Italy by Numbers

Italians love to say that when someone is "driving them crazy" that "mi sta dando i numeri" -- like in Bingo, too many too fast so it boggles the mind.  Living in Italy, you often are boggled by the numbers: bus routes, highway speed limits, even the little signs posted to indicate overpasses (and not kilometers) on the roads, or the use of Roman miles vs English miles vs Kilometers on those same roads.
So on a recent trip on Trenitalia back home from Milan, I couldn't understand why, for no apparent reason, no one on board could figure out how to count.  Suddenly, people were found to be sitting in everyone else's seats.  It was playing out like a large game of musical chairs.  I would have chalked it up to tourists...but, something seemed truly amiss.

Things are looking up:
Trenitalia's competing numbering system (s)

I looked up and found the problem.  Trenitalia, in their unrelenting passion for providing no customer service, had decided to renumber all the seats.  Your ticket and seat were posted with a number.  Having done away with letters altogether.  Except that one look up on the wall, therein was the problem.  They had posted the new system without taking the previous one down.  I could not believe my eyes.
Reading the newspaper onboard, an Italian journalist complained how he witnessed two British tourist lose money when taking Rome's city buses:  The tariff had gone up from €1/ticket to €1.50. With swift Milanese planning, all of the ticketing machines on all of the buses had been tinkered with to accept the new amount and regurgitate a ticket in return.  Too bad, none of the machines had been painted over to change the €1.00 to €1.50, posted in extra-large digits. By the time the tourists figured it out, and started inserting more coins, it was too late -- their money had been swallowed up.  The journalist was embarrassed to overhear their epithet:  Leave it to the Italians for finding new ways to steal from tourists...
Of course, this episode may have occurred after the recent football win over England...and it was simply a case of sour grapes.  But as the journalist asked of his countrymen...
What would it have taken to just get it right the first time?!  
And Trenitalia is vying for the right to run the city buses of Florence.  Caveat Emptor, you Florentines.  

Tante Belle Cose - March 09

At face value, it sounds almost too good to be true: Trenitalia has announced that it will offer cheap train fares just like the discount airlines. This is great news, except that will probably signify that traveling around Easter or Christmas could cost you the equivalent of a round trip airfare to Sydney.

I haven’t determined whether and by how much I’ll get penalized for being a last minute buy-at-the-station, but, I can imagine it won’t be pretty. And, considering that the online bookings don’t accept foreign credit cards, tourists will most likely seriously be hit right in the wallet.

I am not making this up: Those ever-inventive Italians have come out with a low cholesterol cheese. How’d they do it? By feeding their cows low cholesterol foods! Grains, seeds, the works.
All I know is, I now have free reign to eat formaggio with wild abandon…and if they could work their wonders on the heavenly (and outrageously fattening) Burrata (read: milky white butter) well, all my cares will be free.

And, again, what’s good for the passengers fares less for Trenitalia…A guy won an incredible lawsuit (payment: 1650 euro) for being forced to travel in an unheated wagon on his commute. While I don’t agree with the cost of his 30 min. discomfort, by these calculations I should be a millionaire. In any case, considering the number of times I’ve traveled in ice cold compartments, on my feet, or in sweltering hermetically sealed cabins, this is nothing short of a Miracle on the order of Sant’Irene di Lecce.
Thanks to the folks at the Associazioni Consumatori, it looks like legal recourse is finally going to be settling in to stay. Those thousands of commuters who sit on the tracks to protest the drastic conditions, disgusting bathrooms, and immense delays may finally get their day in court.
It’s a new world.

Excess Baggage

I’ve been accused of carrying a lot of baggage, both literally and figuratively. And trust me, it’s the literally that really takes its toll… So, traveling around these days to towns large and small, I was utterly flabbergasted to find that Trenitalia, in its eternal march toward (non) Customer Service, has decided to turn your own trip into a death march of sorts, having decided to make traveling with luggage a thing of the past.

Once the war has been declared, historians can always point to the little incidences along the way which in truth led up to the full blown affair – like the sinking of the Mesopotamia. In the new and improved Stazione Centrale di Milano (where they’ve removed almost all of the fast ticket machines – needless to say, I missed my train), they’ve installed huge posts to block anyone carrying anything larger than a lunchbox from taking the escalators. At Milan’s newly revamped Porta Garibaldi station, I was impressed, until I discovered they’ve done away with the luggage deposit altogether. I had to lug my bags (included Trevor's doggie bag) to my meetings.

