Unlikely Words

Some days you wake up with a feeling, and you just know how the whole day is going to go. I sprang eagerly out of bed at 7:30 sharp, walked out onto our terrace for a last look at Amalfi through the clearing haze, and breathed in deeply with satisfaction. Yes, sometimes you just know it’s going to be a good day.

And sometimes you’re completely and utterly wrong.

Things got off to a bad start when, at breakfast, we both ordered cappuccinos. Rachel generally doesn’t drink coffee, and for good reason: it makes her jittery, nervous, and sick to her stomach. The whole morning, she said, she felt her heart pounding as if in the middle of a panic attack. This did not bode well for her mental state during the travel to come.

The ride to the train station, in retrospect, was perhaps the easiest part of the day. The ride was as stomach-churningly twisty as always, which didn’t help Rachel any. Our driver spoke no English and we spoke no Italian; luckily, Rachel was able to dredge up enough high school French to make halting small talk and ask how much longer it would be until we arrived. The social pressure of making conversation seemed to distract her a bit from her feeling unwell, and as her mood improved I started to relax.

And then we arrived at Napoli Centrale Station. I’ve heard it said that in Italian, the phrase “go to Napoli!” is roughly equivalent to “go to hell!” (I also think of the classic scene from The Kentucky Fried Movie in which a prisoner is dragged before Dr. Klahn. The prisoner loudly asserts his fearlessness until Klahn pronounces his sentence: “Take him to Detroit.” The hapless victim is then dragged off-screen, screaming, “No! Not Detroit!” Let’s just say that Dr. Klahn could use Naples as a backup.)

The station was big, confusing, and poorly signed, but we eventually found our way to our train and, with the help of a moderately helpful guard, found our coach. I should mention that I had high hopes for this leg of the journey. A train ride across Italy sounds exciting and romantic, does it not? On the drive in, Rachel revealed that not only were we taking the Eurostar line (which Rachel and her father had given rave reviews in France) but we had first class tickets. First class! My mind was filled with visions of bone china, white-gloved waiters, and nubile slave girls to fan us with ostrich feathers.

In reality, our seats in the first class coach were, perhaps, more comfortable than those in second-class, but still somewhat cramped. The car slowly filled up with fellow Americans, mostly headed to Rome. We sat and waited. Inactivity seemed to return Rachel to her previous high level of nervousness, and she was anxious for the train to depart, but I assured her that things would be just fine and that we would be on our way shortly; it wasn’t even 11:30 (our scheduled departure time) yet.

Then the rumors started to move through the train: “There are people on the tracks.” People on the tracks? I had seen men in identical blue shirts running by out the window, shouting and laughing. As it turns out, the people on the tracks were actually blocking the tracks, arm-in-arm. It was a labor strike. “These things happen in Italy all the time,” our fellow passengers said, reassuring one another. “It’ll be resolved, and then we’ll get going.”

Forty-five minutes after the train was supposed to have left, an announcement came over the train’s PA system. In Italian. We Americans all looked at each other, shrugging our shoulders, until we saw the one Italian family on board gather their bags and start to leave the train. One woman knew enough English to tell us “cancelled” and “other station,” and then they were gone.

We dragged our bags down from the overhead compartments and out onto the platform, following the herd of confused passengers. At the end of the platform, we attached ourselves to a group of equally lost English speakers: a pair of recent college graduates backpacking across Europe, a blond guy (who looked a lot like Alan Tudyk) and his wife (who did not), and a family of three (including a girl, Tori, of about 11) from the Bay Area. The woman in this couple, Nancy, quickly became our leader. She spoke just enough Italian to find an older Italian gentleman who, for a few Euros each, was willing to guide our hapless bunch across the station, down the stairs to the Metro subway, and explain that our new train was leaving from the Fligrei station, six stops down the line.

Dragging our bags, we raced to the subway train (along with hundreds of other stranded passengers) and crammed ourselves in. Nancy managed to keep us all together, and keep everyone’s spirits up, in the hot, smelly, over-crowded car. For Tori’s sake if for no other reason, we all tried to confine our remarks to the kind of upbeat gallows humor that is the best-case scenario for travelers in our predicament. We all, in an unspoken agreement, appointed ourselves her co-protectors.

When the Metro finally, blessedly, arrived at Fligrei, Nancy herded us off the train, up two flights of stairs, and onto what we correctly guessed was our train. (Somewhere along the line, blond guy and his wife got separated from the group, but we saw them get onto a different car.) By the time we got to the train, every seat was, of course, occupied, and the aisle was rapidly filling up. Our group piled into coach number one and attempted to make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the aisle, sitting and leaning on our baggage.

