Italy--Final Day. Saturday September 04

We woke up early, had breakfast, then left for Salerno where we were to catch our train to Rome.

B's parents drove us there, along the coast road. The highway would've been faster but less direct and more confusing. We had plenty of time, so no worries.

We got to Salerno in about forty minutes, then crawled through town several kilometers until we found the train station. The center of Salerno on a Saturday morning is a busy place. The traffic creeps along, you hear the occasional honk of a horn (but nobody leans on it) and of course the scooters weave in and out of traffic, split lanes, and generally do as they please. Unlike Vienna, I saw nobody riding a bicycle. I think it would be suicidal.

We said our goodbyes at the train station. B's parents and sister had another week in Paestum.

Our train was scheduled to leave at 11:30 or so . We checked the board and, sure enough: DELAYED.

This time, they had a legitimate excuse---because of the rain, there'd been a landslide much further south. They had to clear the track before our train could pass. Thankfully we'd changed tickets the day before, figuring even a three hour delay would still get us to the airport in time....assuming the train from Rome's Termini to the airport wasn't fucked up, as well.

B asked one of the ticket agents if it was possible to get an earlier train. Yes----but they too were delayed because of the mudslide, AND you'd have to pay a fee for changing. Fortunately the conductor on board the train could take care of this. OK. We decided to take the first train to Rome that pulled into the station, and fuck the rest of it.

On the platform, we kept hearing a robotic announcement, first in Italian then repeated in English: "(The train in question) will be delayed 90 minutes." The thing is, no matter how much time passed, the amount of the delay remained the same instead of decreasing. It was always 90 minutes.

We looked at the electronic signs. The 90 minute delay was for the first train---the one we were now hoping to catch---not OUR train, which was 220 minutes delayed! Holy shit.

We had First Class tickets. The train cars are numbered 1 or 2. Our job was to get on the car with the 1 on it. We didn't expect to get seats----those would have been reserved. But if we were fast, we'd have a place to stow our luggage and maybe a place to lean against a wall for the long trip to Rome. B told me: "The location of the First Class car varies. It can be at the front, or the back. When the train pulls in, start looking. If you don't see a big 1 on the first car, run like hell for the back of the train!" If you're late getting in the car, you won't have a place for your luggage and you damned sure won't have a place to lean / squat, resulting in la fuck della cluster, as I think they say in Italy.

After about, uh, 90 minutes, the train pulled in. I scanned for the big number 1. "It's at the end---run for it!" We dashed like hares for the end of the train, dragging our luggage behind us. Got on, put our luggage on the rack, and claimed a place to stand / lean. All the seats were taken. After a few minutes, the train pulled out.

Sitting on his suitcase in the aisle way near the luggage rack was a pleasant man of about 40 who spoke excellent English. As I alternately leaned against the wall (dangerously close to the EMERGENCY BRAKE lever) or squatted down trying to get comfortable, and B sat on her suitcase, we and the guy commiserated with one another, kind of smiling and shrugging and generally glad we'd made the train---and hoping it wasn't delayed further down the track.

I couldn't place his accent but finally it emerged that he was a Turkish academic who'd been in Italy for a conference. B and the Turk talked a lot about place they'd visited in common, or about places she'd heard of in Turkey but never visited. Very interesting, pleasant, urbane, and mellow man, not the kind of Turk you might imagine from watching the old movie Midnight Express.

The train stopped in Naples. People got off, emptying some seats. We quickly grabbed two, and the Turk found one for himself. B said: "Expect to give these seats up, either immediately or further down the line. No doubt they're reserved." But in one of those weird southern Italy train-travel reversals of fortune, we rode those comfortable seats all the way to Rome. AND never saw the conductor, who would have charged us more for taking this earlier train.

And, biggest miracle of all: this train was a fast train to Rome, the fastest of the three kinds we could have taken. Our original train had been of the second-fastest variety. So the way it turned out, we actually got to the Rome Termini about 30 minutes before we were originally supposed to arrive----even though we'd taken a train that left later than we were originally supposed to leave!

It was as if the delay had actually reversed itself, the train propelling us through the time-space continuum to land in the future earlier than expected!

Fuckin' Italy....

----

Hung around the airport for hours. Ate sandwiches. Read. Wrote. Watched people.

The crowd at the gate was growing. The plane arrived. There was a long line to board. I thought they'd board by row number, as usual. But B, very experienced flier that she is, saw something I didn't. "Get ready. Put your backpack on and follow me when I say."

Suddenly a second gate agent appeared and opened his gate to check the boarding passes! "NOW!" B said. We jumped up and were first in the newly-opened line and for the only time in my motherfucking life, I was the first guy on board a plane---which meant, no struggling to find space in the overhead, no having to wade through people, no wriggling into an already-seated row, no fighting for the fucking armrest.

Of course, the luggage loading machine broke down, so we were about forty minutes late leaving. But the pilot made up most of the time in the air, bringing us into Vienna only about ten minutes late.

And unlike Rome, we waited about five minutes for our luggage.

Got back home about 10:30, ready to settle in with a bottle of wine.

Greetings from John and B, back from Italy.