Goodbye, Italy

Wednesday March 16, 2011 Day 259

After the same boring breakfast for the seventh morning in a row, we left the hotel and trekked through a light rain to the train station and headed for Milano, then on to Geneva, Lyon and home. Home. It sounds so wonderful! The first leg of the journey was a blur of mist-obscured rural landscapes and unexpected tunnels, particularly since we were facing backward and had no warning when they would come along. Once we stopped briefly in a tunnel - probably three minutes. A train blasted past us in the other direction, then we started up again. I though WE were on the fast train!

We had only a few minutes to change trains in Milano, so we moved along smartly once we detrained. We located track 3 and scurried down to our car - the last one! We boarded and found our seats. There is an odd seat-numbering system to this train. Our assigned seats were numbered 12 and 18, and we expected not to be able to sit together. However, our seats were side by side, one aisle and one window seat! The two seats opposite us were numbered 11 and 13, then across the aisle were 14 and 16, side by side, and 15 and 17 facing them, also side by side. Then, with logic that escapes me, ours were 12 and 18. Does that make sense? I didn’t think so either.

Unfortunately, the seats were rather close together, depriving Roger and the guy across from him of much leg room. Once the train got moving, we slipped into the vacant set of four seats behind us, leaving our former seatmates plenty of leg room as well.

The powdered -sugar Alps were primarily shrouded in mist, but occasionally peered out through the rain to show off. They were not sunlit, however, and were not always easy to distinguish from the gray-white sky behind them. The vista could have been spectacular but for the rain. As it was, the scenery was difficult to capture on camera. First, we were photographing through a train window, which in and of itself diminishes the quality of any photograph, and this window was both dirty and rain-streaked.. Second, the shades of gray were subtle enough not to be easily captured on film or in digits, even with a quality camera.

The rain stopped when we entered Switzerland. I wonder how the Swiss pulled that off! Still, the clouds hung low and gave gray cast to everything, making the tops of the snowy mountains difficult to distinguish. Shortly after we entered Switzerland, Roger got up and went to the toilet, then on to the bar car to see about getting us some lunch. He was told that the only sandwiches were on a cart that was moving up and down the aisles somewhere on the train, so we settled in to wait. The cart did not arrive in our car until 3:00, and the vendor was apologetically out of sandwiches, explaining that we were the last car. We bought a sweet bread-cake kind of thing, his last bag of chips, his last Coke and some orange juice. Ugh - not what we were hoping for in the way of lunch. And of course, the drinks were just slightly cooler than the ambient temperature of the car. There are no cold drinks in Europe.

Switzerland as seen throug the rain-dappled window 

Switzerland, again from the train window

Lake Geneva from the train window

Lake Geneva again

By the time we arrived at the southern end of Lake Geneva, the rain had stopped, although the clouds never really lifted. The scenery was more visible, however, and we had some lovely views as the train ran immediately alongside the bank of Lake Lausanne, which is quite large. Most of it ran by too quickly to be adequately captured in the camera’s lens.
 
We arrived in Geneva with almost an hour to get something to eat then catch our train. Many of the eateries did not have places to sit down, so we picked one that did. There were roast beef sandwiches and salads in a case out front. When I tried to order, the woman behind the counter gestured me into the seating area. She disappeared and reappeared several times, but it was clear she was not serving. We sat there for five minutes without being waited on. We didn’t quite understand what was going on - there were other patrons in the seating area who were eating and drinking, but no waiter in sight. One other woman came in after us and she was directed to a seat by the same woman who sent us into the seating area, but no one waited on her either. We finally got up and left. I was pretty stressed by this time - I was quite hungry and we didn’t seem any closer to eating than we had been on the train! We finally found a counter serving quiche and sandwiches, and I ordered a quiche Lorraine. There was no seating, so we moved away a bit and I insisted rather uncivilly on leaning against the wall and eating immediately. As I ate, much of my stress began to ebb and I felt almost human again. Once on the train, I had a bit of a crying jag as the tension of travel flowed over me, accompanied by the puzzling frustration of what happened in the restaurant and the knowledge that we still had four hours of train travel left, along with a 40-minute layover in Lyon.

The rest of our trip was uneventful. We got some more food in Lyon, then went up to the platform to await our train. Interesting little note - while we were waiting on the platform at Track G, an announcement came over the speakers stating that the track number had been changed to Track H, which was just a matter of turning around and walking six feet to the other side of the platform. The “interesting” part is that the same thing had just happened in Geneva..

Home sweet home!! We walked the distance from the station in less than 15 minutes and were so glad to get home and collapse.