Rental car

"Do you think we should rent a car when we come see you?" my mother asks, "so we can visit some of the sights around the beach?" I think for a moment. I picture my mother's frustration level rising meteorically as she hesitates and misses the exit on a highway. I picture the speed of the autostrada. I picture the forehead-vein-pulsing moods she gets in when she is in a town with one-way streets and she doesn't know how to find her destination. (Her forehead vein doesn't actually pulse, but it would if we were characters in a movie.) I picture my brother doing his angry sigh when he learns that we will not be relaxing on the beach, but trekking through medieval villages in the hot sun instead. The poor kid only has three or four days of potential beach vacation.

"Nah," I tell her. "It'll be less stressful if we just take the train. And a lot cheaper."

This turns out to have been a bad idea. Because we are going to Viareggio and the trip is planned for a date just a few days after the explosion. Sigh.

In fairness to trenitalia, the trip there is not that bad. Cheap regionale the whole way, change trains at Parma and Vezzano Ligure (we experience a moment of panic when my mother decides to follow our progress on a map and discovers that there is a Vezzano up near Udine), get off at Forte dei Marmi and take a free bus to Viareggio. We even get to see the very cool marble quarry storage yard things as we pass Carrara.

In Viareggio, things are sad. There are black ribbons on the flags, the trees near the train station are crisped, you can see blackened shells of buildings. "Sono stati carbonizzati," the taxi driver comments to me, on the subject of the victims. It is a throat-lump moment.

Despite that, the sea is lovely (my students are right, of course, and the water on this side is much better than on the Rimini side) and the seafood is lovely and spending time with the family is lovely.

On the way back, Trenitalia redeems itself for all of the organization and stress-free trips that I have experienced since being in Italy.

"No, the station is open today," the hotel person tells me, "you can just get the regular train home." We take a cab to the train station. I look at the departures board and find that "open" is not the same as "actually having trains going through it".

"You can take a bus to Lucca," the biglietteria lady tells me.

"Ah, okay, and then we can just get back to Reggio normally?" I ask, just in the interest of having her smilingly confirm. "Of course," she will probably say.

No. She hesitates for a moment, briefly looking up at the corner of the room.

"Well, maybe. But maybe not. C'e' sciopero oggi, sai," she explains. Splendid. (New word! Sciopero = strike. The Italians are excellent at striking. It's like France, except that sciopero is more fun to say than greve.)

We board the bus to Lucca. "When is the bus leaving?" I ask the driver. She shrugs, smiling pleasantly, "I don't know. Whenever they tell me I can leave." She gestures vaguely at the train station. Ah. Indeed. I pass the time by translating for some random tourists. The bus driver asks me where I am from and tells me she would've guessed Switzerland. I try to decide whether I should be pleased about this or not. (I think the key point would be this: Italian-speaking Swiss, or other-language-speaking Swiss? I think of this later, though, and fail to ask her.)

The landscape we pass on the way is lovely, but in Lucca, trains are being soppresso'd (cancelled) one by one. For the sciopero, you see. Apparently if we can get to Florence, it will be okay, because the sciopero is just in Tuscany. (So is Florence, I think to myself, but I don't point this out to the man who was nice enough to give me directions.) I translate this information for a few stray foreigners who must have heard me speaking English with my family and have gathered around me to ask questions through me. This is entertaining but not very helpful.

"If you walk about a kilometer and a half around the city walls, there's a bus station. Probably you can get a bus to Florence," a non-striking Trenitalia guy tells me. "If you're not in a hurry to get to Bologna, though, you can just stay here with us. We're friendly and we can just hang out and pass the time until the sciopero is over." (Roughly paraphrased.) Cute, but no. We take a cab to the bus station. We wait for an hour. We get on the bus for Florence and find that it stops at the train station before departing. The train station where we were *just* standing an hour or two ago. Sigh. We buy a ticket for the eurostar to Bologna and find that it is forty minutes late. We take a different Eurostar (I smile at the conductor and he lets us on. It's good to be a girl in Italy). We take the regionale back to Reggio and get fined for not having tickets but I tell part of our sad story to the guy and he only fines us once (instead of for all three of us). Good to be a girl.

I take my family to a cute restaurant with no menu and really old waiters and dessert on a cart. They have regional food and some of the best tiramisu ever (seriously). We have affettati misti, lambrusco, tortelli (verdi for them because they are not brave, and di zucca for me because, ormai, I am knowledgeable like a local and therefore know it is delicious... well, not really, but I like to pretend). They try the tortelli di zucca and agree that it is amazing. Huzzah. My mother likes the lambrusco despite being a frog and declaring her skepticism that fizzy red wine is a good idea.

"These are the best ravioli I have ever had!" she tells me. I do not inform her that they are not ravioli. It's not like I know the difference either (so much for knowledgeable). I am about to apologize for the ridiculous journey home (circa 8 hours of travel) when she says "and that bus ride was amazing. The paysage (landscape) is so beautiful." She sighs wistfully.

Which is why, Italy, you are pretty amazing. Even when you are suffering from a recent explosion and the region is on strike and no one seems to know what's going on, you drive us through beautiful hills and feed us tortelli and tiramisu and we are happy. Props to you.

However, next time, we may rent a car.