Berlusconi, I thought. That smile. Not that he personally is responsible for everything that’s happening in Italy today – how could one man ever be, however often he has been prime minister? But you really don’t need to think hard to see a connection between the rise to power of a man whose fortune has been made by creating a vast TV and advertising empire and an Italy where one tries to resolve any and every contradiction between what people expect and what they are willing to pay for it by turning public services into advertising spaces and retail outlets. Sometimes, moving through an Italian station or airport today, it feels as though the selling power of cute buttocks, sweet smile and pert breasts is really all that stands between Italy and economic meltdown. It does seem a lot to ask of the girls.
Brushing the crumbs off my coat, studiously ignoring the antics of the two youngsters across the table, I left the warm bar for the freezing station to check where we were up to with the Frecciargento’s delay. Anything over ninety minutes and I would go home, I thought.
I couldn’t find the train on the departures board. This was odd. Other trains were posted for Munich, Trieste, Turin, Mantua, but not the 6.55 to Rome via Florence. Puzzled, I hurried up to the platform. There was no one there. The train wasn’t indicated. I went down to the main concourse, but the information office didn’t open till 8.30, and there were long queues at the ticket windows. Eventually I found a man in uniform who didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular.
What had become of the 6.55 to Rome?
He presumed it had left by now. It was 7.20, after all.
‘But they announced an eighty-minute delay.’
His eyes narrowed and he became cautious. ‘If it were delayed eighty minutes it would still be on the board.’
‘They announced the delay, I went to the bar and now it’s disappeared.’
He shook his head. The 6.55, he said, actually started its journey from the station here in Verona. It was thus unlikely that they would signal such a long delay, since the train would have been right there overnight. At most they might have had to run a check on some systems because of the cold.
‘They did announce an eighty-minute delay. I didn’t imagine it.’
Picking up my accent, he shook his head and said in comically poor English, ‘Perraps you ’ave made the mistake.’
‘I have been in Italy thirty years,’ I told him. ‘There have been periods when I have practically lived on Trenitalia. I did not make a mistake.’
He sighed and began to move away. He had work to do. If I had a complaint to make, there were proper channels.
Furious, but above all bewildered, I drove home, booted up my computer and opened Viaggio Treno. This is one of the truly great novelties of the past ten years, and I take this opportunity to salute and congratulate whoever invented it: Viaggio Treno is a page on Trenitalia’s website that gives you the exact position of all the trains in the country. A map of Italy opens with double lines indicating the main train routes in each direction; you can choose the region that interests you and home in on that. If the line is dark blue there is a train on it; if it’s light blue, there isn’t. You then click on your dark blue line and a small table appears indicating the various trains on the line, their present positions, any eventual delays. In short, it’s as if you had a huge toy train set in your front room with all the frecce and Intercities and Interregionali moving back and forth on it from the top to the bottom of the peninsula.
Sure enough, the Verona to Bologna line was dark blue. I clicked. The Frecciargento 9461 had now passed through Poggio Rusco and was running just ten minutes late. It must have left just as I settled down in the bar. Unfortunately, my ticket was valid for that journey only. Could I claim my money back for a train that had departed more or less on time? No. Could I ever prove that a delay of eighty minutes had been posted? Probably not. Could I claim expenses from Palazzo Strozzi for a ticket I had bought on a train I had not boarded? Hardly. But the most curious thing of all, I realised now, was that I had appeared to be the only person at the station who had missed that train, the only one rushing around in an angry panic at 7.20. There were two explanations for this: first, that
