Darling, when things go wrong in life, you lift your chin, put on a ravishing smile, mix yourself a little cocktail…
~!Sophie Kinsella
One thing I love about Italy is the train system. Want to take a day off from Bologna and hit the coast? Train it to Rimini. Interested in seeing Michelangelo’s David? Train it to Florence. Need the Pope’s blessing? Train it to Rome. Trains are fast, easy, and fun ways to just get away or to travel from place-to-place…until they’re not.
I tend to buy train tickets for long trips in advance for a few reasons. Who knows if a train from Roma to Bari or from Milano to Napoli is going to sell out? I don’t like to take chances if I know I need to go somewhere. In addition, the earlier you buy a ticket on the fast trains (with assigned seats), the less-expensive it is. Example: Today I bought a ticket from Lucca to Rome for Sunday, and I paid 44 euro; had I bought it a month ago, it would have been about 10 euro. It was for those reasons, therefore, that I bought tickets for my group’s travel from Assisi to Rome to Bari back in January.
Where’s Our Train?
Our first train, from Assisi to Roma Termini, was to leave Assisi at 7:04 am. We gamely hauled our luggage down the 44 steps of our B&B and walked across the street to the train station by 6:30 (I am ALWAYS extremely early for trains.). We tugged our luggage to the waiting room, and I went to look at the departure board to see on which platform our train would arrive. I crossed my fingers hoping for platform one as there was no way I wanted to wrestle my luggage down and up steps to another platform.
Our train was not on the board. There was a train at 6:50 and a train at 7:10, but neither was our train and neither was going in the right direction. Hmmm. I walked back to the waiting room. “For some reason, our train’s not on the board,” I informed Nancy and Barb. At that point, while I was curious, I wasn’t overly concerned.
I went to the ticket office and found it closed, as I expected. I looked at the station’s master train schedule (Each station lists every hour/minute that a train arrives or departs and the platform it usually uses.). Sure as anything, Trenitalia 531 was on the list, and it showed that it would depart at 7:04 am. The digital departure board still did not show it, however. I walked back to the gals while I mentally weighed my options.
“Still not showing,” I said, “and I’m trying to figure out what to do since there is no one here to help us.” In the back of my mind, I thought that the only thing worse would be that I were standing in a dark room with one golden light beaming down from the other side of that quiet station.
Right about then, a recorded voice announced that Regional Train Such-and-Such from Foligno and direct to Terontola was arriving on platform one. “I’m going to see if I can catch the conductor and ask him for help,” I said as I scurried out to the platform.
As luck would have it, the conductor was in the coach that stopped right in front of me. I knew I didn’t have much time, so I quickly explained our problem to him. He looked at my ticket. “That train was canceled, Signora.” He shook his head and gave me the sad eye. I threw my hands in the air. About 1000 thoughts went through my mind at that moment, none of which I would want to repeat here. “What do we do?” I whined.
He put his hand on mine and said, “There are three of you? Get the other two and get on this train. Hurry. Hurry. I will help you, but we have to leave.” Into the waiting room I ran screaming (or the equivalent of), “Hurry, get on that train. They’re holding it for us.”
“What are we doing?” one of the women asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “Just get on the train.” In the back of my mind, I was thinking, This train is going in the wrong direction. Good grief. This cannot be good. I tried to listen to the conversation the train manager was having with Trenitalia central, but he kept turning his head so I could not hear. Finally, he approached me.
“Signora, it is all arranged. When we get to Terontola, get on the train to Roma. They will let that train manager know what is going on, You will have four minutes to change, but they will try to hold it for a minute if possible.”
Time for the Backstory
Because we were going from Assisi to Polignano a Mare, we were going to have a long day on trains. Originally, we were supposed to get into Roma Termini around 9:00, giving us two-plus hours to have breakfast and be on time for our train to Bari which was supposed to leave at 11:45. In my infinite wisdom—and to save a ton of money—I booked the Assisi-Roma train on Trenitalia and the Roma-Bari train on Italo.
That is comparable to booking two consecutive flights on two airlines. For example, if you want to go to Paris from Nashville, it might be cheaper to fly Jet Blue to JFK and take United to Paris. Since you are booking two separate tickets on two different airlines, if there is a problem with the first flight and you miss the second, you are pure out of luck.
Train Number Two
Since we were going two hours north (by train) of where we started, I was starting to panic about missing that second train. What, I wondered, were we going to do if we did?
As we were arriving in Terontola around 9:00, the train manager came up to me. “You must get off and hurry. There is your next train now,” he said as he pointed to a train approaching from the other direction…and three platforms over. “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.” he shouted as he almost pushed me and my luggage off of the train.
Luckily, we were right near the staircase that lead to the underground tunnel between platforms. Unluckily, my suitcase weighed a ton. The look on my face must have made a few people have pity on me as a young man and a woman in her 40s or so grabbed my bags and ran with me down the stairs and to the next platform. The kid, God love him, ran up the stairs with my behemoth bag and then went back to help the girls. They got us on the train and turned to leave. They were not even on our train.
