the main entrance and costs E .70 (in exact change)
Termini
.We found a place to wait with a good view of the large electro-mechanical display of arrivals and departures and took turns exploring the station. When I checked the large printed display of hundreds of departing trains, I realized that our Arezzo train was bound for Milano. When that train clicked up on the display, I walked to the binario.
There I found a second information system that used video monitors. Unfortunately, the two systems didn't agree. After validating our train tickets at a yellow machine, we rolled our bags out binario 9 and looked for coach 02. We found several coaches marked with large 2's. After boarding a couple, I found seat numbers matching ours, and we hauled up our bags. (Later, we learned "2" means second class, and we had first class tickets.)
The coach was almost empty, but I asked a passenger if this was the train to Milano. "Si," she responded. Fifteen minutes later, about five minutes before departure, the train's PA system announced that this was not the train to Milano. That train would depart several binari away.
Imagine our frustration. We had arrived early, checked the schedule, checked both information systems, asked a passenger, and ended up on the wrong train. I hauled down the bags. We pulled them to end of the car, and I handed them down to the platform. Next we raced back up the platform and across the station. OK, right train, but which coach?
As the conductors motioned all aboard, we gave up looking. We hauled up the bags and jumped aboard as the train rolled out of the station. We pulled our bags from coach to coach looking for our seats, until Bettie tripped. Then we finally grabbed a couple of seats in a nearly empty coach to catch our breath.
We traveled through flat agricultural land before moving into low hills with orchards, vineyards and tunnels cut through hills that sloped into the valley. "La campagna è molta bella." The countryside was very beautiful, and the further north we went, the prettier it became.
When we arrived in Arezzo, we followed the other passengers to a set of stairs. These binari were connected by a tunnel. Bettie climbed down, and I ferried down the bags one at a time, before repeating the process at the other end.
Luckily, AVIS was directly across the Piazza della Republica. Three fourths of the way through signing for the car, I needed a restroom and was directed to a bar across the street. I asked, "Dov'è le toilette" (pronouncing the last two words in bad French). To cover my embarrassment, I bought two bottles of acqua naturale on the way out. Paperwork completed, we were the proud renters of a Fiat Cleo, a small, comfortable four door sedan. Tuscany was ours to enjoy.
Car + Two Trains = More Challenges
After enjoying our final Tuscan breakfast, we said goodbye to Villa di Piazzano and headed for Arezzo. The traffic was heavy and slow through the towns, and I kept one eye on the road and the other on the clock. We had to find fuel, return the car and catch our second train.
After stopping at a benzinaio and filling with diesel, I found signs for la stazione. Upon reaching Piazza della Republica (after several lucky turns), I realized that AVIS was in an impossible location. The configuration of the piazza and the one-way streets meant I had to drive out of the piazza and try finding a narrow, one-way street that sloped down a hill in front of the AVIS store front. (How do Italians return rental cars?)
I dropped Bettie and the bags at the station and drove out of the piazza. After negotiating a wild rotatoria and being certain that I'd never see Bettie again, I brought our little Fiat Cleo to a stop, parked neatly on the sidewalk. The clerk checked the car and said I hadn't filled the tank. "I put in E 12 worth of diesel, all the tank would hold," I replied. "No," she stated, "the gauge shows 'not full.'" I pleaded, "Do what you must; I have to catch a train." She let me go, but goodness knows what extra charge will hit my VISA statement.
I joined Bettie; we found the WC outside the station; and I asked about our 4 minute coincidenza in Bologna. The station agent said, "imposibile" and wrote down the time of a later train. I validated our tickets, hauled the bags down the stairs to the tunnel and up to our binario, only to hear "all aboard" once again. As in Roma, I threw up our bags and we scrambled aboard as the train started to roll. We gave up looking for our first class seats, and settled in to view the breathtaking scenery as the train climbed through a steep narrow valley.
Our travel agent told me, "don't worry about the four minute train change; Bologna is a small station." Wrong! Bologna Centrale is third in passenger volume (70 million/year), and as Italy's principal rail junction, it is tied with Termini for train traffic (650/per day).
