Sliding Doors, Lesson in Italian Physics Continued

Returning now to the issues of trains, one can readily see that you cannot talk about Italy without talking about transportation. Italians and transportation are like Laurel and Hardy, who are surprisingly popular here. I will let you work out the details for yourself about that analogy.

The general law of antimatter, however, is something that amazes me each time. As I take the train to Forlì, which is fifty minutes from Bologna, I spend quite a bit of time at the train station. The train that I take to Forlì comes from Milano and the one I come back on is from Ancona. Both of these cities are major stops as is Bologna. So, while the smaller towns like Forlì and Faenza (I love that name, but finding a restaurant there is another story…) do not exhibit the full effect of this law as when then trains stop at Bologna. I usually take the Intercity or Interregional and they are more or less hourly.

But, it would be too easy to start with the train. First, you have to get to the train. Bologna has a dozen or so tracks in the main platform area. However, as a trivia question, there are two tracks that you will never have a train on. You will have to visit to know the answer. Anyways, on each of these tracks are trains coming from and going to major Italian cities as Bologna is at the center of the northern Italian train network. In fact, the train line that I ride is built along one of the oldest and straightest Roman roads in the world, the Via Romagna which bisects the Province of Emilia-Romagna. Bologna is in Emilia, Forlì in Romagna. Now you know.

So, in general, trains are supposed to run on the same track on a daily basis. That happens in fantasy lands like Switzerland, Germany, and Austria where you can set your watch by the train. As I never wear a watch and am often late (though those two are not connected in my case), I too can set my watch by the trains in Italy. Pretty much on a daily basis you can see a German, Austrian, or Swiss person being wheeled out on a stretcher from heart failure from the realization that he or she is going to be late for the first time in his or her fifty some-odd years on this planet.

The Italians, however, are different. It is okay to be fashionably late to the train station because the train won’t be there. For the first few weeks, I would be running to the station from the bus to get to the platform on time. Several times I got there when the train was supposed to leave, but I only found a guy sweeping the still-burning cigarettes off the binario onto the train tracks for the pigeons to smoke. Yes, even the pigeons smoke here. Damn, I had missed the train! This happened as I said a few times before I realized that the Italians had not even shown up for the train yet, much less the train. I had just missed the train from the previous hour, not this one. It is confusing if you start to think about the implications of that…

So, after ten minutes or so the Italians begin to arrive for this train. I have obviously learned better. If I want to take the 9:40 train, then I go at 10:20. However, if I want to leave when the 9:40 train would leave, I need to be there at 9:00 to catch the 8:40 train at 9:30 after a quick coffee. It’s kind of like a slide rule.

OK, so once you make adjustments for when you should be at the train station, the next step is finding the train. Sounds simple enough. They are large, make a lot of noise, usually pretty easy to spot in a crowd. However, remember that we are in Italy, and you can become invisible. So can the trains.

Normally if I take the 9:40, and I will let you do the math to figure out when I actually go to the station, that train is supposed to leave on Binario 4. So, you go to the main hall where there is the Arrivi and Partenze scrolling signs which indicate the trains and their binari. By the way, if there is one thing that I love about train stations, it is the scrolling signs. If you have never experienced one of these, then you are truly missing out. I have stood watching those for hours. Meanwhile I was pickpocketed and had my shoes stolen, but it is fascinating. You watch them spellbound and suddenly, rows and rows of numbers, letters, and symbols go racing by. It’s like Vegas, but you don’t have to pay. You stand there, everyone looking up as if Martians are landing (and meanwhile the pickpockets are have a field day) and everyone is waiting for their train to show up. The first time I was waiting for my train and it came up after lots of clicking and scrolling I yelled “Jackpot!!” and grabbed the guy next to me and hugged him. He was a pickpocket and took my train ticket.

The daily ritual then is for hundreds of people standing in the hall, looking up at the schedule and when the train and binario number comes up, it is chaos. Suddenly, the train that has been twenty minutes late rolls into existence on the board. However, it sometimes ends up be Ancoroma or Milanapoli so you’re not sure if it is Ancona, Roma, Milano, or Napoli. You roll the dice, it’s Ancona, binario 4. But when you get to binario 4, on the mini-scroll bar, it reads Venizia 8:56. But, it has not come, and you need the 9:40 train to Ancona. You go back to the main hall, and now, next to Romancona, the number for the binario is blank. All other trains have numbers, except yours. People are casually waltzing to respected binari, saying goodbye, talking on phones saying that they were about to leave, but not you. Standing there, after the train was supposed to leave, even on the calibrated analog system that you spent four sleepless nights perfecting, there is a blank.

