Bellagi-oh-my-word

After leaving Switzerland, we had the long train journey to Milan Central station (the dirtiest station in the world?) before heading onwards, again by train, towards Como. 

Oh, Como.  Now, let's just reflect together on how lucky we were not to book a hotel there - it might sit at the foot of Lake Como, but it's congested, unfriendly and the lake is its sole salvation, from what we could see.

On arrival at the station, I thought it could useful to buy our ticket onwards to Venice for later in the week. 

The kiosk was a two-window affair.  At the first window, there was nothing unusual, but the second window was occupied by the attendant and an elderly Italian guy who seemed to be getting increasingly exasperated trying to get some train times written down on his piece of paper.  The process seemed further hindered by his poor hearing, which itself wasn't helped by the thick glass which separated him from the attendant; rather than speaking into the microphone, as the attendant repeatedly indicated for him to do, the guy just shouted louder and louder.  The transaction ended with the attendant grabbing the guy's bit of paper through the drawer and making a series of scribbles on it, before handing it back to him.

Now it was my turn.  But I wasn't ready. 

I wasn't ready for an attendant who didn't speak a word of English.  I wasn't ready with my (still unpurchased) Italian phrase-book to make myself understood.  Most of all, I wasn't ready for a true, deep, Italian arrogance of an attendant who was going to go out of his way to nothing to make this transaction any easier.

But, how hard can it be to book a train ticket using gestures alone?  Quite hard, as it goes.

"To Venice": easy enough, he managed to find it within his heart to forgive me for not using the Italian pronunciation of the name.

"On Thursday": Jesus, this was simply the hardest thing in the world to communicate, made agonisingly worse by the large calendar that was hung on the wall just behind the window.  I gestured repeatedly towards it (I couldn't touch it, of course, because it was behind the thick glass, whose true purpose was becoming increasingly clear) but he was having none of it.  Holding up and counting my fingers to indicate the date for Thursday?  No chance.  Ingeniously, I tried reading the Italian for "Thursday" from the calendar, but there was no way he was going to be tolerant of bad pronunciation twice in the same transaction.  To be honest, I'm not sure how we got there in the end: it could have been my shouting (I had much more sympathy for the old guy from before now), it could have been that my face told him that I was ready to use the queuing barrier to physically smash the glass to get to him, or it could have been telepathy.

"After 12 o'clock": he wanted this thing done now too, so he was prepared to accept finger counting for this.  Numbers over 10 are, of course, more difficult; I wonder if he understood the significance of the way that I indicated "2" after I'd done "10". 

"For two": thankfully, I'd already worked out an acceptable gesture for this, and I was more than happy to use it.  Repeatedly.

As he printed the tickets, I contemplated the other crisis (we had a total of 7 Euros with us, and there was no cash machine at the station), but I was in no mood for second round with the attendant trying to get some 'gesture directions'. 

Instead, we headed out to the streets and found a monument that gave more of a helping hand than the guy at the station.

 

We dragged the cases through the streets of Como, taking delight (and cash) at the machine we found en route, until we arrived at the ferry terminal.  The fast boat to Bellagio was leaving immediately; on our 40-minute journey up the lake, we reflected that Italy was nowhere near as nice, or as friendly, as Switzerland. 

But, as we talked, we hadn't been to Bellagio. 

Oh, my, word.