It was meant to be a 2 ½ hour express train ride… leaving at 9:53 and arriving at 12:30. We should have known there would problems when at 9:32 the ticket agent sold us tickets to a train that was departing at 9:30 and then insisted I told him the wrong time.
But the 9:53 train was late and when the Eurostar train from Milan pulled in on track 11, the departure board for the Rome train showed our train would depart from track 11. We gathered our bags and got on the train. Once the train pulls away from the platform, there is a general announcement stating the destination, but too late to get off. As we pulled away from the station, the announcement in Italian come over the speakers and it sounded like our destination was Milan. We looked at each other and asked “What did you hear?”. Our fears were soon confirmed by the conductor. An hour later, we got off in Bologna and bought a ticket for Rome, arriving in Rome about 4:30. (For the record, we were not the only tourist captured by this mis-posting.)
The good news was it was only a 10 minute wait before the slower, inter-city train departed. While not as fast as the Eurostar, it is faster than the inter-regional train which stops at every town, where the inter-city trains only stop at major cities. We roll away from the platform and our biggest concern was lunch. We had not planned on traveling from 10 til 4:30 and so had only an orange and a couple of bread sticks. Well that concern was quickly discarded. About 100 meters down the track, the power goes out and we just coast to a stop. The only thing we understood from the announcement was “problem mechanical”. Even from our English speaking conductor, that is all we got. So we sit.
20 minutes or a half hour later, who is watching the clock at this point, the power returns and we head out. But the damage was done. Criss had cashed in a few chips to get his travel partner up and to the train station in time to catch the 10:00 train. And the to end up in Bologna, sitting at the end platform with no food. How do you recover from this?
