"SOPP"

…an Italian abbreviation that will make any traveler’s heart sink. It basically means “sorry, sucker, your train was cancelled on account of this strike we planned.” I happened to see it more times than I can count on two hands this weekend…but that’s the end of this story….

As most of you know, I traveled with 16 of the students to Cinque Terre this weekend. I’ve been wanting to go since my first time in Venice, and so I inadvertently roped a ton of people in to joining me, meaning I felt serious pressure to make it a great trip. Therefore Thursday was an anxious day full of “hurry up and wait” moments…like taking the vaporetto (super slow) to the train station, then waiting for the train, then getting to Florence and waiting for my next train, getting to La Spezia and waiting for my regional train to Riomaggiore, etc. To distract myself on the trains, I thought a good bit about where I want to apply to law school, what I want to write my personal statements about, and when applications are due. Entertainment was also provided by the students (who were on a later train than me), who prank called me, somehow expecting me to not realize it was them, despite caller ID…it was cute.

When I got to Riomaggiore, I met a cute American couple and we walked together from the train station to the office of the lady renting apartments as we happened to be using the same agency. While she showed the American couple their apartment, Edi, the owner of the business, left me in the office with the biggest swarm of mosquitoes ever and a cat who could tell I hate cats. Then she came back, laughed at me when I asked for a map of town, and proceeded to lead me to each of the 3 apartments as I furiously scribbled directions in the hopes that they’d help when I had to show everyone around well after dark. She also warned me multiple times in Italian (no English here, folks) about the two big faux paus--having more people than we rented apartments for (check) and being noisy at night (check), so I was a little nervous. After Edi abandoned me by the marina as the sun set, I went in search of the main street (Via Colombo) and found myself an impromptu dinner of pesto-coated foccia bread. Despite being tired, I forced myself to walk to each of the apartments again so I wouldn’t forget the way, then went to mine to rest until the kids arrived.

By 10:30 pm, everyone made it safely to Riomaggiore and had dinner before we all went to the rocky beach by the marina to swim and hang out. 4 of the 6 in my apartment decided to go to sleep, so I told the other 2 to just call me when they wanted directions and to be let in. The whole only having 1 key thing turned in to a bit of sleep depriving problem (as different people wanted to come home at different times), but it wasn’t too terrible and we were still able to get up early the next day to have coffee and start our hike by 10ish.

I hiked with Kayla, Elizabeth, McKinley, Eugene, Chris, Jen, Brian, and Megan and the rest of the group split up to do their own thing (hiking with 17 is practically impossible on the sort of trails we were traversing). I am proud (and still slightly amazed) to report that I hiked 8 miles of mostly uphill, narrow, steep, rocky trails and was rewarded with some of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen. The trail took us along the coastline and through five separate, adorable towns carved in to the cliffs that drop down straight in to the Mediterranean. We definitely took the train back to Riomaggiore instead of re-doing the 8 mile hike, and I think that’s the only thing that saved me from being impossibly sore afterwords. After the hike, the majority of the group met back up for dinner and to hang out. It was probably one of the best meals I’ve had since I got to Italy…in all seriousness, it was the BEST pesto Genovese I’ve ever had on top of homemade pasta, followed by the perfect dish of tiramisu.

Elizabeth and I decided to go to bed really early Friday night, and so as I was assuming what I like to call the “sleep position” (one arm under the pillow, one arm with the stuffed animals, ear plugs in), my phone started to ring. Great, it’s the rest of the apartment and they’re ready to be let in, too, which is perfect bc I’m not asleep yet, I thought to myself. Instead…“Hi Jenny, it’s Chris. There’s a train strike…Rhianna and Ana are stuck in Monterosso and are staying with an Italian couple they met at dinner. Oh and the strike doesn’t end until 9pm tomorrow.” My first thought is yeah right, nice one, boys, because they’re constantly pulling jokes. But then I began a series of slightly panicked phone calls to David and Kelly (the only two back at Casa Artom), and they confirmed via the TrainItalia website that there was a planned train strike, localized in Tuscany, set to end at 9pm Saturday. I asked David to call Laura (the Italian lady who "runs" the house) for more details (mainly-is there actually a strike? if we have to buy new tickets to go home a different way, do we pay again? what if we're stuck in Cinque Terre?). I got very little info except to find out that a train was running from La Spezia to Milan at 4:40 and that there'd probably be a train after 9pm from Milan to Venice. Then I'd just have to figure out how to get 15 people to La Spezia for that train and make sure Rhianna and Ana survived the night. With a rough back up plan in place, I finally fell asleep around 12:30.

