After bidding a sad farewell to the cruise, we landed back in the real world with a resounding thud. Even before we had finished dragging our luggage the couple of cobbled stone kilometres from the ship to the train station in the blazing Civitavecchia heat, our well-oiled plan for returning to Rome and getting to the UK was already unravelling. There is a saying that men (and women) make plans and G-d laughs, well in this case we made plans and all hell broke loose.
In our defence it was inching towards the final weeks of our dream 3 months of travel around Europe and we had held up pretty darn good thus far, surprising even the most cynical naysayers (yes Mom, we were still alive at this stage). So this was our big Baranov travel disaster of the trip, and even though at the time it wasn’t all fun and games, in hindsight it still makes us fall about laughing.
So Gary had done the research and figured out that to catch our Ryan Air flight to London later that day we needed to get from Civitavecchia to Ciampino airport outside Roma. We had bought our tickets for the train ride from the port town to Ciampino, connecting in Rome, just in time to board our flight. The only catch was that at some stage during our mad baggage dash off the ship to catch said train, we learnt that the train to Ciampino went into the town itself and not to the airport of the same name – which was a good few miles into the countryside. Yes, we were going to have to wing it.
As a result of this little snafu, we now needed to catch the earlier train to Rome so that we could buy ourselves some time to work out the cheapest way to get to Ciampino airport from that point, either by bus or another train if it existed. We looked more haggard than two contestants lost in Morrocco in the final leg of the Amazing Race, and we were using the momentum of both our body weight coupled with our luggage to ram the elderly and random men, women and children out of our way. Pavements became ramps and the sheer power of our minds was employed to break through the ensuing arm and calve cramps. The sorry state of our luggage by August meant that Gary’s carefully taped up suitcase wheels and superglue stitching was unravelling faster than we were running but we could stop for nothing and no one.
Arriving at the quaint little railway station and having offended all our fellow passengers from the cruise, we then propelled ourselves past the ticket machines causing more than a little commotion, only to learn that our train was sitting at one of the furthest platforms from the entrance. With the station obviously still firmly stuck in the 18th century (or further back, when were ramps invented?) we had no choice but to throw our bags and ourselves one by one down the stairs, across the tunnel under the tracks and up the next set of stairs to the platform as no elevators were to be found. Gary was first up the stairs, which by the way was a Herculean feat at this point considering that he had so gallantly taken control of our main bags and given me the lighter hand luggage to cart along. The train was still on the platform before us, although by the sound of the deep rumbling noises it was beginning to emit, all indications were that ‘go’ time was any second now. As my husband summoned every ounce of remaining strength to assault the ‘open’ button on the closest carriage door, images of London and all the things we’d be losing out on after missing our flight went flashing before my eyes, the doors miraculously opened in front of us and I was inelegantly placed into the train with screams of ‘get in, get in’ ringing in my ears.
Triumphantly in the train, I turned round to grab the next bag from Gary and yes, the unthinkable happened. With the inaudible Italian announcement that our journey was to begin blaring through the train’s speakers, and conductors striding beside us with whistles going full tilt, AND with me IN the train mind you, Gary suddenly turned around and bolted back down the stairs of death and into the tunnel. I was stunned. I was speechless. Faster than a little whippet Gary had disappeared into the wide blue yonder and before I could extract myself from this precarious position, the heavy industrial steel train doors of the train shut suddenly just inches from my face.
It was at this stage that time seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace but in reality only a few seconds had passed before Gary re-emerged at the side of the train with our other main bag in tow. The very same bag which he had, unknown to me, left at the bottom of the stairs a few minutes before in order to get to the platform with the first bag at lightning speed. As never EVER letting our bags out of our sight was our paranoid South African rule number 2 on this travel expedition (a close second to always accepting free alcohol and appetizers), coupled with the fact that he had indeed opened the train door and pushed me in, I had unquestioningly jumped aboard like an innocent lamb to the slaughter thinking that we had just made it onto the train in the nick of time. Apparently not.
As Gary began banging on the train doors and waving his hands around violently, I knew I was done for. For a brief moment our eyes locked - his animated with helplessness and mine glaring back with the fury of a thousand suns. The train lurched forward jerking my two sad carry-on bags and I around like rag dolls and I succeeded in giving the international signal to phone me to my husband who had already gathered a sympathetic crowd of onlookers around him. Crazy tourists they must have thought, but entertaining none the less. Sadly, I think I was just out of his peripheral vision when I finally roused from my stunned daze and mouthed the words “I am going to kill you’ but I suppose I had other things to worry about now.
