The rail way to enjoy Italy
Tim Parks says that to get under the skin of this Latin country, board a train
T HERE are a few complications with taking the 18.36 Regionale Veloce on a Sunday evening from Verona (Porta Vescovo) to Milan (Centrale). Your problem is this is a small station, where the fast through-trains from Venice to Milan don’t stop.
You could get a local to Verona Porta Nuova, the main station on the other side of town, and then a fast Frecciabianca ; but if some delay — hardly unusual — prevents you from making your connection, you’ll be left holding a ticket valid only for that one reserved-seats-only train. Not good.
Or you could go to Verona and wait for another regionale . However, the westbound Milan departures seem timed to depart just seconds before your train arrives from the east. You’ll wait nearly an hour. Given this situation, you feel rather grateful that there are still four slower trains a day from Venice right through to Milan, stopping in Verona Porta Vescovo.
Regionale Veloce means fast regional, but is actually a slow train. Let’s say, the faster of the slower trains. On which you can’t reserve a seat even if you want to.
It costs à11.55 (R148) to go 150km in just under two hours. The Frecciabianca costs à23 (R296). This could be why the regionale , when it arrives, is so grotesquely packed.
Verona PV is a sleepy place staffed and managed only by recorded messages that warn you not to walk to your platform across the rails, which many still do; not to board the train without a ticket, when the ticket machines are not functioning; and to spread out along the platform to avoid crowding, when there are only three of you. The long, lavishly graffitied, green-and-grey train clanks in and, at once, Japanese and American tourists start spilling out of the doors. They have seen the Verona Porta Vescovo sign and imagine this is the Verona station. Wrong. Verona Porta Nuova is actually six minutes away, by train, but a huge hassle by foot and bus. All the Italians know these foreigners are making a mistake but no one says anything. This has been going on for decades.
The train is packed with students and workers who spend the week in Milan but go home at the weekends. To Vicenza, Padua, Venice, Trieste. People here prefer never to lose touch with home — home being the absolute centre of the world, even if it offers no work. And, of course, their mothers have excellent laundry facilities. The cheap prices make this back-andforth possible. Knowing the train will be packed, I’ve paid à6 (R77) extra for a first-class ticket. But first class is packed, too. I’m in for two hours’ standing.
Then, as the train approaches Peschiera, a miracle. Suddenly, everyone wants to get off, pushing past me in a hurry. Then I see the peaked cap of the ticket inspector. These folks aren’t getting off at all: they don’t have first-class tickets. So, soon, I’m settling into a seat.
A young woman opposite me is frowning over photocopies. A student. The ticket inspector, who seems oblivious of the stampede, asks for our tickets.
“This is a second-class ticket, signorina.” The girl looks around with an air of surprise. “Is it?”
She isn’t really trying to fool him. The naive gesture is sketched; it’s just enough to allow the inspector to act as if she hadn’t understood. In short, an excuse for him not to fine her. “Well, signorina, you’ll have to move,” he says.
The girl half stands while the inspector walks on down the now pleasantly free carriage. She fusses with her bags, then suddenly sits down and slumps low in the seat, closing her eyes as if this could make her invisible.
“He’s gone,” I tell her after another minute. She laughs and goes back to her photocopies.
I ask her what she’s going to do when he comes back. Theoretically, he could get nasty. “I don’t think so,” she says. “They’re not serious about first class on these trains.”
I raise an eyebrow. The girl elaborates a sophisticated theory.