Fast Train to Venice
My squeeze and I had just finished a delightful week in Rome, and we were next scheduled for a week in Venice. To get there, we had booked passage on a bullet train that would take us through Tuscany in what was scheduled to be about a four hour trip. This meant that we had to check out of our Rome hotel, taxi to the train station, and once there figure out which train was ours and get ourselves and our luggage on it.
We had some good luck at the station because we were approached by a stout porter who spoke English. He took our bags and led us to the track our train would be on. He told us that we’d board in about 45 minutes.
When the time came to load ourselves aboard, the porter reappeared and helped us with our stuff. On the train itself was another man who asked us our seat numbers, and first found our seats for us, and helped us get situated. In the meantime the porter had lugged our bags aboard and put them in their proper place. My girlfriend said thank you, and handed him a 10 Euro tip (a Euro at that time was worth about $1.15). He handed the note back to her and said that he figured he was worth 20 Euros, which my girlfriend then handed him. “I never had anyone tell me how much to tip him before,” she said.
Meanwhile the man who had helped us to our seats asked if we wanted sandwiches and drinks for our trip. We told him no, we had heard excellent things about the lunches served in the dinning car of the train, and we were looking forward to that. He explained that the rail-line was no longer serving food on the train and asked again if we wanted sandwiches and drinks. We said OK. We each got two salami sandwiches, a bottle of water, and a can of Pepsi. I handed the man a 20 Euro note, expecting change. He shook his head no, so I opened my wallet and he took another 20. Then he started helping the Americans who had boarded right after us. A similar scene played out with them, and after the Italian man left I heard one of the Americans exclaim “I wonder if I have a sign that says ‘Victim’ on my forehead.” As it turned out, the train did indeed serve food, and had several sittings on our trip. It was the only time in Italy that I actually felt conned.
The trip itself was very interesting. First, the seating was set up so that I and my companion faced each other. There were four seats on each side of the train, and my squeeze and I had the windows on our side. Two young American women from Virginia Tech were in the seats beside us on the aisle.
The Italian train is very, very fast. In US trains, if you look out the window at the parallel highway, you’ll always notice that the cars and trucks are moving at a much faster speed than the train is. Not on this Italian bad boy - we were barreling past even the quickest of the cars on the highway, and I suspect that Italian speed limits are way above American ones. We were moving!
The scenery was wonderful. Out in the Italian countryside we saw the vast expanses of land, mostly uninhabited. We saw fields of grapes. We saw ancient estates and castles. It was beautiful.
In the meantime, my girlfriend had engaged the two Virginia Tech coeds in conversation (she’s quiet the social animal, she is). She shared with them that she had “dated” a guy from Virginia Tech years before. Now in my girlfriend’s girl-speak “dated” means slept with. If she talks about someone she “went out with” that means didn’t sleep with (usually). Girlfriend is an interesting character in that she seems both embarrassed and simultaneously proud of the number of sexual experiences she has had, alternately bragging about her past boyfriends and fiances, and later saying things like “I’d never tell ANYONE how many men I’ve slept with.”
She has “dated” and/or has been engaged to the doctor, the lawyer, the Jew, the Brit, the pro golfer, the pilot, the Mafioso, the Italian, the artist, the stockbroker, the piano-tuner, the mortician, the scribe, the...
Interestingly, she gets upset if I talk about any of my old flames because “It’s boring.”
After the co-eds had detrained, I said to Girlfriend “The next time you start that ‘dated’ crap, I’m going to tell whoever you’re talking to ‘She’s trying to sleep with at least one guy from every state in the union. So far, she’s only got four left’.”
Girlfriend was silent for a moment and then asked “Which four?”
“What!?”
“Which four states do you think I haven’t slept with anyone from?”
I thought about it, and decided to pick places that were sparsely populated.
“Nevada, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Delaware.”
“Well,” she said, “you’d be wrong.”
Goody.
We had some good luck at the station because we were approached by a stout porter who spoke English. He took our bags and led us to the track our train would be on. He told us that we’d board in about 45 minutes.
When the time came to load ourselves aboard, the porter reappeared and helped us with our stuff. On the train itself was another man who asked us our seat numbers, and first found our seats for us, and helped us get situated. In the meantime the porter had lugged our bags aboard and put them in their proper place. My girlfriend said thank you, and handed him a 10 Euro tip (a Euro at that time was worth about $1.15). He handed the note back to her and said that he figured he was worth 20 Euros, which my girlfriend then handed him. “I never had anyone tell me how much to tip him before,” she said.
Meanwhile the man who had helped us to our seats asked if we wanted sandwiches and drinks for our trip. We told him no, we had heard excellent things about the lunches served in the dinning car of the train, and we were looking forward to that. He explained that the rail-line was no longer serving food on the train and asked again if we wanted sandwiches and drinks. We said OK. We each got two salami sandwiches, a bottle of water, and a can of Pepsi. I handed the man a 20 Euro note, expecting change. He shook his head no, so I opened my wallet and he took another 20. Then he started helping the Americans who had boarded right after us. A similar scene played out with them, and after the Italian man left I heard one of the Americans exclaim “I wonder if I have a sign that says ‘Victim’ on my forehead.” As it turned out, the train did indeed serve food, and had several sittings on our trip. It was the only time in Italy that I actually felt conned.
The trip itself was very interesting. First, the seating was set up so that I and my companion faced each other. There were four seats on each side of the train, and my squeeze and I had the windows on our side. Two young American women from Virginia Tech were in the seats beside us on the aisle.
The Italian train is very, very fast. In US trains, if you look out the window at the parallel highway, you’ll always notice that the cars and trucks are moving at a much faster speed than the train is. Not on this Italian bad boy - we were barreling past even the quickest of the cars on the highway, and I suspect that Italian speed limits are way above American ones. We were moving!
The scenery was wonderful. Out in the Italian countryside we saw the vast expanses of land, mostly uninhabited. We saw fields of grapes. We saw ancient estates and castles. It was beautiful.
In the meantime, my girlfriend had engaged the two Virginia Tech coeds in conversation (she’s quiet the social animal, she is). She shared with them that she had “dated” a guy from Virginia Tech years before. Now in my girlfriend’s girl-speak “dated” means slept with. If she talks about someone she “went out with” that means didn’t sleep with (usually). Girlfriend is an interesting character in that she seems both embarrassed and simultaneously proud of the number of sexual experiences she has had, alternately bragging about her past boyfriends and fiances, and later saying things like “I’d never tell ANYONE how many men I’ve slept with.”
She has “dated” and/or has been engaged to the doctor, the lawyer, the Jew, the Brit, the pro golfer, the pilot, the Mafioso, the Italian, the artist, the stockbroker, the piano-tuner, the mortician, the scribe, the...
Interestingly, she gets upset if I talk about any of my old flames because “It’s boring.”
After the co-eds had detrained, I said to Girlfriend “The next time you start that ‘dated’ crap, I’m going to tell whoever you’re talking to ‘She’s trying to sleep with at least one guy from every state in the union. So far, she’s only got four left’.”
Girlfriend was silent for a moment and then asked “Which four?”
“What!?”
“Which four states do you think I haven’t slept with anyone from?”
I thought about it, and decided to pick places that were sparsely populated.
“Nevada, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Delaware.”
“Well,” she said, “you’d be wrong.”
Goody.
posted by Satterwhite | 6:03 AM
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