And then we waited. The air-conditioning was not, of course, running while the train was stopped, and we had no idea when it was scheduled to leave. Rachel was feeling worse and worse as dehydration and dizziness took their toll. Finally, after almost an hour, the train started to move (to the wry applause of all on board). I spent the two-hour ride to Rome alternating between leaning against one of the seats with all of my weight on my left foot, and leaning against a different seat with all of my weight on my right foot. Rachel alternated between leaning against our bags and talking animatedly to our comrades and sitting on the floor with her head between her knees. (“She’s dehydrated,” said Nancy. “You have to make her drink water. I know; I’m a mom.” In fairness, we only had a quarter of a bottle of water between us.)

This portion of the day would have been truly unbearable were it not for Nancy, Ron, Tori, Melissa, and Steve. As the train finally pulled into Roma Termini, we exchanged email addresses and sincerely wished each other better luck to come. Rachel and I, however, were now on our own, continuing on to Bologna.

As the train emptied out, Rachel and I stowed our luggage and collapsed exhausted into our miraculously unoccupied assigned seats. We met a large and funny family from New Jersey, some of whom were double-booked in the same seats but cheerfully found seats elsewhere when they saw how pathetic we looked. We finally got our first-class perks: air-conditioning, a packet of cookies, and a Dixie cup of water.

Once we pulled away from Rome and our tickets had been inspected, Rachel went to check out the dining car. I asked her to bring me back a bottle of water and a sandwich. As it turns out, the dining car was only offering one food item – a sandwich – so that’s exactly what I got. It was ham (speck, I think) on bread. Dry and austere, but, given how desperately hungry I was, delicious.

We had two points of stress remaining to us. First, at every stop the train made, Rachel was convinced that it was somehow going to turn around and go back to Naples. The second was that we were going to miss our connecting train, and we had no idea when the next train from Bologna to Venice was. In this situation, I did what any self-respecting, self-reliant, competent and confident man would do. I called my daddy.

Actually, I text messaged both him and my sister, waking them both up at who-knows-what ungodly hour, and begged them to look up the Italian rail schedules for us. We also asked my dad to stand by to call his travel agent to find us a hotel in Bologna should we miss the last train out. As it turns out, there were plenty of trains for Venice, but without the help of our agents in the United States, Rachel and I would have had a much worse day. We salute you!

When we finally pulled into Bologna Centrale station, I was highly amused to hear the following announcement in Italian and English: “This is Bologna Central Station. This train is running 169 minutes behind schedule. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we thank you for riding Trenitalia.” Can you imagine, for instance, Amtrak ever acknowledging the fact that they were behind schedule, never mind exactly how far behind? Can you ever imagine them apologizing for it?

Compared to what preceded it, the Bologna train station was an oasis of calm beauty and serenity. We bought ourselves some dinner: speck e formaggio sandwiches. Rachel pointed out that the day’s meals had progressed from bread (breakfast) to bread and meat (lunch) to bread and meat and cheese. Who could say what amazing sandwich possibilities awaited us the next day?

The train from Bologna to Venice was not as nice as the Eurostar. It was essentially a commuter train, with oddly uncomfortable seats (the seats had about 15 inches of fabric between wide strips of plastic – they made us feel thunderously obese). Rachel pulled a muscle in her side and simultaneously crushed her pinky finger while lifting her bag overhead, and after a whole day of being in charge of not freaking out, I was starting to tire. The low point was when the conductor came through to check our tickets. He started at them for a long time – I thought, “what could we have screwed up this time? – and then pointed to the “first class” printed on the ticket. We were sitting in a second-class coach. Neither of us had any interest in moving our bags so we stayed put, although I was haunted by the possibility that I was missing out on nubile virgins with ostrich feathers just two cars up.

Back at the train station, I had called ahead to our hotel to let them know that we’d be arriving late and to ask them to arrange a taxi from the train station to the hotel – we felt in no shape to be navigating a new foreign city’s buses at night. The plan was that I was to call the taxi company from Mestre, the stop before Venice, and they’d tell me what taxi number to look for. Naturally, T-Mobile let me down here. My phone, which had been working perfectly in Europe for the whole trip, suddenly decided that it didn’t want to make any more calls in the Veneto. I could call anyplace in the world except our hotel and the taxi company.

When we arrived at the train station, therefore, we were stranded. We couldn’t figure out how to buy a bus ticket, we couldn’t reach the taxi company, and we couldn’t figure out how to work the Italian pay phones. (Seriously. How embarrassing is to fail to figure out how to work a pay phone?) I began to despair, but Rachel spotted a water taxi sign and for the price of €50 we had a ride to our hotel.

Once we actually stepped into the boat, all of the stress of the day disappeared. We had arrived. We were gliding down the canals of Venice. Venice! The air was cool, the boat was gentle, the buildings were – well, more on Venice tomorrow. The feeling, though, was amazing. This city is almost unreal. As the boat pulled up to the mooring in front of our hotel, and we unloaded our bags, Rachel and I turned to each other and grinned. Venice!