Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/22/milano-to-trieste/
We lingered in bed the next morning, our last morning together. I saw Janet off on her bus to Malpensa from the train station, where I was left with a desire to use the WC, which the station had, for a humble €,60. I scanned the entire facility, and concluded that I was definitely about to take my first dump in a pit toilet. I was intimidated, but found a nice big stall where I could crouch opposite my bag, slide my pants to my ankles, and hover over the hole, making sure everything was clear for the trip down. Aside from a slight leg cramp, the experience went well, and I left the toilet facility beaming the smile of a man who has just mastered some arcane secret. But, it wasn’t like I could brag to anyone in my foreign language as to how proud I was, as a grown man, to have mastered something as mundane as a toilet.
I decided to head for Trieste to get to Slovenia. Why not? I was accosted by two panhandlers the moment the machine issued my ticket and change. One spoke English, the other did not, both had googly eyes. 24€ via Venice.
On the train from Venezia Mestre to Trieste I considered my options. The Lonely Planet book Janet had left me omitted Trieste. A black hole. My Hostelling International guide listed a hostel 8km NNW of city center. That did not sound promising.
Upon arrival, it was pretty clear that I was at the End of Italy, a narrow strip of territory between Slovenia and the sea. The departure schedule at the station had about half or a third as many entries as any other Italian station I’d been at. Most trains were bound for Udine or Venezia, one or two Eurostars for Milan, Rome, trains for Bucharest, one or two overnight to Romania, Germany . . .
To Ljubljana, it was a bus. The bus left at 1730, and arrived after 2000. I considered my options, and decided that I’d rather not struggle around Ljubljana in the dark after the Tourist Information Center had closed. How to get to the Trieste hostel?
A tobaccanist told me which bus to take, and sold me a ticket. On the bus, I gave my seat up to an old lady, and considered whom would be best to ask for the right stop. A middle-aged man looking over my shoulder saw the address for the hostel, and explained that it was a nice place, right on the beach, near the castle. All of this was communicated with hand grestures. I answered his questions as to my origin, and the old lady and her old lady friend mavelled to each other all the more with each progressive answer, “America.” “California!” “Chicago!!”
They didn’t elaborate, though.
The guy then indicated that I should get off. The bus actually stopped right behind the hostel, but it was necessary to walk back down the road a piece to switchback to its front door, on a beautiful, rocky coast, with Trieste visible back where I’d come from, and a castle just a stone’s throw away in the other direction, which the guy on the bus had praised and explained that it was important to visit.
Upon checkin, the lady looked up at me and asked if I was related to the famous American movie director Ron Howard. No, but people have told me I remind them of Richard Cunningham plenty of times before.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/23/castles-gardens-buses-trains/
The garden at Maximilian’s Castle.
After breakfast this morning, I strode with an Italian and a German pre-school teacher over to Maximilian’s Castle, built on the Adriatic coast, a few meters from the Ostello. The castle was nice and luxurious, and the gardens were very pleasant. I could see why the guy on the bus had talked the castle up: you could very easily kill a morning or an afternoon just relaxing in the tranquil gardens.
I thought that it was interesting that during the whole of her trip, horticulturist Janet managed to miss every botanical garden she wanted to visit along the way, and the day after, I find myself standing amongst a wide variety of trees, and an Italian garden. Unfortunately, she was no longer at my side to rattle off horticultural trivia.
I missed the bus that would have gotten me to the train station on time to catch the train for Budapest that would have gotten me to Ljubljana. I actually saw the bus pull up, and decided that if I ran with my bags, I was unlikely to make it. Best to leave things to chance. I caught the next bus twenty minutes later.
At the station, I saw on the board that the 1036 for Budapest that could get me to Ljubljana was running twenty-five minutes late! It was still there! If only I could possibly purchased a ticket in an Italian train station in time! A mere twelve minutes later I ran down the hall with my €20 ticket and was seated in a train compartment. A moment later, the train rolled from the station.
The train lingered for a while at the Italian-Slovenian border. Time enough to check passports and switch engines. This was the first time I crossed out of the EU.
I could swear that the first bus had lingered for me to catch it. I could swear that the Italian ticket line somehow managed to squeak me through just in a nick of time to catch the train that just happened to be sufficiently late to pick me up. So, I had to wonder, what awaited me in Ljubljana?