“Grazie. Grazie,” I gasped. “Dio vi bendiga,” (Thank you. Thank you. God bless you.) I almost cried. I could barely breathe, and the train doors were closing on us. As it started to move, the three of us tried to catch our breath before we sat down.
When I was finally breathing normally again, I looked up the train’s schedule on the TrenItalia app and found that we were to get into Rome at about 10:50, as long as there were no delays. That was the good news as it gave us about an hour between trains. The bad news was that we were arriving in Roma Tiburtina, not Roma Termini, and we would have to get to the main train station somehow.
Terontola-to-Roma
All of the air left me. Again.
The truth of the matter is that TIburtina is less than three miles from Termini, and it is connected by the Metro system and buses. Trying to haul luggage on those is not easy; Roma’s public transport services are packed, so dragging luggage on them would not be optimal.
I sat for an hour watching the circus the regional train can be. People walked up and down the aisles. A father wore his daughter’s bunny hat for the entire ride. Best, a guy pushing a so-called mini-bar went by a few times. His sign advertised Prosecco, and I was tempted, but it was still before 10 am. I thought wine might not be appropriate at that hour.
As we approached Rome, I told the gals that I made an executive decision that we would catch a taxi to Termini so we didn’t have to deal with the Metro system. Great idea? HA! Try finding a taxi at Roma TIbutina.
We followed the signs that advertised taxis a certain way only to exit to the Metro station. We yanked our luggage up the stairs to an empty piazza and just stared. No taxis. No buses. No one.
“Let’s go this way,” I practically cried. I had seen a taxi come from that particular direction, so I took it as a sign. As we walked down the street, we saw more taxis, and we all waved our arms in the air to attract one. The drivers all shook their heads and pointed around the corner to a taxi stand that was about 20 people deep. We would be lucky to make the train if we waited in that line.
“CHRIS!” Both Nancy and Barb, who were behind me, yelled for me. Apparently one taxi driver took pity on us (I hate to think of how defeated we looked), and he pulled over when he saw Barb waving. I wanted to hug him but held myself in control as he loaded our bags into the trunk and us into his car. Ten minutes later, he pulled up to the far end of Roma Termini and let us off.
“How much?” I asked him expecting to pay 20-50 euro.
“Ten euro,” he said as he apologized for dropping us off so far away. I could have hugged him, but again I held off. I would have paid the 20, to be honest.
At Termini
When we got into the terminal, I noted that our train to Bari was delayed 10 minutes. We were glad since none of us had had anything to eat. We went to get food, and long lines delayed us a bit. We started to walk to the train at about 11:25 even though the digital signs all showed that the 11:45 departure was now 11:55.
As we were walking down the platform to coach 7 where our seats were, I overheard the train manager tell another woman to get on the train NOW. It was 11:43. He blew a short whistle. I was near coach 5, and Barb was right behind me. Nancy was two coaches behind us.
I shoved my luggage up the stairs and yelled back to Nancy. “GET ON THE TRAIN NOW. GET ON THE TRAIN.” I frantically waved my arm and helped Barb with her luggage. I looked out of the door as it was closing and didn’t see Nancy, so I assumed she made it on the train. Our train to Bari, still showing a 10-minute delay on all signage, rumbled down that track on-time at 11:45.
Getting to Our Seats
Seats on the long-haul fast trains are assigned, so we all had to get to coach 7 to get our seats. Midway through coach 5, I saw a lady with her full-size suitcase sitting in the aisle next to her. There was no way I could get around it even if I had no luggage, and I was not going to pick mine up and climb over hers.
“Scusi,” I said to her politely. She looked at me and then looked away. I repeated the scusi a little louder, and she looked at me again. “Please move your luggage,” I said to her in Italian. We have to go past you.”
“I cannot move it,” she replied shrugging her shoulders. “There’s nowhere to put it.”
Let me just say this: I was in no mood. I once had a teenager and I taught junior high and high school, so I had a lot of practice at the stink eye and mom-glare. She got both. “Move your luggage,” I repeated a lot less politely this time. She insisted there was nowhere to put it. I let out the angry sigh. (Bad sign. Really bad sign.)
“I am not standing in this aisle for four hours. There is an empty row two seats behind you. Get up and move your bag there for two minutes so we can all get by you.” My glare and tone must have worked as she jumped up and moved her suitcase faster than I am writing these words. “Umph,” I grunted as I walked by her.
You have to know, of course, that when we got to our seats, other people were sitting in them. By that time, I was more than exhausted and tense, so I just pointed to the tickets and thumbed the offenders out of our seats. I fell into mine and almost started to cry.
The Aftermath
We made it to Bari and caught the next train to Polignano a Mare and our apartment. Thankfully, we went to dinner close by, and I found a nice cocktail with my name written all over it.
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