FIRENZE

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

There is a phrase that is used quite frequently in Papua New Guinea – TANGFU – That’s A New Guinea F*** Up. It can be used as a noun, as in “There was a good tangfu on Italian Rail today.” Or as a verb, as in “We got tangfued by the Italian Rail System today”. Personally, I thought that Mussolini had sorted out all the problems, especially as far as getting them to run on time was concerned, but perhaps Berlusconi has had a finger in the pie somewhere along the line.

The day started off well, I thought. I slept very well last night, didn’t cough much and my cold seemed to be under control. We got up bright and early as we were planning to do our own thing and catch a train to Firenze (or as we know the city Florence) from Livorno (which used to be known as Leghorn!). We had a bite to eat at the bistro and they announced that the first shuttle bus would be leaving shortly, so we dashed down to grab our things and were off the ship in next to no time. Clearly my mind wasn’t operating at full capacity however, as I found I had left my cap behind. But I had time to get that from the cabin and we were on our way through a tortuous set of one way streets to the drop off point in town, from where we could catch a bus to the station, where we would pick up our train. What fun, all that public transport! But Alas! I found I had left my camera behind. My Camera? How could that happen? On a day like today I might take over one hundred pictures. How could I think of going off to Florence without a camera? How could I have left it behind in the first place?

So we stayed on the shuttle bus and wended our way back to the ship. I nipped back to the cabin and grabbed my camera, plus a warmer jacked for Rab as it was very nippy in the wind. As one of the men said on the train later “Don’t forget it’s winter here.” I forbore from snapping “No, it’s not. It’s what you folk call Fall.” But whatever the season is, while it may be warm in the sun or in the lea of a building, it can be very cold in the sharp wind – after all that is what laid me low in Tangier. Maybe if I’d been wearing a cap instead of a fez there I’d have been OK?

Of course all this toing and froing and annoyance with myself for being such a dickhead had raised my grumpiness bar. Without that, maybe I wouldn’t have found it so annoying to hear the old boy in front of me reading out loud every sign he could see and commenting on them. Thank goodness his glasses seemed as poorly focused as his wife’s hearing aid was tuned, or we might have had more pearls of wisdom from him. One such example may suffice to give a general feel of what I had to put up with “Marina Americano. That must be where the American Consul is.” (No, I cannot follow that line of thinking.) Or, seeing a road sign to the Autostrada saying PISA – “That must be the road to Pisa – doesn’t seem like much of a highway.” I didn’t strangle him, and the ride didn’t last forever – just seemed like that.

The gals and gals at the end of the shuttle bus ride greeted me like a lost friend. “Nothing else you leave behind?” “No,” through gritted teeth. David pointed us to the nearby Tabak and said we could get bus tickets – and rail tickets. We joined the queue at the tobacconist and sure enough got our set of tickets. Two each for the bus: four each for the train. Be sure to validate them, he told us, although they had mentioned that on the ship. Only €37.40 all up for the two of us we chortled – how much we were saving compared to the £49 each the ship was charging for the Florence Experience – and we could do our own thing without being herded by the guides.

Bon chance - a #1 bus was waiting at the Piazza Grande and we hauled ourselves aboard – quite a high step up for Rab, validated our tickets, found there were no seats available and were steadily compressed as more and more people crowded onto the vehicle. What fun, though, to be in a mass of Italians – or were they?. We soon heard some American voices – a dear old couple (not much older than us on reflection) who were truly confused as to where they were, where they were going and how they were going to get there. I explained as best I could how to validate their tickets – look for a big yellow box and put the relevant tickets in there.

“All the tickets?”

“No, only the ones you are going to use.”

“Which ones are we going to use?”

“The one that says 100 and the one that says 10 for your first trip: the same ones coming back.”

“Who told you about this? Did they tell you on the ship?”

“No, but we have a similar system in Melbourne, Australia.”

“Are you guys from Australia? That’s cute?”

At the railway station we established there was a train to Florence in about 30 minutes, leaving from platform 4 so we all trooped over there, explaining to our new friends that Firenze was what the Italians called Florence, in their ignorance. Italian station platforms have no seating or shelters of any sort, so we stood there in the chilly wind, the gilt melting off the gingerbread ever so slightly. After about ten minutes a scratchy incomprehensible Italian voice was heard, but not understood by anyone but one stout fellow who shouted that the train was now leaving from platform 2. So we all trooped down the steps back through the subway..