Kayla, Elizabeth, McKinley and I decided to get up and out of the apartment by 8 to eat a quick breakfast, then hit the tiny Riomaggiore train station to see if we could get more details, and depending on what we learned, we would go back to Edi's office and see if we could stay another night in our apartments. At the train station, we learned there were only two more trains out of Riomaggiore that day...one was in five minutes, the other in one hour. The people in the ticket office didn't know any more info, but the 4 of us decided it'd be better to at least get to La Spezia, so we called each of the apartments and told everyone they had to be up, ready, and packed up in less than an hour. McKinley went back to our apartment to clean it and get our things while Kayla, Elizabeth and I dispersed to the other 2 apartments to help clean and pack only to find out that Karen and Jaimie had gone for a walk/swim. Kayla went to find them while Elizabeth and I packed up everything Rhianna and Ana left in the apartment (not knowing, of course, they'd be stuck in Monterosso all night). By some miracle, we found Karen and Jaimie, Ana and Rhianna got on the last train out of Monterosso, and everyone left in Riomaggiore got to the train station with at least 10 minutes to spare.

We got to La Spezia and it was an absolute mess--imagine Hartsfield airport when Delta has cancelled at least 5 flights...everyone needs to be rerouted. The group hung out in the McDonald's while Brian and I tried to figure out whether we could still take our orginal trains or whether we needed to go to Milan and then Venice. We started at the ticket office and the man told us he had no idea, that we needed to ask at the information office, so we joined a massive line of disgruntled people there. The lady at the window told us there was one train to Pisa at 12, one at 2 and then we could take a train from Pisa to Florence at 6:30pm, which would get us to Florence in time for our Eurostar to Venice. Brian and I were really worried that we couldn't be sure that those trains would run, as trains were constantly being cancelled (indicated by "SOPP" next to the time on the computer screens), and the strike was localized in our region of Italy.

We presented the options to the group and there was a little grumbling regarding possibly having to pay an additional 40 Euro to get to Venice via Milan and a few people wanted to "just split up and find our own way back." Neither option seemed all that appealing, so Brian and I went back to the ticket office to try and buy tickets on the La Spezia to Florence and Florence to Pisa trains to ensure we had seats, only to be told the trains were full and we could not stand on them. Frustrated, we went back to the information office as the woman there had told us our original ticket would get us on the trains we now needed instead. Sure enough, she told us that we could stand so long as we used our original tickets. We went back to the group and basically told everyone they WOULD be getting on the noon train to Pisa, like it or not, and we'd go from there.

The train to Pisa was absolutely packed with people trying to get towards Florence/Tuscany, so most of us stood for the 50 minute ride. In Pisa, Brian and I again went in search of information to make sure the trains to Florence and Venice were still running and that our original tickets would again get us there. Once we got confirmation, or at least what passes for confirmation in the midst of a "planned, localized" train strike, the group dispersed to either walk or take the bus in to the center of Pisa. Eugene, Elizabeth, Kayla, and I walked quickly in to the city center to see the Duomo and leaning tower, then we headed down the main road back towards the train station to do some shopping. I had been to Pisa before, so I didn't feel too badly about doing the touristy thing pretty quickly, then getting in some shopping at places like Zara that we don't have here in Venice. After some serious stress relief via shopping, we all met back at the Pisa train station around 5:45 and caught the 6:30 train with little issue. Apparently the ticket checkers were feeling generous as they ignored the fact that 17 of us ticketed in 2nd class were "accidentally" sitting in 1st (and the fact that a few of us were a little intoxicated).

I didn't really take a deep breath of relief until we got on the Eurostar to Venice. By then, I knew we'd make it home, and exhaution hit me like a brick wall. The train was really noisy and cold, so the ride seemed interminable, but I was so thankful that not only were we almost home, we were almost home at the time we originally planned to be. The only downside was that we left Venice when the weather was hot and humid and arrived home to 55 degree rain--not pretty. David was nice enough to meet all of us at the train station bearing gifts of vaporetto tickets so we wouldn't have to do the 30 minute walk back to Casa Artom in the cold drizzle. Once we got home, I unpacked, ate my first real meal of the day, and absolutely crashed.

The short story is "there was a train strike, but 17 of us still got home safe, sound, and on time with a bonus side trip to Pisa." There was quite of bit of stress and confusion to get us back, but everyone handled it really, really well. Other than a tiny bit of tension in La Spezia when we were first making a plan, the group did so well--I'm so proud of how well we all worked together and I'm a little proud of myself for getting us all back (not that I think the group couldn't have done it without me, but still!). Hopefully the next trip will be less stressful, but equally as enjoyable...