Italy’s train company has always been hostile to travelers, and especially for those with bags. Even the fancy trains to the airports leave no room – anywhere – for luggage. Arriving in Naples, there were precisely 29 carts for 33,243 passengers per diem. Communist Bologna, preferring the workers over accommodating the customers, never even had carts – you had to ask for help (errr, make that beg, plead, cajole and probably pay off someone, if you could ever have found them). In my hundreds of trips there, I never did. In the rest of Italy's Grandi Stazioni, in the odd instance you actually snagged a cart, they were forbidden in the waiting rooms. Go figure.

And so despite the insidious signs over the years, I was still stunned to find in exceptionally organized, wonderfully run and just a fantastic place overall to visit, Torino, posters plastered everywhere complaining about the missing carts. Actually, these folks aren’t really concerned about customer amenities, they’re worried about their jobs. And while I don’t have much sympathy for the probably 58 luggage cart guys who do the job of 2, nonetheless, in war, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Now, if they really want to make traveling with luggage a thing of the past, they’d sport curbside valets who take your bag and happily hand it to you at your final destination – just like in Morocco.

Tante Belle Cose - July08

This month, Italy is on the move. And, within all the negative information on the 14+ million people on the road for the August holidays, the skyrocketing cost of gas, train tickets at record highs, there are many good things happening in the world of transport (not least of which, the eventual sale or demise of Alitalia)…

Italy’s Eurostar – The train I love to hate has actually been recognized as the safest on the tracks, and probably the best made. The rest of Europe will soon be taking Italy’s engineering prowess to their own drawing boards.

Shame that the announcement came just days before -- in two separate incidents – two carriages split right in two whilst being towed.

The Great Italian Vespa – High gas prices in the USA have delivered great news to the Agnelli-owned Piaggio Company, makers of the illustrious Vespa. Even with the low dollar, sales are up 150%.


Of course, the Company doesn't mention that they went from selling one Vespa per year up now to three.

Rome’s Horse Carriages – Animal rights groups are partially rejoicing after trying to remove the buggies which take tourists around Rome. They won’t be removed, but, will undergo surprise checks to see that the horses are not abused, are stationed in the shade and, in the summer heat, will not be available between the hours of 13.00-17.00.

Now, if we can just get these same groups to fight for human rights and get air-conditioning on the buses between the hours of 13.00 and 17.00, they might help put an end to our misery.

Back to the Future

I have long held that Italy is a very nostalgic country. And now it looks like the folks at Trenitalia are so nostalgic, they’ve decided to take us right back to 1985; with the exception of their spiffy Eurostar trains (the train I love to hate) and the fact that nowadays, we all get a seat (we’d be fined €50 if we boarded without tickets—explain that to the foreign tourists), and of course, the ticket prices: we now pay about 18 times more to receive the same service we had in the ‘80s.

The nostalgia is so prevalent, the fancy Trenitalia.it website now even redirects back to its old unwritable and unpronounceable name, ferrovie dello stato (State Railways). I’m sure you’ll find this brainy move in your Marketing textbook right next to the Case History on Alitalia’s 50 years of running losses, and yet it still goes on flying. You can well imagine where we’re headed here in terms of efficiency and quality:

- In a country banking on tourism, you can no longer purchase tickets online with a foreign bank card. So, back to the ticket lines.

- When calling the reservations number (and here they are quite efficient and bilingual), I was told that the groovy promotions are on a first come first served basis, and to simply ask for my discount back at the ticket office.

- The windows were plastered with the promotion, but the ticket guy said those discounts were taken away on February 1st (it’s Feb 5th). So much for coordination of the information flow. I later discovered he lied – probably just couldn’t be bothered.

- I hold an Executive (Frequent Traveller) Card which, when it was first instated granted me a great many benefits (of course, for a hefty membership fee) including: free luggage checks, 10% discounts on travel, a wonderful lounge for meetings, free drinks, internet access, and no lines. Over the years, each one of these terrific benefits has been taken away; and so here we are, in 2008, when none are no longer applied (except the membership fee, of course). So much for keeping your customers happy. You'll find this move in your Marketing Textbook under "Monopoly Power".

