TRAIN #15 – 23:07 Nice to Venice (Continued)
My first impression of Italy, midnight at Ventimiglia station, was that it seemed a little chaotic. There were a lot of Italian police standing around dressed in very impressive uniforms but they didn’t seem to be doing anything. There was little in the way of a customs check.
There was a voltage change too, the French 25kV AC system (1500V DC in the station itself) would give way to the older Italian 3kV DC one. Some of the Italian electric engines that were buzzing around seemed positively ancient. Nonetheless, I was very happy to see that one of them was now adding some extra empty coaches to our Venice-bound train.
The Italian language sounded beautiful to me. I especially loved the station announcements. Italian seemed to sound romantic even when they listed all the place names on the Tannoy. “Binario”, we soon learned was platform. Unfortunately, the phrase that we were to become most familiar with was “in ritardo” which meant “running late”.
We climbed back aboard our train and quickly found an empty compartment in a coach of Italian State Railways (FS) origin. Down came the seats and out came the sleeping bags. As the train pulled out of the station heading for San Remo, Genova and Milan, I was already falling asleep.
No one disturbed us the whole night and we both slept really well. Even a ticket inspector who had managed to catch me with my eyes briefly open had smiled and decided not to wake my friend. Italy was fast becoming my new favourite country. We pulled into the cathedral-like Milan Central station at 07:20.
I knew the train would reverse at Milan and that it was bound to get busier. Sure enough, people soon began to file down the corridor. We took steps to try and selfishly keep the compartment to ourselves. We placed our legs, still emersed in our sleeping bags, across the seats and tried to look as menacing as possible.
It seemed to deter a few people but soon the compartment door was opened by a guy wearing a blue and white T-shirt and holding an Italian newspaper. He said “excuse me” as he crashed in, pushing our feet to the floor. He was quickly followed by another Italian man and then by two girls.
The girls were British. They were in their early twenties and archaeologists from London. They were going out from Milan to Brescia for a dig of some kind. We talked about their work and our own trip and they gave us several useful hints for Venice.
We reached Brescia just before 09:00 and the girl’s places were then taken by two young Italian lads who both had Walkman cassette players. They spent the journey listening to the music whilst trying to get the attention of two girls standing in the corridor. We finally made it across the causeway into Venice Santa Lucia Station at around 11:20. We were about 20 minutes in ritardo.
VENICE
We completed the normal currency exchange, left luggage and tourist information formalities quickly and went out into the city. I then made my first mistake: contrary to the advice I had received from the archaeologists, I forgot to check my change. I walked into the bakery next to the station and, having got a couple of cans of 7-up, two slices of pizza and some rolls, I just accepted the notes the assistant counted back to me without looking. Outside, I realised the multiple zeros had confused me. I had lost £2.50. I went back in and pleaded with the assistant but he wasn’t having it.
We walked through the pedestrian backstreets of Venice to the Rialto Bridge, across it and down, following yellow signs, through to Saint Mark’s Square. After a walk around the square, we went on the river bus, paying 1500 Lira for 4 tickets by mistake, out across the water to Lido. The sky was dull and it began to rain. We tried to stay on at Lido for the return journey but got ordered off and had to pay again.
We went to the Plaza de Roma and found another bread shop for more pizzas and cakes, this time working all the prices out in their thousands of lira and then arranging near enough the correct amount to tender. The bakery smelled of espresso and sweet baking. It was just wonderful and all the stuff looked delicious.
We went back to Saint Mark’s Square, followed by a couple of annoying Americans who’d lost their sense of direction. The weather was getting a bit better and we sat for nearly an hour in front of Ducal Palace, watching gondolas at the entrance of the Grand Canal. I tried my first genuine Italian Gelato, strawberry and pistachio flavour, quite amazing.
We left Saint Mark’s Square, walking past little pubs that looked very tempting but out of reach for our budget. We got ham at a butcher’s shop, more bread and a big bag of biscuits from another sweet smelling confectioner’s shop. We treated ourselves to a bottle of Merlot from a little convenience shop.
We got telephone tokens from a kiosk at the station and made some phone calls home. Then we just sat on the steps of Venice station looking over at the beautiful Grand Canal, illuminated at night. After our disastrous time in Madrid, Italy had fully restored our spirits and we now looked forward to another day out in its capital.
TRAIN #16 – 22:48 Venice to Padova
We boarded the 22:48 train to Rome Termini. After the previous night’s success, we were hoping that we would be able to sleep well again. We soon realised it wasn’t going to happen, at least not on the train we had just got on.
With twenty minutes still to go, we were sitting in a compartment with two elderly Italian women and a young Irish couple who were Interrailing, having just come down from Brussels via Switzerland. As all six of us were bound for Rome, it seemed that the chance of stretching out to sleep were next to nil.
We decided to opt for ‘Plan B’ which was to get off at the first stop, Padova, and await another train heading for Rome. There was one that was scheduled to follow ours around half an hour behind and was due into Rome around 07:20.
We reached Padova at about 23:20 and got off. We sat on the platform sharing the bottle of Merlot whilst gazing hopefully at the monitor which suggested our train would arrive at 00:02. As we waited, a Milan to Venice train formed of one of the famous ETR 300 ‘Settebello’ sets arrived on the opposite platform. The sight of Italy’s classic express of the 1960s, lifted me a bit, but even at 23:59, there was still no sign of our own train.
Forty Years Later….
- Physical border controls between France and Italy were removed in 1995 under the Schengen Agreement.
- Euro banknotes and coins replaced the Lira on January 1 2002.
- Venice is now served by high speed Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) trains linking to Milan in 2.5 hours.
- Venice has been overwhelmed by tourists over the years. The population in the historic centre has fallen from 120,000 to around 48,000.
- An InterCity Night train still runs between Venice and Rome.
- The last E636 locomotives were retired in 2006 when the design was already 66 years old.
- The ETR 300 trains, having been displaced from Rome-Milan services in June 1984, continued working Milan to Venice until 1992. One set of the original three is preserved.
- Although I have only been back to Venice once since, Italy is one of the European countries that I have visited the most and it remains one of my favourites.
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