When you are abroad in general, getting around through public transportation saves you a lot of money and helps you expand your knowledge of the area you are around in. But now what happens when you take that a bit further? This is what this weekend was for me. I have a pretty good grasp of the transportation in Milan and some places like Rome and Florence, it’s pretty much the same concept. You have trains and light rails and a few but occasional bus routes. I’m here to tell you that there is so much more to that. In Italy, there are a lot of frequent transportation strikes that can take place for hours of the day, sometimes even a full 24 hours. The good side is that these strikes are pre-planned. Many applications can inform you of how long, when, and where these strikes will occur because, trust me when I tell you that they will affect your travels.
This weekend I headed over to Portofino. To get there was a simple train from Milan Central to Saint Margarita Central and then a four-minute train to get into the town that I specifically needed to go to. Which also led to an optional 30-minute boat ride to get into the heart of Portofino. This is to tell you that not every town in Italy will have a commanding road for big vehicles. For example, in the area of Portofino, streets are pretty narrow and there aren’t many sidewalks, so you have pedestrians and vehicles on the roads. And by vehicles, I mean really tiny 1 seaters, motorcycles and Vespas. Besides that, everything else leads to a lot of walking. Meanwhile, in bigger cities such as Milan or Rome, train stations can make or break your day. Now you see, yesterday was time to head back to Milan then things took a turn for the worse. I knew that there would be a strike that day, but I did not expect it to affect the station because it was not recorded. My train ticket was supposed to depart at 11:00 AM but it kept getting canceled, in fact, the train stopped midway from where I was to the station where I needed to be because the strike would not allow it to continue moving.
I got off in a random town and had to figure out a bus route. Now I know what you might be thinking: reading a bus schedule is not that hard. But now try reading a bus schedule on a 5-minute time crunch, while late for a train, with angry people all around you, unlabeled stops, and a machine that only takes cash-the one asset you did not think you would need because you got so used to the city life and Apple Pay. Stressful times will test you. As you can see, that day I got experience of what an organized strike can become. For when I tell you that it was already 5:30 PM and every single train going anywhere was canceled. But having class the next day and being very dehydrated, I just had to persevere.
I became friends with someone at the station and bonded over our headaches and four tickets to Milan, I purchased in all of those hours, and nothing occurred, and no reimbursement had me at my limit of patience. But out of nowhere, these two strangers came up, and we made a plan. We would pay a taxi driver to drive 2 hours from Saint Margarita to Milan Central and divide it by 5 would cost us €80 each. Now, as expensive as that was, it was either that or sleep at the station, and I was not about to take that risk. So even though none of us got reimbursed for our previous purchases and I had gone to such a stressful time, I actually got to bond and become quite close with people who were strangers at first. But most of all, I learned to always carry a pheromone of cash, remain calm when reading a schedule, and know that there is always a way to get to a destination. But most of all, I recommend it to anyone. Avoid using public transportation at all if you can when a strike is occurring that day. It’ll save you a lot of stress, but to end it on a better note, I have shared some of my weekend pictures to show that not all patience was lost.
Ciao!
DU Abroad 