Missed It By That Much
I’ve been working every Monday morning while I’ve been away, so it was an early start this morning. We had a big day of travel ahead and we’re praying it would all go to plan.
We decided we’d pack our bags and then grab our complementary breakfast at the Hotel Hell, aiming to head off around 9:30am. We started off on the wrong foot by leaving almost half an hour late but that was just the beginning…
Stuffing Jimmy the Jeep full of bags one last time, we set off on the winding roads I’d become accustomed to, our destination: fair Verona. The GPS was telling us it would take us two and a half hours to get there and our train left Verona Station at 1:02pm. That meant we would get there around 12:30, giving us about a half hour buffer. Tight but doable.
Siri started talking about an “Auto Bahn” coming up. Though I was very sick of driving in loops, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to take on the Bahn. The warnings came for a while and I was trying to psych myself, then before we knew it, it was upon us. There was a weird roundabout with lights and so many options of which road to take - too many options! Predictably and regretfully, I took the wrong one. Being an Auto Bahn, exits are few and far between and the next place I could do a u-turn was in half an hour. There goes our buffer. Half an hour down a toll road to a ginormous roundabout to turn around, and then half an hour back to square one. It was beyond frustrating. Molly tells me every breath I took was a sigh. It was such a waste of time. Molly remained completely level headed (that made one of us) and began putting her fingers to work on Google to search for options. There was another train half an hour later from Verona, but we were destined to miss that one too.
Our trip included three trains: Verona to Milan, Milan to Zurich, Zurich to Bern.
We were praying hard for some way forward and that’s when Molly had a brainwave. The cogs in her brain were turning so fast I could almost see the smoke coming out her ears.
“Why don’t we call the car hire place and see if we can drive all the way to Milan and drop the car there?”
What a brilliant idea! We would get there with a 50 minute buffer and still get on our train to Zurich. The car hire place said it was no problem, we changed our destination on the map and we were away.
Driving on the Auto Bahn was totally stressing me out. The speed limit was 130km/hr (upwards) and it was wall-to-wall trucks. Big trucks. I had to keep up a solid pace (ie the speed limit) if we had any chance of making a train today at all. I was scared stiff for the first half hour and then I started to settle in, watching the speedo climb, whizzing past semi-trailers and caravans and keeping up a cracking pace. That said, we’d lost a fair bit of time while I was being timid in the slow lane, with Molly gently urging me to drive faster.
If the Auto Bahn was massively anxiety provoking, the toll booths were next level. We must have gone through about ten and EVERY time, despite Molly’s reminder to “get closer Mum!” I was too far away to reach the big red ticket-producing button, having to put the car in PARK, pull on the hand-brake, take off my seatbelt and grapple for the bit of paper barely poking out of the machine. Then it was back in the car, start it up again, grab my seatbelt and untangle the stupid jacket I was wearing that kept getting caught in the buckle. Meanwhile, Giuseppe behind me was snorting like a bull in Pamplona, beeping his horn and flashing his lights.
This process was even worse when the toll road would end and we’d have to pay for the toll by inserting the ticket. There were several ticket-sized, credit-card-sized slots and a woman’s voice was bellowing something urgent at me in Italian. Molly discovered there was an ‘English’ button to push but all she said was: “insert your ticket”…WHERE? It felt like I’d conquered Everest when the boom gate raised to let us through.
I’d love to say it was smooth sailing from here on in but sadly, no. Entering the metropolis of Milan was crazy. Molly guided us beautifully to the car hire place but the traffic conditions were so weird. At one stage we were skidding along on train tracks! The street was busy and when we finally heard those magic words: “ you have reached your destination” there was absolutely nowhere to park. We followed the signs to a nearby parking lot but realised we were way to far away now. We had 20 minutes until our train left the platform. Molly took the initiative to run back to the office and ask where we should leave the car. They told her to just double-park it, derr. Who ever heard of a car rental place with no car park?!
By the time we got back around the block, we had 15 measly minutes to get there. Two men with clipboards sauntered slowly across the road, giving Jimmy the once over. We had our bags out of the car and were poised to run, yet they were acting like we had all day. Come on. Finally, we got the thumbs up and we were off. It was a good few blocks to the train station and we were sweating.
The Milan Central Station is huge and chaotic. Not what we needed today. We checked the board and ran as fast as we could towards the gates. It was an international train ride so we had no idea whether we had to go through customs. Apparently not. One more glance at the departures board gave us such relief - our train was delayed by half an hour. We could relax. We weren’t going to miss it.
Still shaken from our morning, we sat mostly in silence for the three hour journey but struck up a conversation with the Swiss couple next to us, who informed us we weren’t getting into Zurich until 7:15pm. Our train for Bern was scheduled to leave at 7:02pm. Oh bugger.
All was not lost, there was a train at 7:32. We could go to the Information office and change our tickets. Our Swiss friends were so kind. So we hot footed it to the Info Centre but got the wrong one. By the time we found the correct one there was a substantial queue and we waited half an hour to get an audience with the loveliest man, with the highest voice we’d ever heard. We think he may have been sucking on helium back there (either that or he was Alvin the Chipmunk in disguise).
Of course we missed our 7:30 train and managed to catch the 8:02 bound for Bern to see our good friends Mitch and Suz. They were a sight for sore eyes. Mitch had even bought us some dinner. What a legend! We had a quick catch up at our Airbnb apartment and then it was off to bed for some well-earned shut-eye.
Some quick highlights from this shocker of a day. We pulled into a petrol station with a weird looking fire breathing, 6-legged dog as the logo and someone actually came to the car to fill it up for us and…he washed the windscreen. The other highlight was the snack bag we remembered to pack to keep us fed on the road, (though I lost a few chips down my bra).
What. A. Day.
