Italian trains... shudder....

So here's the deal with Italian trains: they're awful.

We have EURAIL passes, which are good for italy and some other countries... that means normally you just get on the train.. and then they stamp your EURAIL pass. But SOMETIMES you have to reserve seats on a train.. you know... if its a sleeper train or something.. makes sense.. for overnight trains you want to get a bed and stuff.. but usually during the day its fine. SO we went to the lady and asked "Do we need reservations from Ancona to Firenze (florence)" she says "no" we say "Grazie" she says "Prego".

Sure enough, because we're in Italy, teh train arrives late, so we miss our connector. No worries we say, there's another one leaving in 30 minutes. So we get on the train and think "thank GOD this one is air conditioned" and have a seat. Well then the lady comes and goes on this HUGE rant about how you need reservations FOR ALL THE TRAINS IN ITALY. and we were like "NO WE DONT!" and she made us pay a fucking fine.. PLUS the stupid reservation fee.
SO basically, EURAIL pays for your fare... but there's a compulsory fee to pay for any train that's good.

Tomorrow, helen and I get to take an 18 hour journey through italy and into france. That'll be reseravtion fees up the wazoo. What's really amusing.. is that right now we're south of Meymac (the town we're giong to) and the train goes up to PARIS (WAY the fuck north of where we're going) and then two more trains and a BUS down to where we haev to go. HILARIOUS. good thing that's the best route we coudl take. hahaha. the only reason we're doing it that way though is because otherwise we have to take 3 italian trains, and surely we'll miss ALL the connectors.

ITALIAN TRAINS ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.

Other than that we're doing SPLENDIDLY!

(note: this post was originally written as an e-mail to Trevor.. but I thought it was amusing and decided to post it... way to save time Erika.. way to save time.)