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Travel

The fugitive tourists

Train travel in Italy isn't as easy as getting a ticket and hopping aboard. Who knew?

By LEONORA LAPETER
Published March 18, 2007

It's hard to say this with a straight face, but my mother, my daughter and I ran from the cops during a trip to Italy.
	[Times animation: John Corbitt]

It's hard to say this with a straight face, but my mother, my daughter and I ran from the cops during a trip to Italy. Actually, we ran from train conductors who called the police. We were traveling to five Italian cities, all by public transportation. For 11 days, we lugged suitcases and backpacks in and out of buses, trams and trains and along ancient sidewalks plastered with dog poop.

We had spent about $500 for rail passes to travel around Italy. I remember standing in line to pay for them. The lady at the counter was polite and informed us that the passes were good for five full days of travel on specially marked trains.

Our trip from Rome to Florence was uneventful. We didn't even see a ticket inspector. We traveled to Pisa for a day trip. Still no inspector. And again, when we traveled from Pisa to Cinque Terre - five towns perched on cliffs overlooking the Ligurian Sea - we didn't see anyone.

We had been careful to travel on the right trains, but why was no one inspecting our passes?

Don't mess with Mom

After three days climbing picturesque mountains and exploring winding paths between colorful old buildings in the Cinque Terre towns, we boarded a train headed south for Venice, our final destination.

About halfway through the trip, we heard raised voices. We peered over the seat to see a man in a conductor hat arguing vociferously with a young Asian couple.

It was difficult to follow the argument, but the young woman, who was close to tears, said repeatedly, "No one told us." The conductor ordered them to pay 50 euros for the mistake.

When the conductor got to my mother, she handed him our ticket and they began arguing in Italian. The conductor was ordering us to pay also. He kept pointing to some very tiny print inside the ticket book.

My mother turned and told us we were getting off at the next stop. My mother is one of those strong British types who does not let anyone push her around. At 65, she climbed up a ladder onto the steep roof of my 1924 St. Petersburg bungalow and repaired a dozen or more shingles. The mayor of Rantoul, Ill., gave her the key to the city a few years ago because she single-handedly cleaned up a drug problem by ousting drug dealers from apartment buildings she owned.

The conductor had our ticket in his hand and threatened to call the police if we didn't pay him 50 euros. When my mother refused, he turned with our ticket in his hand and pulled out a cell phone.

"You're not taking that," my mother said, and she snatched the ticket back. A tug-of-war ensued in the middle of the aisle until finally my mother had the ticket. She began gathering up her things.

My 8-year-old daughter, Lauren, was wide-eyed. I was upset. I knew no Italian, but I did know one word: bambino.

"Shame on you," I yelled at the conductor. "Bambino!" I pointed to my daughter. He shook his head and rattled off something in Italian.

I later learned that you are supposed to write in your date of travel before you get on the train. It's buried in some fine print inside the ticket booklet. The conductor clearly had been through this before. He babbled away angrily in Italian on his cell phone. I worried that we would arrive at the next station and walk into the hands of the police.

On the lam

At the station in Carrara, home of the famous marble of the same name, we got off, and I made one last effort to reason with another conductor on the platform. He spoke no English and after a few words from the other conductor, he ignored me.

My mother, meanwhile, had taken off down the street, suitcase in tow, yelling for me to follow her. The conductor was on the phone again, purportedly with the police. I was near tears and wondering how we would keep moving in our journey if we couldn't get back on the train. My mother returned and yelled for us to follow her.

People were staring at us, so I turned and followed. As we rounded the corner, rolling our suitcases on the cobblestones, a police car full of officers careened past us on the way to the train station. Apparently not much happened in this sleepy little town.

We moved faster down another block and ducked into a coffee shop to ponder our options.

If we went back to the train station, we could be arrested. My mother asked some people in the coffee shop about buses.

We lugged our suitcases about half a mile to a bus stop, got on and ended up at the docks, where massive chunks of marble from the towering mountain behind the town were ferried all over the world.

From there, we got on another bus that took us to the next train station headed for Venice. The entire side trip took us about three hours but cost only 10 euros. We split up and boarded the next train for Venice.

Because they can

The ticket fiasco smacked of a scam to get money from unsuspecting tourists. Still, three days later, as we got on a train in Venice headed for Rome, we were careful to write in our travel date. This time, three conductors appeared. We saw them hit up three Japanese girls, a Spanish couple and others farther on down the train for the 50-euro fine. Each of them argued he or she didn't know; each was forced to pay.

Later, as the conductors tagged tourist after tourist for the lofty fine, my mother ran into a few between compartments. Why were travelers not informed about the need to write in the travel dates more clearly, she asked the conductors.

It's bad public relations, she said, making tourists pay fines like that.

One of the conductors listened and mentioned he had been mistreated in France once. The French, he argued, would do the exact same thing to an Italian traveler. Why should the Italians be any different?

Contact Leonora LaPeter at llapeter@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 15, 2007, 10:34:54]