- Once on board, I was surprised to see the drink vendors from days gone by roaming up and down the coaches even though there’s a bar on board. There is one modern update, however: now these guys are Albanians. Even just last year, the personnel manned each entranceway in an effort to keep these and other undesirables from clamboring aboard and stealing your luggage. I can’t tell you how many bags I saw literally fly out the doorway before this not-so-little perk was put in place. But no more.

- And while my train to/from Florence was on time, the bathrooms are back to ‘80s (or 1920s, take your pick) standards. And, the wonderfully courteous conductors who religiously checked your tickets now run through the cars mostly skipping us altogether just like before. If this keeps up, maybe I can get away with a free ride like half the guys in my 2nd class car (I no longer can afford 1st) -- just like I did when I was a student in the ‘80s.

Can someone please find the contraption to put us back up to 2006 again??

Eurostar: A trip for all Senses

I admit it: I have wild fantasies over Giugiaro, the designer from Pininfarina (of Porsche fame), the man behind Italy’s “high speed” EuroStar trains: I am a frequent traveler on them, usually 4 or 5 times per week. As I ride them, he fills my every thought. But not out of sheer lust.

In fact, not a trip goes by that I don’t dream of the day that I could take that architect, strap him to a seat, and have him ride his high-design trains day in, day out. And get an idea of how it truly feels to be inside a beautiful Eurostar train. Oh, he can even ride in first class. For ‘certi versi’ it’s even worse than 2nd. The experience would, once and for all, serve to convince at least one designer in the world that Form over Function is not a good thing. But in a country where ‘la bella figura’ trumps all hands, well, not less can be expected.

If nothing else, I’d like to suggest my own expedient: how about simply renaming the ubiquitous ES to AG? AG after Abu Ghraib – that way, at least, riders will know what to expect.

The Eurostar, with its wide seats and sleek design is excellent; superior in fact, to the ones where they were invented: the cramped and dirty and uncomfortable French trains. But, the comfort stops there.

You sit in your seat, but, if you’re a woman, or if you decide on any other position in the chair other than the straight-seated one, well, the chairs begin to make the electrical chair preferable by comparison. So, you close your eyes to forget your pains? You have a line of fluorescent lights shining in them; so strong they even penetrate your blinders (a must on any train trip). There is no peace. Again, you think, ‘if only I could reveal all my state secrets’ -- for sure that might turn off these lights. I now hope to find seats where they are mercifully burned out.

Uncomfortable and blinded, you can’t get any shut–eye anyway: the announcements for eating, drinking, lateness (a daily occurrence) and whatnot, broadcasted in a volume to wake the dead, are incessant. And, in the pauses in between? Don’t worry, your head will be numbed by the shutters that shake, rattle and roll; jarring your every thought and of course, putting out any conversation you might be willing to have -- even with yourself. I have taken to riding in 2nd class, just to avoid going deaf by the shaking shutters.

So, with your sense of touch, sight and hearing underway, the final coup de grace is the smell. The cleaning squads love to post their first-world notes declaring boldly, ‘this bathroom has just been cleaned’, but, on numerous occasions I have entered the bathrooms soon thereafter only to find them covered in excrement of the highest order.
The cleaners simply pour gallons and gallons of putrifying cleaning liquids with a smell so powerful that I grab a barf-bag when the corridor doors open and in wafts another barrage. I spend most of the trip looking like a Taliban's wet dream: wrapped up in a kind of Burkha, except my head and eyes are completely covered; a winter coat wrapped tightly around my legs due to the sub-zero temps, a scarf around my face as if I am an avian flu carrier...The germ-paranoid Japanese take one look at me and immediately change cars. Don't they do this to prisoners on Guantanamo?

What's left? Ahhh..taste. While the food on the ES (I mean AG) trains is outstanding, the prices have risen to Four Seasons levels. I used to eat 4 or 5 meals a week years ago… Post-euro, I haven’t eaten a meal on board in over 4 years. But, if you happen to take an early train anywhere, ‘caveat emptor’: the hot tea and coffee has a bit of a metallic taste to it. Why? The litres of chlorine they pour into the water at the beginning of each trip. Great. I thought Chlorine was used to disinfect swimming pools or, at these levels, even killed people.

Glad to see the new spiffy design of the fantabulous EuroStar. Maybe someday someone will finally take into consideration the passengers and not the politicians.