Just less than a week after returning home, I left the UK for Italy again - this time for good. When I say good, I don't actually mean good but I do mean as I left on the 31st July 2009, I wouldn't return home (save for a fortnight at Christmas and two summer weddings) until the second week of September 2011. Good.
When I flew out this time, I was going first of all to Pisa, and then, by a seriously convoluted route, I was to end up in a small hilltop town called Camerino. I was flying out on a Sunday to start a four-week intensive language course the following day on the Monday. I'd never done anything like it before and I was psyched for it. I'd had a reasonably positive experience with Italian public transport up to this point, so if I was worried about anything, getting there wasn't it.
So I arrived in Pisa. I've been before, though just the once. Back in 2005, I went on a family holiday to Tuscany. My love for Italy really started blossoming from there and it was strange to be back a few years later after never thinking I would return, and certainly not under these circumstances. If you want to know why, I suggest you start at the beginning.
Pisa is one of the only Italian airports that have a train station attached. There are many times in the following year that I wished that was the case for Milan as well. So I had a four minute ride into Pisa and then I was off to Florence. I got myself a MacDonalds and found a corner where I could sit and gorge myself before getting on a train to a small place called Foligno.
I didn't know Foligno that well - to be honest I'd never heard of it. I know certainly the station a lot better now as my train was delayed two hours there. But that's just it - my train wasn't delayed there. It just never showed up - well not for two hours. Being a Sunday, all the normal Italians were at mass and spending time gorging on massive banquets: there were very few people I could have turned to for help. I had to wait it out.
I started to think about my upcoming month. A friend of a friend had put me on to it, apparently she knew the lady that was the principal of the school I was to be studying at. But I never met her, even her contact came through someone else. I filled in all the forms and got myself a place on the August course. It was going to be pricey, but I hoped the 480Eur I'd earned during my month teaching would go a little way to offsetting my living costs.
The course included a place to live as well as a tutoring fee and some excursions. I had a bursary because I was a student myself and it halved the overall fees, making it a not-too-shabby investment. My plan had been to gain some soft exposure to the language when I was teaching, learn some more in the language course, and by the time I arrived in Verona I'd be fluent and ready to go to all my classes and ace every one of them.
It didn't quite work like that, but let's not dwell...
Anyway, I was really looking forward to the whole experience, but I was still in Foligno, waiting for a train to Fabriano (another place I'd never heard of, and haven't since). Two hours later the train came and evening was fast approaching. It was about an hour over to Fabriano, but even that train was delayed. I arrived, still waiting for a connection up to Camerino and met with an unhappy truth.
I went to the ticket office to ask what I should do. I then cursed myself for being stupid: the ticket office isn't open on a Sunday. My only option was to scour the departures board and find the next train. Oops. The last train. And it wasn't even a train. It was a bus.
No problem. I had plenty of time to wait for it. I got to know Fabriano quite well too. I passed the time avoiding a gentleman I dubbed Weird Ugo which helped to keep me occupied. The bus came and I had acquired a new set of English-speaking friends. Frankly without them I'd have been up that old creek sans paddle. They were going to the same place as me because they studied at the university in Camerino. Not only that but they called the principal of the school I was to be attending and asked her husband to pick me up at the bus station and take me to my flat.
They helped me get on the right bus up to Camerino and showed me where to get off - the bus, it wasn't an insult. They explained how to access the moving staircase and get into the main city at the top of the hill. it was there that I met the principal's husband and heaved a great sigh of relief.
My train travel ordeals were becoming a regularity.
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