Maybe I should renamed this post : "Europe tour Interail 2006 : The day when I discovered I can actually speak Italian". That would actually be a lot more positive but I think that the actual title fit very well.
First I have to tell you something about Italian trains. I hate them. I think they are the worse in the all world. Not because they are uncomfortable, you'll see how I care for comfort when I travel a bit later but because they are crowded. The basic idea is, sell tickets, if someone ask for a ticket you sell it. It doesn't matter if there are sits in the train or not, or even space in compartment or sits in the corridors. So you see what happens. Night trains in Italy, going from Venezia to Roma, standing in the corridor most night, finally getting a sit in the corridor, having to get your Interail pass out for the controller every ten minutes as he never seems to remember you. And finally, forgetting the Interail pass in the train, and letting the train go before you can realize it. Oups we were supposed to have three more weeks of travel, right ?
Well I guess at that stage when you go see the people in the train station and that they can do nothing for you and that you can only buy a pass in your home country most of people would have give up. I guess we were probably crazy but you'll realized with what follows.
The guy in the train station said he was going to call the train, then said he did and that the controller found nothing... when we had given the all explanation about where it was, not a chance, my guess is he didn't want to bother with that and didn't even call.
So I had to take care of things myself. I was used to trains I had been checking where trains where going in all Europe for a month( maybe more) before going on this trips. The European train lines where my playground and I didn't feel like giving it up just yet.
We bought a ticket for Sebastien to go to Salerno, I still had my pass :D And we followed the train 400 kilometer southern from our destination to get to Salerno. Nobody wanted to eat or drink, we were just trying to avoid a nervous break down I suppose. And we get there and the first thing we saw arriving in Salerno's train station was that our train was there. Thinking about it now it could have been gone somewhere else but luckily, it was there. We went to the train station to find someone to take us to get the pass Interrail and we find a nice girl.
Little summary of my conversation with her : "I can't go anything about it, you need to go to the police station in the train station. But don't tell them it's a train ticket, they are lazy they won't go in just for a train ticket, tell them it's your id."
So we went to the police station and I had to explain to them,
everything again, from the start to make them go look for Sebastien passport in the train (by the way Sebastien didn't have a passport at that time). Lying to policeman all in Italian, because Italy is like France, you have to speak the language, no English. At that time I can assure you I was fluent. It took me forever to make them go, and when the guy finally went, I was half suspecting that he was not going to really look for it. Actually he did, he came back with the pass and we were so happy about it
but we still had to pretend for a bit that we didn't know where the passport was. They finally let us go, making fun of us because we didn't know that we could travel in Europe without the passport. Of course we knew but we were not going to tell him. Secret victory, maybe, huge relieved, certainly, with the pass Interail back we could finish our Europe tour.
We waited four more hours in the train station for the next train to Roma, Italian trains are always late, you know when you'll arrive (kind of) but you will never know when you will be able to get in.
We arrived in Roma and started to look for a youth hostel. That was our first night in youth hostel during the trip. People told us that it was impossible to sleep here because they couldn't have conditioner as the building was too old, so that they needed to let the window open and the cross-road was very noisy. I can promise you that we slept very well.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction
Travel table of content
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