Vol. 1 Issue 24
So finally… It’s really not that exciting after all, but I
really did get kicked off the train in Genoa. I can’t remember where I was
going. I think the intention was to get from Nice to Rome on a single punch of
my Eurail Pass.
I had a seven-day Eurial pass for use in five countries, so
traveling across as many countries within a twenty-four hour period as possible
became the goal. That way I would only have to punch a single day on my rail
pass and could thus potentially travel more. Overall, this generally sucked
because it meant really long days of traveling. At one point I had arrived in
Madrid at 1130 at night after traveling almost 24 hours straight from Venice. I
had no idea how to get to my hostel. Luckily Madrid is a safe town. But it
still sucked. I eventually found the hostel, but not until like 1 AM.
I had no problems in France, Spain, or any part of Northern
Europe. On the Nice-to-Rome trip the problem occurred once I got into the Italian
rail system. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the Italian local trains
were the toilets. You’d open the lid and there was the ground whizzing passed
below. The toilets just opened out directly onto the tracks. Even Asian trains
have septic tanks.
As I mentioned, I had traveled all the way from Germany and
had had no problems, at least not with train conductors. Every time I got on
the train I’d hand them my rail pass and they’d stamp a hole in it, validating
it. On the Italian train I handed the conductor my rail pass, but instead of
stamping it and handing it back he said a few words in Italian, and then
stormed away, keeping my pass.
Without going off on a completely ridiculous tangent, even
if it is justified, I just need to allude to the terribleness of my Italian
here. I’ve talked in depth about my sucking at foreign languages at various
junctures- first time readers see any previous posts regarding horrendicity. I won’t
go on about that again here, but I would just like to officially add Italian to
the list of languages of which I speak horrendously. It’s not as bad as my
Vietnamese, or god my Swedish, but it’s very bad.
So when the conductor dude ran away with my pass I just
assumed he’d be right back with it, but no. Apparently I was supposed to have
punched the card myself before getting on board. His notion being that if
perchance he wouldn’t have come around, it would have been possible I could
have fandangled a free ride, having not punched my pass before getting on the
train, and this was BAD. He thought he had caught me trying to defraud Italy of
a small piece of its precious railway capacity.
After about 15 minutes I went to find the guy. He didn’t
speak English, and since I only knew (and still only know) si and grazie in
Italian, we had to find a translator. Once I figured out what the conductor’s
problem was, my whole not-punching-of-the-card-thing, and that no amount of
begging would get my Eurail pass back, I resorted to my dwindled supply of
Euros. I started with 20, but not until I got up to 50 would the bastard give
my pass back, and then, that’s right, he kicked me off the train 50 Euros
poorer. I had my pass back so I could have gotten on the next train and kept
going to Rome, but I didn’t for some reason, hence the eponymous blog title.
In 1882 Nietzsche referred to Genoa as hedonistic when comparing
it to his austere Northern Europe; “ But what you find here upon turning any corner is a human being who knows the sea,
adventure and the orient; a human being who abhors the law.” I guess he meant
was that the Genoese are adventurous, you know, with the whole Christopher
Columbus being from there and all, but I didn’t find any adventure or
lawlessness. I did find a really amazing city that had the best view from
a hostel balcony of anywhere I’ve ever been. And in Genoa when you order a
gyros/shawarma/kabab whatever-you-call them, they put french fries inside the
pita. Yes, inside with the meat, sauce, etc. It was amazing. Almost worth
getting kicked off the train for.
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