Logically, a train that is coming from somewhere else must consequently arrive from that place, correct? So it seems. Looking at the Arrivi board, there is Milanoroma, binario 4. Looking back to Ancoromano, nothing. Binario 4, blank. Okay, you roll the dice again. You go to Binario 4 and you see, ES Monaco (which is very confusing because that is actually München, or Munich) 9:14. No Venezia train. No Romilancorona either. You decide to wait. There are a few coffee machines in the tunnels under the trains, so why not? Fifteen minutes later after having figured out how to actually get the coffee from seventy-two variations of sugar, coffee, water and milk with special names each, you go back to Binario 4. This time, it says Firenze 9:28. You go check the board. Arrival from Milano, binario 4. Some unintelligible gibberish that looks like there is an “a” and a “c” which you imagine could be Ancona, blank. As it is now well past noon, your hope of getting to work at all begins to dwindle. Back to the tunnel.

Now, you get to binario 4 and the mini-scroll bar is blank, except for two numbers a 9 and a 4. Suddenly, these scrolling signs aren’t so endearing. However, there is now a crowd forming and you hear whispers of faraway places like “Ancona” and “Forlì” and you figure out that you are not alone. So, then the crowd grows. Obviously you still have to work out some kinks on your analog system because magically every Italian has figured out that the 9:40 train is about to depart. It is 1:35. The mind literally boggles.

The crowd is now so large, that nobody from binari 6 and up (if you are paying attention, you know one of the trivia answers) can get by. There is a Doctor Suess story about two critters, a northbound one and a southbound one that refuse to move until an entire city and highway system is built around them. Something similar happens at this point, but eventually a little lady with more determination than most climbers of Everest have, breaks the dike and passengers from Balzonoroma come bursting through. When the confusion has hit its zenith, there is an indecipherable screaming over the intercom in a language that could very well have been spoken by the Italic tribes thousands of years ago, but you don’t understand a word of it. But somewhere in there, the Italians have managed to decipher, or at least you think they have, that among that cacophony of barking, static, and what may or may not have been singing, was the information that the train to Ancona would in fact be leaving from binario 4 as the train from Milano was in arrival. You dash to the main hallway to try and verify this, but just then, the scrolling bar has just finished spinning, and there is no train to Ancona. You sprint back to the binario to see that the train has in fact arrived.

And now, we get to the concept of antimatter, almost. The train glides towards a stop as there is another round of crackling howling and screaming over the intercom and everyone on the platform begins asking each other if this is the right train. Lots of lifted shoulders with hands out at the sides, which means in Italian, “don’t ask me, I’m invisible.”

The train stops. The air is thick with anticipation. No, that is smoke. Every single Italian has just lit up a cigarette and is frantically smoking it, knowing that they are about to board the evil “non-smoking” train. The pigeons begin to descend, shaking from nicotine withdrawal. Now, how the concept of non-smoking trains got passed in Italian is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that it is more or less obeyed, is nothing short of witnessing the birth of the universe. Smoking in a crowded auditorium after an Umberto Eco lecture is another story, again. Especially when it was Eco. But, that will have to wait.

The doors begin to creak open. The pigeons are going nuts, waiting for the Italians to toss their cigarette butts to the platform. As I said, this train is coming from one major place and going to another, stopping in a middle major place. This equals lots of people. Lots of people with mass. Let us restate our law: Two or more objects containing significant mass are required to fill the same place at the same time. And so it begins.

Unlike the buses which have an ingress and an egress, the trains have one, two-foot wide door for each end of the car. On the inside of the train, there are thousands of Milanese people who were last sighted in the Bermuda triangle when the train left the station 12 hours ago and on the platform, there are thousands of Bolognese who are now a week and a half late to work. And there is one, two-foot wide door standing between them. Instead of standing aside and letting the Milanese descend and then have the Bolognese board, it happens simultaneously. I don’t mean, about the same time. I mean sim-ul-tan-e-ous-ly. The Milanese would never yield to a Bolognese and vice versa, so what happens is antimatter. As a Milanese descends, a Bolognese boards and presto! Two bodies occupy the same space. The mutated result is a part fusion, part fission. At the beginning of the process, the Milanese and Bolognese masses merge to form one larger massive body of four arms and legs, two heads and several brands of designer clothing including at least six pairs of sunglasses. And then, the fission begins and the boarding Bolognese and the descending Milanese seem to appear more or less intact, though not necessarily with the same three pairs of sunglasses.

After this defiance of natural process occurs, you start to fight for the seats. But that, like the flight is another lesson in Italian Physics.

For now, the train begins to pull out of the station. The pigeons swarm the tracks, and an American comes running up the stairs onto the platform believing that he has just missed the 16:45 train to Rome and realizing that the “long lost friend” who hugged him in the station just lifted his wallet. In the distance, the ambulance can be heard responding to a call about a German tourist at the train station.