As a girl, like most young woman do, I had envied the 1940s black and white movie scenes where the stylishly clad lady waves goodbye to her 'Clark Gable' from the window of a moving train. Appropriately suave man on the platform shouts back, running beside the tracks and declaring his heroically undying love. Well kids, fairy tales aren’t what they used to be. I was now found myself standing in the tiny steel link area which connected two completely packed carriages, the tinny floors moving out of synch with each other beneath my feet and providing brief flashes of the stoney tracks below every now and then. I had no money, no passports, no water or much needed painkillers, no idea what our plan was and most importantly, as i was remined by the trusty sign smack above my head which read no ticket = 100 Euros spot fine or jail if not paid’ - I had no ticket. Granted, we had never actally been asked for our tickets on an Italian train before but the universe and I have this nifty little arrangement in situations just like these and I knew that today, as sure as night follows day, I would be called out by the ticket inspector. The fact that i had parted with more than a few Euros and had a perfectly good ticket sitting in my husband's back pocket just aded to the frustration levels.
It was only an hour long trip to Rome, you can do this Pugh-Jones. Just stand iinnocuously in the corner with your bags innocently between your legs and try to look as law abiding as possible. Maybe the worst of this mishap was behind us? Sure, it was going be yet another mad sweaty dash to the plane at Ciampino but goodness knows I had carbo-loaded on the ship for just such an occason … that is if we had the right plane/ airport/ town this time … how many more mix ups could two people actually make in one day?
It was only upon taking a moment to survey my fellow travellers jammed with me in this sinister nowhere land between carriages, that I realized that I may not be in the home stretch just yet. The man who grabbed my attention first was a lively elderly Italian who was obviously extremely inebriated and began singing and chatting away to who knows what at the top of his voice. Somehow, in between his constant rolling on the floor, he because quite taken with me and even with my eyes downcast he insisted on asking me a loud series of personal questions. It wasn’t his complete lack of personal space, or even his need to spit in my face as he jabbered away, but his constant urge to stroke my face with his stained hands that relly started to become a little much. I tried to diplomatically and as unassumingly as possible, sidestep myself out of this hot mess - bloody boiling in there it was indeed! It then dawned on me that the only people who could potentially save me from this strange man if he became any friendlier were a group of angry looking hooded Tunisian youths staring me up and down. They didnt look particularly amenable to coming to my rescue and so, feeling more than a tad vulnerable at this point, it was a relief when the automatic carriage doors started slamming open and shut every 10 minutes or so. Adrenlin at the thought of being arrested kicked in every time and I came up with a nifty routine of taking refuge in the public toilet to dodge any ticket conductors.
I was literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Well, actually I had suspended myself above the floor (come on, I had seen enough movies and knew how to hide in a bathroom with some skill at least), one foot on the dirty sink and the other on the broken toilet seat. The longest train ride of my life and accompanied by the sound of sreetching metal for some extra mood music.
Flash forward to Gary about an hour later whom, upon entering his 2nd class carriage and placing his luggage serenely into the designated bag compartment, sat down at his caboose and spent the journey chatting with doting Americans (‘You poor man, you must be so traumatized about being left behind’) in between checking the latest Skysports football news on our laptop compliments of the free WIFI. With an extra ticket for good measure. Just saying.
Well, all’s well that ends well. Luckily I had an hour at Roma Termini to sip some coffee and recover, and by the time Gary arrived I had secured us a speedy taxi ride to Ciampino. Of course, the pleasure of having to try wear or trash half the weight of our bags before boarding our Ryan Air plane was still ahead of us, but at this stage we were just happy to have arrived in the same place together. Not even the fact that our overweight charge cost more than our actual ticket, and the whole exercise neagated the purpose of going through Ryan Air pergatory in the first place, could dampen our relief. The drama of having to put our much loved and schlepped hand pressed olive oil from the Agritourismo in Lazio in the airport bin because it weighed 2 kgs - and then deciding not to cheap out and trying to dig it out of the rubbish only to rethink this again and chuck it away - also created its fair share of what I like to think was a form of live performance theatre. And the run to the plane to secure one of the undesignated seats on the plane made for a nice change.
Next stop, Londres and the Lipinskis.