As we arrived in Bologna, our train to Venezia was in ritardo by ten minutes. Great, we had a chance. We saw our track number and pulled our bags toward a standing train. Wrong train! We had hurried to the commuter platform. When we found our binario marked over stairs leading to another tunnel, we knew we'd never make it! Then Bettie spotted an elevator. The operator invited us into a giant freight elevator. Another operator greeted us as the door opened on a deserted freight tunnel. "What track?" she asked before guiding us to an elevator and taking us up to the platform. "The train to Venezia?" we asked. "No, just left," we were told.
We found a schedule, rode down and up another pair of elevators and changed platforms. I found stairs down to a busy pedestrian tunnel, reached the station, fortunately had E .70 for the WC, and quickly returned to the platform where I asked an off duty conductor about our train. "No," he said, "you cannot take this train to Venezia; you must change platforms and catch another train." Down and up the elevators we went one last time.
When we settled into the second class coach with no air conditioning, we thought we were in heaven. We were finally going to Venezia. The train sped north with the window curtains flapping in the wind. It stopped at six stations and twice at signals. (It was a local train.) Finally we reached Mestre, the last mainland stop before rolling into Venezia, Santa Lucia. Two days later, we rode our last train back to Roma.
We've Got It!
There is apparently an Italian high-speed train racket that goes like this. You cannot reserve a seat until they're released, and you cannot reserve a seat after they're released because they're all reserved. Now for a few Euros, in the right hands.... In any event, we ended up in first class on the slow train to Roma.
First class, second class, we couldn't tell the difference, except that our second class trains traveled with open windows. The irony was that many well-healed tourists with huge suitcases were booked into our first class coach. They couldn't find seats, much less places to store their bags, and soon the passageway was filled with bags and people sitting on jump-seats that fold down from the wall.
For the first time, we found the right seats, coach, and train. As we relaxed, a well-to-do American couple joined us. A few minutes later, a second, much younger, but equally affluent, American couple also entered our compartment. We six American watched other passengers push, pull, and trip over the bags in the passageway.
I didn't feel a bit guilty about sitting in my cramped first class compartment on the slow train to Roma. In fact, I chuckled when an American man, who couldn't find his reserved first class seats, told his complaining wife, "You see that big number 1 on the side of the coach? That means first class, but it doesn't matter because half of Italy doesn't work anyway." By now I knew, the half that didn't work was the tourist half.
The older man was a mortgage banker, and his wife taught school. The younger couple were newly married and on their four week honeymoon. She was a management consultant, and he sold high priced real estate. Amazingly, both couples were from Potomac, an exclusive village outside Washington, DC. They knew the same people and talked about property values and hairdressers. I enjoyed the lovely scenery between Bologna and Florence.
Our four American friends left us in Florence, and we were joined by an Italian woman, and two Italian men. When the woman entered the compartment, the seat was littered with empty plastic bottles. There was only a small trash receptacle, and the "cart-man" had passed twice to sell bibiti e panini. Unlike airline flight attendants, he never collected the trash.
After getting an "are you kidding?" look when she asked the conductor to clear the trash, the lady picked up the bottles and stowed them in the luggage rack over her head. When the man said a bottle was leaking, she got up in disgust and tightened the cap. That's when I noticed window sign in English: "Don't throw bottles out the window." It had a picture of a bottle in a circle with a diagonal line through it. It was a relief to reach Roma.
Arriving Was More Fun
After our final breakfast in Roma, we caught a cab and confidently walked into Fiumicino. Why not? We had arrived without a hitch and survived four trains.
My god, what a mass of people and lack of signage. Not to worry, there was informazione directly in front of us. I asked, "Where is check-in for American" and was told, "Over to the right." We walked around an enormous line of people waiting to go the same direction, until we were stopped by armed guards who gestured to the line.
We asked, "Is the check-in line?" "Yes," we were told. After 10 minutes an agent walked down the line asking, "American Airlines?" We said "yes," and she responded, "Follow me." (It was the Delta line.) She led us out of the terminal and back in past soldiers with automatic weapons. When we arrived at the American desk, we had to show our documents twice to check our luggage and get our boarding passes.
We passed the metal detectors and boarded the shuttle train to the International Terminal. When we arrived, we lost our minds. Bettie wanted to buy a book, but I had her ID and most of her money. I wanted to buy food for trip, and without thinking we separated. We exchanged a few sharp words when we finally found each other 15 minutes later, just as our group was called to board the bus to the plane.
Arriving at Fiumicino was more fun than departing.
