Escaping the trains.

I like Italy, but I am honestly excited to be out. After living in Switzerland for so long, I started taking public transportation for granted. I am actually sort of surprised that the Swiss don't use seconds as well when writing out their train schedules.

Italy? No. Not a single train was on time, and they have all sorts of secret rules. There are about twelve different types of train, depending on their makeup and how fast they're going to go, and you have to remember which ones require reservations. Inevitably, every train I got on did. I got on one train in Cinque Terre at slightly after 16:01, on track one, expecting it to be the 16:01 track one train that stopped at each of the towns along the coast. Ohh, no. This was the previous train, late, not my train, also late, going in the same direction. This train wasn't stopping until the last town, and it only had little cabins, none of which I was allowed to sit inside. And I needed to pay an extra thirteen Euros for the reservation I needed for the privilege of going to the wrong town late. I grumped at the ticket collector while he yelled at me in Italian. Eventually, he gave up and I jumped out at the first stop.

I had trouble again when going to Pisa and Firenze, and I had trouble again on my way to Venezia. In Verona, the ticket office woman yelled at me when I asked if I needed a reservation for the train up to Bolzano (NO RESERVATIONE!), since it was the exact same train as the train to Innsbruck (SI RESERVATIONE!) and the ticket guy on my previous train, the Venezia-Milan run, had informed me that I needed one even if I was only going a couple stops, to Verona. She snatched back the reservation she had sold me for the Innsbruck train, refunded my Euros, and informed me that that sort of question should be directed to the station info people, not the ticket people. Even though the info people seemed to be touristy stuff like hotels and sights, and I would need to be at the ticket window anyway if I did need a reservation. I dutifully trekked to the info people, found that I did need a reservation, and bought it again from a different person back at the ticket office. Even the train station people don't know what's going on with their trains.

Verona smelled like vomit, by the way, so I spent less time than I had allotted for the city. (I also arrived late because guess what: my train was late.)

Oh, and another point: the Swiss have organized their train schedule so that the trains going in directions you might ostensibly want to go in after hitting a hub leave five to ten minutes after you get to the station. You just get off, flit over to the schedule board, get on the next one only a track or two over (or possibly on the same track, pulling in four minutes after your previous train leaves), wait three minutes, and you're off. Italy, on the other hand, has optimized missed connections and waiting times. I think they must anticipate late trains in this scheme, too, planning their departures to cause the maximum possible aggravation. It worked, or at least it did until I left the train station to wander in a new city.

Not Verona, though, because as I said, it stunk. The Dolomites and Bolzano were a pleasure as I rode north, up to Austria and away from ferriovia hell. I shared a cabin with a mother and her early-teen daughter, the latter heading up to boarding school in Germany. As the mother left the train, she appointed Anastasia my little sister for the duration of my trip, sealing the deal by handing me the rubber dinosaur that had come inside Anastasia's chocolate Kinder egg. I was happy to hang out with Harry-Potter-reading Anastasia, especially because she was able to converse in both Italian and German.