Train Strikes and Stubborn Italians

I had warning. An email from the Padova bus website, a service I had mistakenly signed up for when trying to figure out their maze of bus routes a few weeks prior. "There is a possible transit strike this Friday, May 15th. Buses and public transportation will operate on a limited schedule, with service between the hours of 12 and 3 pm." I worried for a moment and then brushed my typical anxious thoughts aside. It's Italy...go with the flow, I told myself. Don't worry about it unless it actually happens.

Thursday night arrives, and we're scheduled to head out of town the next morning to meet with friends in Trieste, a few hours away by train. A weekend on the sea in Croatia awaits. But, I start to worry, what if this strike is indeed is a reality and what does "public transportation" mean anyways? Does that include trains? So we ask our Italian hosts, "what's going on?" They look around on a few, unofficial websites and blogs, confirm there is indeed a strike and say, "maybe you shouldn't bother tomorrow. Even if there is a bus, surely the trains will be a mess, as well, and wouldn't it be better to just wait an extra day?" Wait? Us? Two Americans with a schedule and a stubborn determination to figure out a problem. We have friends to meet, apartments reserved, beaches to see. Too tired to argue, we retire to bed and decided to deal with this in the morning.

We awoke early, bound and determined with American zeal that we will figure out this strike. We searched and searched and find nothing at all mentioning trains, just a few bus services shut down and it looks like indeed we can get to Padova between 12-3pm. But, timid and unsure, we ask our hosts, so where did you guys see this train strike thing, because we can't find it anywhere. Our lovable host launches into a story about how he's tried to travel during a strike, and while we may be able to get on a train, we'll likely get stuck at a station 15 minutes away, where we must switch trains, and then he'd surely end up having to come pick us up in the car, defeated by the train strike monster. Hint taken. So, we caved. We listened to our stubborn friend and gave up arguing. We made him call our friend (his ex-girlfriend, by the way) to explain. Partially because we wanted to be sure she understood our predicament without any language barriers and partially because we didn't quite understand it ourselves.

The next day we awoke early, caught a ride to the station and prepared for a shortened visit and a 50 euro penalty. Plans were altered, beaches were bid farewell. And...when we arrived in Trieste, we discovered that there was, indeed, no train strike. If only we had caught that 12-3pm bus the day before, we would have been relaxing by the sea rather than cursing a stubborn Calabrian.

But, in the end, we were really happy with the way things turned out. Our extra night's stay was rewarded with a trip to some of the world's best gelato tucked away in an unvisited corner of the Veneto. And, while the beach may have been fun, we still crammed in a ton of sightseeing and had an amazing trip through the Slovenian and Croatian countryside. And, most of all, we learned an important lesson. Never trust a stubborn Calabrian for advice on a train.