2008

We bought the tickets online a month ahead of time. That’s what they say to do for the Rome-Paris sleeper train. We got to the station an hour ahead of time. That gave us forty minutes to stare at the display at the Roma Termini station. Track 7! We push our selves and bags over to the track and get in the car. In each compartment a bench of three seats sits across from a bench of three seats. Two levels of beds are above on either side, the middle one folded up to allow seating. Our tickets are for the two bench seats in the middle, corresponding to the two middle beds. The window seats are the beds on the very top and the corridor seat is the bench we will sit on.

We are in the middle seats facing each other when an Italian couple sits in the window seats. The train starts moving. The steward, speaking French and English, comes by to collect our tickets and passports. Another man comes by and hands everyone non-sparkling mineral water and a cup. We eat our cold, last-minute supermarket sandwiches. The Italian couple looks about our age. They are wearing leather jackets, They look like they have jobs.

Their sandwiches look so much better.

The train is half-full into Firenze, and then everyone else gets on. A quiet man takes one of our corridor seats. The train leaves Firenze. It’s 8:53. The Italian couple begins to prepare their beds. The quiet man leaves.

The quiet man is wise to leave. The top bunks lie flat horizontally and the blankets and pillows are stored on top of them. To take your place on the top bunk you must find an empty place to store the extra blankets and pillows. Then anyone sitting must rise so you can access the ladder that sits under the bench seat. The ladder hooks into the top bunk. It does not hook in readily, but eventually. Mister Chen drags down his middle bunk through a complicated series of levers. And I open my bed, and the quiet man comes back. We would have been fine sleeping in our seats.

The transformation of beds back to seats never takes place. Mister Chen remains sleeping until we pull into Paris Bercy. The steward returns with our passports and tickets. We get off the train. We have no idea where we are.

…

TRAIN 226 TO PARIS
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS $386USD
DEPARTS ROME 6:40PM
ARRIVES PARIS NEXT DAY 9:10AM
artesia.eu

We ask the lady at the ferry’s information desk if the passenger terminal is near the train station. She calls in another lady who speaks enough English to tell us that they don’t know where the train station is. The lady who speaks English tells us to ask the lady who works at the duty free shop. The lady who works at the duty free shop is pretty sure the train station is pretty near the passenger terminal. But she’s not sure. It’s a Croatian ferry, she explains. And Ancona is an Italian city.

The ferry’s passenger terminal is a parking lot next to the water. A series of signs eventually leads to an actual building housing customs and an information office. The information office opens at 9am. The ferry arrives at 7am.

We walk. If you walk down the shore and keep the water to your right and you will soon reach a train station. It is the wrong train station. The Ancona maritime station sees very few trains. We walk away from the water to a building that sort of looks like a train station. It is not. But it is next to a sign that points to the train station. With a trust born of having very few other options we follow this sign along the train tracks in a convoluted path onward and inland for about twenty minutes. And then, slowly, past the bus station, it rises – the train station.

The next train for Rome leaves at 1:53pm. It’s a little before 9am. We buy tickets. We go to the waiting room and fall asleep for twenty minutes until the police officers ask to see our tickets. The luggage lockers at the station do not inspire confidence. We wander around Ancona with our backpacks, we sit in the sun where we find it. We are glad to board the train a little after 1:20pm. Newspapers lie on the seats.

The route is mountainous, picturesque. The man taking our ticket tells us we should have had them stamped in Ancona before boarding the train, but there are no consequences. We arrive in Rome hungry and on time.

…

R 2327 TO ROME
ONE WAY TICKET SECOND CLASS EUR13.22 (APPROX $19.33)
DEPARTS ANCONA DAILY 1:53PM
ARRIVES ROME 5:48PM

Both companies running international ferries to Italy have the same prices listed in euros in their brochures. We go to the Jadrolinja office. One lady stands at the information desk. We ask about the differences between the grades of seating and the prices of the tickets, and then we ask here where to buy tickets. “Window Four,” she says. We walked left past a pillar to Window Four. It is empty. The lady from the information desk walks over to stand behind it. She looks as ashamed about the whole thing as we do. And then she sells us two reclining seat tickets abourd the Dubrovnik for the next day.

The Dubrovnik leaves at 9pm. We are told to report with our tickets between 7pm and 8pm. We show up at 7:12. It’s a short but argumentative line. Up at Window Five, our lady from Windows Four and the Information Desk gives us customs forms and directs us to the door in the back and to the left. A lady in an Italian uniform looks at our passports and lets us by. We join the monks standing on a corner outside the ferry terminal, waiting in the new dark for the Blue Line boat.

Eventually Officials arrive to take our tickets and lead us past the traffic streaming to the ferry’s lower automobile hosting decks. We climb up to the lobby, where a disinterested lady sells customs-free liquor and cigarettes and no one can tell us where in Ancona we will be landing or where the train station there.

The signs direct us to our reclining seats in a large open room divided into a front and a back by a glass partition. Each section is thirteen chairs across and about eight rows deep. Each section has three television sets at the front. We are the first people in the room. By the time the boat leaves there are three other people in front and three or four people in the back. By the time the boat leaves we are completely engrossed in a Bruce Willis movie that we have missed the beginning of. It is about an autistic boy who breaks a government code and the secret government agents that are out to get him and only Bruce Willis can stop them.

And the alarm goes off in piercing, rattling groups of three. Bruce Willis confronts the corrupt government official in his home at a party. Then the television goes off and we are informed of safety procedures first in Croatian, then Italian, then English. By the time the movie resumes the battle is over and Bruce Willis is visiting the autistic school in this new orphan’s new home.

…

JADROLINIJA’S DUBROVNIK
ONE WAY TICKET RESERVED RECLINING SEAT 315HRK (ABOUT $54.50USD)
DEPARTS SPLIT TUESDAY, THURSDAY AND SUNDAY 9:00PM (LOW SEASON)
ARRIVES ANCONA NEXT DAY 7:00AM