F-F-F-FLORENCE

In Italy's defense I will say that I am not a great traveler and by the third week my enthusiasm had waned considerably. Our trip to Italy started out with this Italian overnight train from Munich. German trains are incredibly clean, have wonderful food and every single light switch and door handle is 110% functional. We also took a French high speed train from Brussels to Paris which was super luxurious and uh, fast. The Italian train was probably constructed about 20 minutes after the wheel was invented and once a year they get a guy to put tape and rubber bands on it to keep the wheels from falling off. The "bathroom" was lacking a working lock, a toilet seat, and a working light and smelled like, ... well, smelled really bad. And the whole idea is that you sleep on the train, thus, saving money on a hotel. Okay, this "bed" was like sleeping the backseat of a really loud car. Let's just say this train ride got me and Italy off to a bad start.

We saw tons and tons of incredible art in Florence and ate some wonderful food especially the gelato. It was endlessly fascinating to me that a country that could have the Roman Empire and make Ferraris could not manage to have one functional public toilet or an even marginally competent system for train travel. We needed to ask a question for a side trip we were taking.

First we had to go to the question area which was this small room with about 100 tourists and their baggage and you had to take a number and wait forever and then go up to a little window to get your information. We got a girl who was training and she'd look at this book like a phone book with itty, bitty writing and then say something to us which we'd have to ask her to repeat a couple of times -- really confidence inspiring.

Once we had what we hoped was the correct information we had to get in the train ticket line. Since we were taking both a local train and an inter-city train we had to wait in two different lines. And there were all these complicated things, in one line you could only pay with cash and blah blah blah and the lines stretched half way out to the end of the world. It was like a half-day just to deal with getting a train ticket and I think after all that, we did need some additional information, but my spouse was kind enough to deal with it without me. And I should probably publicly give him a big two thumbs up because he was a fun travel partner and was good at dealing with me when I was wenching out. ("Why don't you sit on this bench in the shade and I'll go find us some water." etc.)

One thing that I thought was funny in Italy was when you order water in a restaurant they ask you, "With gas?" which means carbonation.

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PHOTO: Pam in my rocking head-rag at the Fischmarkt in Hamburg. PHOTOGRAPHER: Bobman.

Posted: 4.18.99
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