This weekend I decided to go outside Milan for a day. Let’s say after a nice month of vacations, I was kind of refusing to stay in the city, above all knowing the sea is so close. It was a bit like being on a rehab program, last swim before winter time. Well, it turned I took 5 trains in a day and it left me at the end a not so nice “souvenir”. Recently, after my trip in Sicily and my constant search for a job in a country where you don’t get contract and paid, it’s true I get a bit nervous about all the gridlocks of the italian system. Going to the post office or buying a train ticket are always a “potential” ordeal/nightmare. Well taking a train is a good illustration.
So today, I left Milan for Genova, quite easy, Milan being known to be organized for public transportation compared to Rome. I prefer not to imagine the tram system in Roma knowing that in Milan, you have to guess where are the bus stop and when it’s written 4 minutes wait, it can turn into 45 minutes, anyway that’s not the point of the discussion. When I arrived to Genova, I had to change station to pick a friend, we checked the time tables (a poster) and went to a hidden underground “binario”. There the time indicated was wrong and the bill board was changing the binario every second due to an electric problem. No need to say the train never arrived… The beauty of those kind of things in Italy is that everyone is looking at each other and asking to the other if he knows what to do. Basically, you always start a conversation and end hearing Italians complaining about their non organized country…. Still, I finally managed to get to the sea and even enjoyed some foccacia.
When it’s been time to go back to Milan, I was happy to be with an Italian that knew that you had to buy the ticket in a special office in the town and not in the station as you would expect. Once in the station, we tried to check which binario to pick. The funny thing was that the tv screen was indicating binario 1, the paper time table binario 2, an A4 sheet was stick on some random walls and it was written in Italian that "all the trains should leave from binario 2". In this kind of scenario, you’re more prone to trust the tv screen but in that case, it was contradicting 2 other indications. We wanted to ask, but the station was simply desert, no office there to confirm. So basically, we just kept wondering where the train will arrive and observing people going from one binario to the other one, not knowing where they should go, creating a perfect mess. The speakers were kept saying “please do not cross the rails”, but honestly I could understand if, at one point, some people would have crossed the rails instead of taking the tunnel. We finally reached a group agreement that, the persons on the right side will block the train in order to have the people on the wrong side time to get in. I had the feeling of being in a game theory experience when analyzing the people following other people depending on who suddenly was taking a decision and consequently the leadership...
I just came back home and honestly, I have the feeling of having spent 10 days on the roads, those kind of experience without mentioning the train with no seats left, the fine I had to pay, still not sure why, makes you seriously consider moving to a country like Germany… This morning, after experiencing once again rudeness of Italians, it came to my mind that God granted them so many nice things that he could not give them everything, otherwise it will turn into perfection. I think I was quite right… I wish one day, when I' ll have to go back to France, I wont have to spend 2 hours in a queue to take a ticket but get the upfront opportunity to order it online and get it refunded if they ever decided to go on strike (thing they usually don’t do).
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