Sometimes you really wish you’d taken a different train. Tuesday was one of those days (and also a day when I had actually contemplated getting an earlier train). What is, on paper, a logistically uncomplicated journey of one hour exactly, ended up taking about three...here’s my account as I sat in the limited shade of Treviglio Ovest train station (nope; I hadn’t heard of it either), avoiding my creepy stalker and sunstroke, wondering how my day would end...
I am currently sat on the platform of Treviglio Ovest, which is, as far as I can tell, a sleepy provincial town. It is not Bergamo, where I had hoped to be an hour ago. However, the shoddy looking train had pulled out of this small station to continue its trip to Bergamo. It stopped. It spluttered. It choked. The air conditioning also stopped (which is when you start to wish that deodorant was a obligation for anyone past puberty). A man in a Trenitalia shirt and jeans scuttled down the dirty overheating carriages with no explanation to his urgency. Another member of staff comes by quickly, and only when asked informs us that the engine has cut off. Great. A broken-down train.
We wait for ten minutes, overheating, blaspheming and wondering what the hell is going on. Then the train rolls backwards a few metres. A few more minutes pass. The train is rolled back into the station we just left. Without any explanation other than “The train is broken, please get off” (no pleases, thanks yous, apologies), we all descend onto platform two. We wait angrily on the platform. Ladies who thus far looked fairly respectable start using words I would never dream of using in Italian, or in any language. No announcement comes telling us what is going on. 5 minutes pass. Still no news. Ten. Nothing. There’s a lot of furious waving of arms, a few ‘ma che paese di merda!’ from disgruntled stranded travellers and a whole bunch of tourists who are even more confused since their Italian vocabulary stretches only to ‘pizza’ and ‘pasta’. Still nothing.
Then, after what seems like a lifetime (and a pretty hot one too; its about 32 degrees) an announcement comes. There will be, ladies and gentlemen, a replacement bus in front of the station in about ten minutes, to take us to Bergamo. There’s a mass stampede via the sottopassagio to the front of the station. In stampedes there is no social hierarchy, no reverence, no altruism. Business men push past nuns, frail grandmothers beat their way past giant black men, all to get to Bergamo.
Half an hour passes and there is no replacement bus service. A couple of buses come, but they are not the replacement service. A few bewildered Asian tourists are taken away on such a bus, unaware of the driver’s verbal protests about not being a train. I swear those were his words; “ma non sono il treno.”
Eventually, a coach turns up, and it is clearly the replacement bus. The only one. The wonderfully efficient and communicative Trenitalia team have organised one bus to replace the whole train. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I know that one coach for about 50 will not be able to take every passenger from a broken down train. Considering the train was very busy, my guess is that there were about 500 people on it. The clever boys of the state railways thought a coach would solve the problem. I checked my calendar thinking maybe it was April Fools Day, since this whole episode had to be a joke. When asked if there would be more buses, the reply, accompanied by a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders, was “we’ll see.”
The fifty most pushy travellers are on the bus (plus, it turns out, quite a few more hiding between baggage and seats), the bus driver gets off the bus in a strop. He lights a cigarette and stands in front of the bus. “I am not going anywhere until everyone is sitting down,” he protests, folding his arms. When he has finished his cigarette, he reboards the coach and walks up and down the aisle. He finds a poor lady who was obviously using a fellow passenger as a seat, or perhaps hiding in the toilet, and ejects her and her huge suitcase from the coach. The coach then departs (about an hour after it was due to arrive) and the majority of the travellers from the broken train are left on the pavement going nowhere.
I then overhear a conversation that there should be a train arriving in a few minutes from Milan to go to Bergamo. If they can succeed in putting it on the other track so it avoids our train currently blocking one half of the station, then it should be here and we can all continue our journey. But it’ll be half an hour late.
At this point, I notice a man in a pink t-shirt is standing very close to me and occasionally taking his eyes of my breasts to look at my face. I do what I learned in primary school and find a family with children to stand next to, because that’s what you’re supposed to do if a stranger scares you, apparently. The man follows me and stands very much in my personal space. I move again, this time next to a lovely looking older man who looks like he has travelled the world. The creep (who looks a bit like one of those E-Fit images you see of criminals on the news) follows me and asks me where I am from. I grunt Switzerland. He asks me if I live in Treviglio. I laugh (but only in my head as I don’t want him to think he is funny) and grunt no. This kind of mundane conversation continues, and I continually try to wander off, but he follows me like a shadow. By this time, after an overheating train, a tiny replacement bus and now a stalker, I am praying that the train arrives immediately.
About 45 minutes after the second train was due, it rolled into the station. The whole crowd pushed their way onto the train and battled for space. The pink t-shirt was just in front of me and I made to get on the train, waited until he had his back to me and then ran down the train on the platform to the front so he didn’t see me. I then found again the nice old man and sat next to him, hoping he would protect me if the pink t-shirt man reappeared.
Finally, after a very long trip, I arrived in Bergamo. I was so desperate for the toilet and so hungry that I stopped in the first cafe I saw, and only then could I start to explore. Luckily, Bergamo was well worth the wait and was one of the most beautiful towns I have been to in Italy, and I had a great day.