In the fullness of time a train moved in to platform 2 and assuming, correctly that this was the Firenze train we clambered aboard. I say clambered, because unlike any other train that I have travelled on, the carriage floor was considerably higher than the platform and passengers were required to go up four very high and steep steps to get aboard. We had faced this kind of exercise in remote country stations in various countries, but not in a city! Anyhow, we got seats and settled back to see the beautiful countryside as it passed by.

I suppose one should always be a bit wary about making any assumption based solely on previous experience. We had travelled only once on Italian Rail before now – a relatively short trip from Venice to Piambino Desi. The double-decker train was very comfortable and we had a lovely view of the countryside seeing \small farms and villages as we travelled. Not on this line. There was a bar across each window with an injunction in four languages not to throw anything out of the windows. This bar, about 2 inches high, separated the upper, opening, part of the window from the lower, fixed, part. And was set at precisely my eye height. So I had three options – to continuously read the injunction on the bar, to stretch my neck like a giraffe to see over the bar (not a good option, given the accumulated dirt above the bar) or twist my body into an uncomfortable position to peer beneath the bar.

Turned out that I didn’t have to exercise any of the options because there was little to see out of the windows as we passed through industrial sites, half finished building sites, bare fields, fields full of weeds, more unfinished building sites …..well, you get the picture. I have made a note to myself that we must do a trip on an Australian country train to a small town. Are there such dense thickets of weeds along our lines? Do all railway lines have these? Is it simply my ignorance of public transport that leads me to make these judgements that may be unfair. Shifting my attention to the other passengers in the carriage I noted a small American party – very cheerful as we have found most US citizens to be when travelling: they often seem puzzled by their experiences, but seem less likely to complain, perhaps because they have no expectation that foreigners will be able to emulate the American experience. The did seem to be a little confused about what they might see. Next was a substantial party of Netherlanders, mother father, grandparents and, possibly, an aunt plus a number of children. At first glance I thought there was just a girl and a boy. Cute kids, blond as white rabbits, with similar front teeth. Next time I looked, there were three, then four. It was like a magic trick, but that was the limit. Rather them than me, I thought; marshalling a party of nine with differing views, desires and relationships might be difficult. They seemed less chirpy when we saw them later in the day. The final pair making up the carriage was a couple of German woman talking very loudly to each other – but at least they kept me awake.

We had a great day after that wonky start. Walking up from the station to the Duomo, we grabbed a couple of delicious gelati – why doesn’t anyone else make ice cream as well as the Italians? Menthe for me Coco and Tiramasu for Rab. Of course the cathedral and ancillary buildings were wonderful – all these old piles are. That goes without saying, but this isn’t a guide book, so beyond saying that we found them wonderful, what else can I say that isn’t to be found in Wikipedia? I can tell you that there were many groups marching backwards and forwards across the square and up and down the roadways – completely blocking some of the more narrow ones. Led by a stout guide with banner held aloft, quiet-voice receivers in their ears they processed from one eye-popping sight to another drenched in historical facts that none would remember beyond the hour. Here was the red group from Oceana; there a yellow group from NCL – over there an unnamed group distinguished by their matching T-shirts. It was the case when we visited Venice, we were astounded that there could be some many visitors so late in the season and wondered what on earth it would be like in mid-season? How could anyone move? And how long would the lines be at the Uffizi?

The statues at Uffizi were beautiful, I must say, but how politically incorrect are they? Women being carried off, men bashing each other or standing proudly with head of the enemy in hand? Should we be exposing sensitive people to these scenes without a warning – Adults Only, or Some Violence. And should children be allowed to see these violent scenes? Aren’t they more explicit in some ways than the violence in those video games? Can they be part of the problem of the growth in violence in our society which started, as I recall, in my youth when Mad Magazine came into being out of the comic world. If you read some of the dire warnings from that innocent time, you’d wonder how we all made it through to adulthood – and now beyond to geriatrichood.

Rab had two aims for the day – well maybe three if you count the gelato – the first was to see the sights, but specifically the Ponte Vecchio and the second to get a replacement leather handbag for the one she had bought on the Rialto Bridge when we were in Venice three ears ago. We achieved all of these aims, at least to our satisfaction. She managed to find not one, but three handbags – she has a minor Imelda fetish regarding these – and the Bridge could not have looked lovelier in the bright afternoon sun. The river Arno was flat and mirrored the bridge marvellously. I took multiple shots and will now have to decide which of these to keep. All look great to me!

A couple of blocks back from the river, looking for a place to get a bite to eat, we followed a narrow alley until we saw the sign for the Café Caruso with a speciality of Risotto Murano – stuffed with seafood. That and a couple of Peroni beers made an excellent lunch and rounded off an excellent day in Firenze for us.

