Dysfunctional Tren Italia - Sempre Ritardo

You also need to figure out exactly how they refer to a given city in order to buy a ticket to that destination or even search the schedule. For example, I tried in vain to find the town Santa Margherita del Ligure until an Italian instructed me to type S. Margherita del Ligure.

Disinterested workers - There are some diligent, friendly, helpful TI workers, but I've been traveling on trains in the country for years and have encountered numerous employees who seemed to stop caring years ago.

Once, several years ago, I was sitting comfortably in a compartment in Rome, waiting for my early morning train to depart for Venice, when I heard an announcement in Italian. At first, I didn't think it applied to me, but moments later, I noticed people fleeing the train.

In a panic, I followed them, ascertaining on the fly that TI had decided to switch platforms for the departure. Just for fun, the new platform was clear across the station and I arrived just in time to watch our train pulling out of the station. As I walked back towards the station, I noticed a group of 3-4 uniformed TI employees enjoying some laughs. I gave them a hard time for not coming on the train to inform us of the new platform but they just shrugged their shoulders. I waited a few hours for the next departure and had to stand the entire way to Venice because I couldn't get seat reservations on the next train.

At the train station in Parma just last week, I came across an astonishingly unhelpful clerk after standing in line to buy tickets to Lucca. The TI clerk didn't speak English but I know just enough Italian to get me through most simple transactions. But he seemed not to understand me when I said, "Orario- domani- Lucca per favore" (Schedule-Lucca-tomorrow-please). A kind man who was standing behind me in line stepped forward to translate.

"He says you have to buy a book to get the timetables," the man said. He then added, "It's Tren Italia, you have to understand, they are very difficult."
The man advised me to use the machine in the station and he was right, it was more informative and friendly than the human being I had just met.

Broken or non-existent elevators - Before I had kids, I always traveled light and never noticed how many Italian train stations have broken or non-existent elevators. With two small children, it's almost impossible to travel light and lugging kids, strollers and suitcases up and down long flights of stairs isn't pleasant, especially when you're making multiple connections.

Platform madness - In many, if not most, Western European countries, you can find a train diagram somewhere on the platform detailing where you should stand to board the train based on your seating assignment. But not in most Italian train stations. Again, if you're traveling light, you can always board wherever and then make your way to the right carriage.

But many trains are extremely long and if you're standing in the wrong spot, you might have to walk the length of the train, pushing your way through the crowds. If the train is crowded and you have kids, a stroller and lots of baggage, this is about as much fun as a undergoing a root canal without anesthesia.

Sempre Ritardo - Obviously the worst thing about TI is that the trains often run late. If you're traveling from one major city to another and don't have connections to make, ritardos aren't a big deal because you're only losing time. The real headache is when you miss connections and then have to take subsequent trains without a seat assignment. Standing in between cars with no seat for hours at a time, especially with children, can be a real hassle.

We missed a connection from Milan to Parma last week by one minute due to a ritardo and had to take the next train, which was packed beyond capacity. We walked through the entire train, struggling to get from car to car through the crowds with our kids and all the baggage and there wasn't a single free seat anywhere until we got all the way to the first class compartment.

On this train, the only way to distinguish first class from second is that first class was almost empty. The seats weren't larger or more salubrious and there's no free meal. Exhausted, we plopped down and hoped for the best. But a TI conductor immediately accosted us and said we needed to pay 86 more euros to sit in first class, this on top of the more than $200 we'd already paid for our Zurich-Parma tickets. A young man came over to help us explain to the conductor that we'd missed our connection due to a delay and now had no assigned seats on the full train.

We're traveling with two little boys, 2 and 4, and for a moment, I thought he was going to take pity on us, especially since the first class carriage was 90 percent unoccupied, but he wouldn't relent. Suddenly, our hero, who later introduced himself as Giorgio, began arguing with him on our behalf. I didn't follow much of their conversation, but I heard Giorgio call him a stronzo, which means a small piece of excrement in Italian, and that caused the conductor to lose it.

But as he started to shout and threaten Giorgio, a few other passengers sitting behind us began to heckle the conductor, urging him to leave us alone. He was outnumbered, but insisted on getting another 86 euros out of us – a big number for a 1.5-hour train ride. I didn't want to pay so I got up and started gathering all of our things, but Giorgio was having none of it.

"I want to pay for you," he said.

I declined but he was insistent. Now I had to argue with him not to pay for us. Eventually, I prevailed upon him not to pay and my kids and wife eventually found seats in second class a couple stops down the line. I stood, but the debacle gave me the chance to make a new friend. It also underscored the fact that Italy's dysfunctional train service brings people together in a kind of shared misery.

Hire the Kids or Go Italo - Italy is filled with highly educated, friendly, multilingual young people who are unemployed. If I were the king of Italy for a day, I'd dismantle the train workers union, fire everyone and hire some of these terrific young people to fix TI, because a great country like Italy deserves a first class train system.

That's not going to happen, but changes are afoot. TI has a new boss, who recently slashed service to Puglia and Sicily, firing numerous employees in the process. TI employees have been "occupying" track 23 at the Milan train station in protest but it's unlikely they'll be able to get their colleagues reinstated.

Meanwhile, a new private train service called Italo just recently launched and could give TI some competition with a Milan-Florence-Rome-Naples line that passes right through most of the country's biggest tourist destinations. Perhaps a little bit of competition will help shake things up at TI. It certainly couldn't hurt.

[flickr image via Hunter-Desportes]