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/25/trieste-vu/
Between Trieste and Venicia, nobody ever asked me for a ticket. We arrived at Venicia somewhere around 10PM, and I was hungry – I grabbed some McDonalds. As I stumbled through ordering a Big Mac with only lettuce and cheese in Spanitalienglish, I had this weird “parallel universe” experience as I forked over €5,10, a little blue bill and a bronze coin, whereas I’d do the exact same thing in America for the exact same reason, only the $5.10 would be a regular green bill with a big portrait of Lincoln on it, and the coin would be this tiny little silver thing with ridged edges.
Otherwise, everything was the same, except for the placemat that described, in Italian, how it was all Italian beef, adorned with fresh, quality ingredients, accompanied by a picture of a Big Mac with an Italian flag sticking out of it.
I used to work at Burger King!
I used to have it my way!
Now I’ve got an M-16!
I kill Iraqis my way!
Airborne Ranger is what I want to be,
You get to shoot!
And kill!
And mutilate!
Ranger!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/26/a-small-victory/
It was too late to arrange for a couchette or anything at Venicia. I grabbed a first-class compartment and reclined the seats together. In an Italian compartment, there are two rows of three seats each that face each other. When two opposing seats are fully reclined, they meet each other and form a fairly flat sleeping surface. In this way, it is possible for three people to sleep comfortably in such a compartment. I wondered what happens when the compartments become more than half full? Feets and faces? Not an issue for me, I had the place to myself.
I had a different issue. The compartment door had no lock. I could not fathom how I could jury-rig one. I stowed my heavier big red bag in the rack above my head, and clipped the arm strap around the rack; Safe from the casual snatcher. The lighter small backpack I stowed under my window seat with my shoes. I then reclined my bed, and reclined the middle set of seats, leaving my backpack pretty well concealed, with more room for me to stretch out.
It must have been at Verona that I stirred and saw a man sitting upright in the seat by the door. He had de-reclined the middle seat by my head, and was sitting with his right leg splayed into the space it had freed. I sat up to appraise my new roommate, and something just didn’t feel right. I sat and watched him a little while, dazed with sleep. I started adding things up. He wouldn’t greet me or even look at me in any way, he seemed pretty uptight. Fair enough. He had no luggage. Okay, maybe he’s just taking a late ride between two stations. Why did he choose to sit in my dark compartment, which had had the door shut and curtains drawn, when the train was barely populated? Surely there must be a more favorable seat. He had moved my newspaper across the compartment, and when I retrieved it he made no note of having moved my stuff around. If you rearrange someone’s possessions and wake them up, and you desire to spend some portion of the night in their company, the least you can muster is a sheepish grin.
My creep detector started to go off. This guy had his foot inches away from my backpack, whose company I valued greatly. He was hoping I’d be tired enough to relax and go back to sleep while the train was still waiting in the station. After that, he could make off with my bag. Well, this was my suspicion. After a few minutes of tense waiting, he skulked off down the hallway. After the train left the station, I checked around for him, and I found no sign, just a lot of dark, empty compartments with open doors.
Along the idea that perhaps the authorities would want a description of a suspicious person to keep an eye out for, I tried to talk to the conductor about it. He said he’d send someone around who spoke more English. I was later visited by a pair of chubby women, who explained that there would be police on the train at Milan, but they seemed to lose interest once I clarified that I wasn’t actually robbed.
I chalked it up to a victory for me, for taking some basic precautions to secure my belongings, and to trusting my instincts and wits enough to keep an eye on the guy. Even though I’d technically won the encounter, I’d passed the test, and, above all, I hadn’t lost the laptop computer, images, travel journal, postcards, and other important belongings that rest in the small backpack, the experience put me off balance and it was some hours before I could relax again.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/26/itinerary/
While the night train was bound for Nice, with a comfortable 0900 arrival, the itinerary I had been given by the Slovenian information guy, who seemed to me only slightly bent, had me change trains at Genova, and again at Torino to arrive at Lyon at noon. I could swear there must be a decent train running between Nice and Lyon at a not-too-inconvenient hour, but who am I to argue with an itinerary printed out from no less august an establishment than the Deutsche Bahn web site, the information resource of choice for Slovenian information types, which should surely be more accurate than the outdated CD-ROM the French use.
So, I was up at 4AM, on a truly uncomfortable Italian train with the exact same itinerary as the one I’d been scheduled for, but with the convenience of running an hour earlier. It was quite chilly at Torino, in the early morning, but the subsequent ride through the beautiful French Alps was mind-blowingly worth it.
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