Coming out of the café we came across a pillar of padlocks – the tradition that we first noticed in St Petersburg – where bridal couples padlock their love forever.

We decided to try and get the 14.28 back to Livorno as that would give us plenty of time to make our way back to the ship, although we weren’t sure that we could get to the station in time. We were right about that. We missed the train by about two minutes, so were stuck until the next one in an hour’s time. Standing at the designated station #1, the one furthest from the station entrance, which is why we had missed the first one, we were puzzled by the fact that there was no 15.28 train to Livorno showing up on the board. I found a helpful employee who told me that the Livorno train would be leaving from platform #4, not #1. His English was not good enough to explain why it wasn’t on the board, although a train to another destination was. I finally found an English speaker who confirmed that the train would be stopping at Livorno, so we made our way across to platform #4 just before three to find dozens of people standing at the closed doors of the train. We joined them and then stood there for another half an hour – and more. Puzzled, we thought initially that we would only be allowed to board a set time before the train left, but as time went by and we went past the departure time, it was clear that there was another problem. An Italian passer-by said that the delay was because they had cleaned the train and were waiting the statutory time for the seats to dry!! Whatever the reason was, we were not happy campers.

Finally about ten minutes late, the doors opened – or at least one door did where we were standing. Warned by my brother’s superior experience in crowds in Europe, we knew that we could not expect any polite boarding procedures: elbows and knees would come into play and it was every man (and woman) for themselves. We gave it our best shot, but Rab’s climbing ability was marred by the walking and standing we had done and this slowed her ascent into the carriage. By the time she summited there were very few seats left. She dived into one and I spotted another the row behind her and went for that. There was a woman next to the empty seat who I recognised as being behind us when we were standing in front of the doors and she had put her hat and scarf on the seat next to her to reserve the seat for her partner. I gestured to her to remove these items – there was no way I was going to stand for another 90 minutes. She shook her head, indicating she was saving the seat. I merely started to lower my not inconsiderable bulk into the seat leaving her with the option of removing the items or having them crushed beyond recognition. She chose the former course accompanied by a long tirade in a tongue which I didn’t understand – and which would have made no difference even if I had understood it. Nobody jumps my queue lady!

The train was packed with bodies standing everywhere and I wondered how we’d all clear the place at Livorno, since that seemed to be the destination of most people – some disembarked at Pisa, but not many. When Rab and I had a chance to speak after we got off, she said, and I agreed, that we should try and catch a taxi as she didn’t fancy another trip on the bus. The drivers are a little erratic and accelerate and brake fairly viciously compressing and decompressing their load of standing passengers as they do so. Of course there was a huge blue going on in the taxi arena as people fought for the limited number of places in the maxi-taxis there which all filled up and disappeared long before we got anywhere near the front line. Massive queues at the busses made that option equally unattractive and I suggested to Rab that we should find a café nearby, have a cup of coffee and wait for the mayhem to subside. We decided to wait a little longer to see if any more taxis turned up – and sure enough a couple did and reduced the queue somewhat, while the bus queues were also diminishing. We saw a #1 bus coming down the road and decided to make an effort to get aboard, just making it, but alas not before all seats, and most of the standing room was taken. But at least we’d be on our way back to the cold beer and coolth of the ship – a picture that had been in our mind’s eye for hours now.

It was not to be. The driver, a slip of a woman, decided that it would be appropriate to check all the tickets of the multitude of passengers. Worming her way from the front of the bus took forever and to make matters worse I couldn’t find my ticket. I had it when I boarded, as did Rab have hers, since we had both validated them, but mine had now vanished like the morning mist. What to do? Not too complicated. Rab showed hers, the driver/conductor turned her attention to another passenger, Rab passed me her ticket and we were home and dry. (I found my ticket in the hip pocket of my jeans, a place I never put anything, but of course the perfect place for a ticket.)

We lurched our way back to the Piazza Grande, stopping some anxious passengers from abandoning the bus too early because they couldn’t remember where they had to get off and then, Glory Be, just got to the transfer bus a couple of seconds before it left and – Glory Be again, there were a couple of seats left.

Rab collapsed in the cool of our air-conditioning, I went to get the beers: That first beer we had didn’t touch sides, but we roused ourselves for tucker and to watch the behemoth next to us sail just before we did. Seventeen decks of passenger accommodation, 4,500 passengers and 1,800 staff it looked for all the world as elegant as a floating office block. We’re happy with our little Marco Polo, which was dwarfed by this giant.