Arriving in Ventimiglia, our first real stop on the border from France (Monaco was also on the way) into Italy, I was pleased to see a clear difference between the Italian locals and the French that I had left behind. True, there is a real sense of Mediterranean life along the Cote D’Azur, with fairly laid-back individuals all there for sunbathing and wine, but these locals seemed even more so. The Carabinieri on the platform when we stopped looked so relaxed they almost seemed asleep, even the sniffer dog didn’t seem upset because 15 sweaty backpackers had just arrived. Nobody moved, the passports were not checked, just a few happy ‘ciaos’ and a ‘benvenuti’.

After leaving our bags thinking of the guide, we set out to explore for an hour before taking the next train. Having spent most of the previous hour practicing how to order a cappuccino in Italian, I was eager to try it. We found a sidewalk cafe and sat down. To my amazement, the waiter understood my order on the first try and duly brought my coffee. He was still smiling when we got back to the train.

The journey to Cinque Terre takes you through countless tunnels, carved out of cliffs hanging over jagged rocks and pebble beaches. Every time we reached the dark, the curtains fluttering insanely on the open windows, I could still see the blue water imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. Nowhere else have I experienced that effect.

The locals and we were chatting with each other until a guy asked me where we were going in Italian. I answer Rio Maggiore. Then he asks me where we are all from. I explain that I am a tour guide and my group are all from all over the world. He goes to Calabria to see his mother and she is from Milan. There he works in a car factory. Another woman opens her cooler to share some iced coffee in small plastic espresso cups with the 2 Korean girls in my group, and another pulls out some ‘dolce’, sweet cakes to share with the Canadian girls.

Of all my train trips in Europe, I have found that Italians are the most generous to backpackers, in terms of communication and sharing the contents of their coolest bags. Especially on the train that goes to Calabria from the north.

I once passed the section between Pisa and Rome trapped in a corridor with a 60-year-old man, a phrase book, and a lot of sign language. He was very interested in telling me his family history and was very impressed that a ‘lontan’ kiwi was trying to speak Italian. He even gave me grammar lessons and corrected my pronunciation. That never happened on a French train.

Most recently, on the train to Florence from Pisa, I sat next to a girl from Romania to get a full itinerary of what to see and do in Florence from the guy in front of her in Italian. The interesting thing was that she only spoke a few words, but seemed to catch most of what he was saying. It was great to see the passion he was talking about about what was obviously his hometown.

On one trip I managed to satisfy the wishes of a rather shy Chinese girl who loved men in uniform. I was trying to collect as many photos of them as possible from all over Europe. Some boys from the Italian Navy had gotten up to La Spezia, obviously from the naval base there, bound for Rome along with a couple of boys from the Air Force. They were filling the aisle outside the dining car, laughing and yelling, all very willing to pose for a couple of photos with my passenger, now his face red as a tomato. We thought we had hit the jackpot when they saw some army boys on the Ostiense platform in Rome, but they were waiting for another train. Instead, he got a photo through the window.

The most frustrating moment on trains may be Florence SMN. The letters could easily represent “so many new platforms” instead of Santa Maria Novella, as they have the annoying hobby of changing lanes. You have to listen to the announcements very carefully. They do them in both English and Italian, but as soon as a train is late, they start shuffling the rest of the platforms like a deck of cards. One day, with a group of 12 people, we waited an additional 45 minutes for the train to Venice, supposedly to reach track 11, then track 9, and then track 11 at the last minute. We broke the rules and ended up tossing packages across the train tracks into the final car when the guard blew his exit whistle and we had a few stragglers who hadn’t heard the change walking back from the sandwich bar. They all made it with a final sprint.

In contrast, in Venice, the train guard was very accommodating when I lost an American passenger between the luggage storage and the train in the short space of about 10 minutes. I explained to him that he was late and he smiled, said he was fine and waited 5 more minutes with me. Finally, she touched her watch and we had to abandon her. This was the last train leaving Italy for Austria that day, so he wasn’t sure when he would see her again. When I finally did, she had an incredible adventure to tell, but that’s another story.

To travel from one point to another, you cannot beat Italian trains for their good value for money, not only in price, because with a train ticket you get much more than a simple seat. Sometimes you don’t even always get a seat, especially if it’s mid-August, but you have a fantastic opportunity to experience local culture that you just can’t get from a guidebook or the inside of a bus.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *