Wow! What a day. I’m still in shock at the contrasts in emotion and experience. From some of the worst fear and panic I’ve ever felt, to pure bliss and wonder.
It was time to leave the land of croissants and dog shit. Even though being by the ocean at Nice had offered a welcome relief to the dry landscapes of central France, Italy was calling from across the mountains. But how to get there… I think out of some sense of self-preservation I’d conveniently forgotten about the forthcoming perils of the train journey: my claustrophobia was not going to like what I had in store for us. If only teleporter technology were freely available.
The Cote d’Azur, and the Ligurian coast, is a serious of bays separated by steep mountains, so travel of any kind, apart from upward, requires negotiating tunnels and bridges. As the Genoan taxi driver declared, “This is Liguria: tunnels and bridges, tunnels and bridges….!” My nightmare made real.
The train itself couldn’t have been more Italian – in our carriage one of the external doors wouldn’t close, which had set off an ear-splitting alarm. I don’t know what was more concerning – that the alarm was screaming in our ears or that no one in charge seemed to be worried. We sat with it all the way to the first station and then a huge bloke in a uniform came and gave the thing a good thump and the door closed and the alarm stopped. Prego.
Even though it was a six-hour journey there was no dining car, so no food or water – ha ha, tricked you, said the universe – and the toilet in our carriage wouldn’t flush. Everyone reacted to this differently: the Italians on the train just sat and bantered while the Americans listed all the problems and the Brits just looked lost.
About three hours into the journey, an American couple got up out of their seats further up the carriage and gently confronted us, claiming that we had their seats. We compared tickets and it looked like we had been issued the same seats. Now, who do you think should have moved? Yes, after we’d relocated everything – six pieces of luggage, empty chip packets, laptop computer, son, packets of sandwiches, etc – they sat in our seats for five minutes and then realised that they actually should have been in the next carriage and off they toddled, seemingly oblivious to the chaos they had created.
Later, as if to emphasise the David Lynch-ness of the journey, a comical (Italian) chap came through the carriage with a three-wheeled cart complete with real bike bell and some awful sandwiches and, thank god, some bottled water. The cart was hilarious – it was so top heavy that whenever he let go of the handlebar to reach for an item, the whole thing toppled over onto the nearest person’s shoulder or chairback.
The journey started easily enough, with short tunnels (ten seconds long at most) separated by the most gaspingly beautiful scenery, with twinkling azure (funny that) water lapping up against perfect villages and massive villas built right to the water’s edge. It was like having a Hollywood set roll past the window for a couple of hours.
But then the tunnels got longer and longer and the panic started to kick in. I know it’s crazy, this paranoia about being underground, but no amount of logic or rationale helps once the panic starts. The thing is, I HATE BEING UNDERGROUND. I hate not being able to see the sun and I hate the thought of not being able to get up to the surface quickly, when I want to. It’s impossible to explain why I panic – it’s probably as much about the fear of the panic itself as anything – but I really believe humans are not supposed to be hanging out under several million tonnes of rock. It’s just not in our genetic make-up and it feels wrong and I hate it. The panic is my body’s double exclamation mark to that certainty.
So, what do you do when you are on an interminable train journey that is principally about rocketing under several million tonnes of rock at 100+ kilometres an hour, and the panic starts? I don’t know either. I tried counting (my usual trick) and I tried walking up and down the train carriages until I realised that people were looking at me not because I was out of my seat and therefore offered a welcome relief to the pitch black scenery but because I looked white-faced and deranged.
I tried Rescue Remedy, which I must say did help a bit: my heart rate dropped and the sweating eased off a bit. I tried holding on to Pat’s hand until it went white, too. I tried breathing deeply, chanting a mantra, thinking about Oliver’s birth, typing my travel notes and eating the aforementioned awful sandwiches. I even tried to go to sleep (which I know is the bleedingly obvious solution but actually getting to sleep once the panic starts is nigh on impossible). The next step, I guess, was to get Pat to punch me out.
The ABSOLUTE WORST part was coming in to a couple of the bigger towns/cities, such as Monaco, where the stations are underground. This means that not only are you under several million tonnes of rock, but you are slowing down and then stopping. At the back end of the train, where we were in first class (which didn’t offer much in the way of alternatives to the facilities in economy by the way), it was dark and cave-like even in the station. Even writing this is putting my stomach in knots again.
I’ll drop the suspense: at Genoa I eventually found someone in a uniform, who told me that there were more long tunnels to come and that the train was delayed 25 minutes, so we would miss our connection in Milan, and then I returned to our carriage to find someone else claiming that we had spilled over into her allocated seat (which we had) and I decided that enough was enough.
In my defence, I’d given it my absolute all for nearly three and a half hours. Some women give birth in less time than that. One positive, I guess, is that I learnt along the way that I can make it through a tunnel that is 74 seconds long without dying. And I also learnt that unless I have some major breakthrough, probably via long-term expensive therapy, or travel only when completely high on a massive amount of drugs, I will never ever attempt to do that again.
So I convinced Pat – eventually – that I needed to get off and in the nick of time, we managed to transfer six pieces of luggage, more empty chip packets, laptop computer, bewildered son, packets of half-eaten sandwiches, etc onto the platform. The stationmaster blew his whistle, the train went ‘toot toot’, and off they went, back into Gollum’s lair.
I was so relieved I almost wet my pants.
So, now we’re standing on a busy, grotty platform at Genoa (where?) with a bewildered and now cranky son, six pieces of luggage, blah blah blah and NO IDEA what to do next. The only parameter was that we had to get to Parma sometime that evening.
Now, how do you get from Genoa to Parma without going through any tunnels? The short answer is, you can’t (unless you charter a helicopter or fly via Rome). Ha, ha, said the universe again.
A short break from the tension of the moment: walking into the main hall of Genoa train station was like stepping onto another movie set. Welcome to Italy!, the scene screamed, as half a dozen macho policemen paraded around with sniffer dogs and guns on hips, while a gaggle of nuns took turns to go to the public toilet (€1 entry, presumably waived for them). The bookshop had maps of Italy and southern Italy and detailed tourist information booklets on Genoa but nothing on northern Italy. The Bureau de Change was closed for lunch, the tourism office was closed for the rest of the day (“for technical reasons”) and the woman at the bookshop was completely unwilling to offer any suggestions as to where we might go for help.
Did I mention that we had a bewildered, cranky and hungry three-year old with us?
And then I found someone who said that the only thing we could do was to get a hire car and the only place we could do that was at the airport. Thankfully our taxi driver was wonderful – friendly, helpful with the baggage, beautifully dressed and he spoke a little English. Don’t think you can get to Parma without going through tunnels, he said. But if you go via Piacenza you will have fewer tunnels than if you go via La Spezia. But you will have tunnels. Great.
We did get a hire car, eventually – a tiny little Chrysler something, which we just squeezed into (why is it so complicated to install child seats in hire cars?) and off we went on our next adventure: to find the right autostrade heading north and to negotiate more *@#!ing tunnels. I gotta say that the helicopter option was looking pretty attractive.
I won’t bore you with the details of the next hour’s journey but it was horrible, although not quite as horrible as the train because I was holding the steering wheel. I don’t quite know why that helped but it’s probably some deep-seated control issue. For most of it, we sat tucked in between some big trucks, which gave a sense of slow and steady – they knew what they were doing and weren’t taking any risks. Also the tunnels were no longer than two kilometres and for most of them I could see the light at the end from about the halfway mark. It was bearable, but only because there were no other options.
And then, suddenly, we came out of a tunnel and we had left Liguria and were in Piedmont and the valley opened up and I just knew in my waters that there were no more tunnels ahead. Now I didn’t really know there were no more tunnels so I couldn’t completely relax but it was looking pretty good. By the time we turned the corner onto the A1 and started heading east along the Po Valley toward Parma, I knew for certain that it was all behind me and it was the best feeling in the whole wide world.
Before long, we had reached Parma and after negotiating our way around tiny one-way streets following real time telephone instructions, we arrived at the steps of Palazzo Dalla Rosa Prati and there was Vittorio Dalla Rosa Prati, phone to his ear, waving a warm welcome. Vittorio was also from central casting: 30-something, handsome, beautifully dressed, charming and with that enchanting Italian-flavoured English that makes my knees weak (although not as weak as French-flavoured English but it’s a close second).
The next few hours were like a dream. Our apartment is on the second floor of the Palazzo, which has been in care of the Rosa and/or Prati families for centuries. I’ll repeat that: centuries. The bedroom and separate kitchenette both have double doors that open out onto the Piazza Duomo, with the main view being of the mediaeval Baptistery, which Vittorio explained is the most important landmark in the whole of Parma. I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful it all is – the view, the smell, the décor, the lavish appointments... And then, as if by the press of a button, some incredible music wafted up from the piazza: I leaned out the window to hear a Bach fugue being played on a piano accordion by a busker straight under our window. He went on to play a gob-smacking repertoire, which included Flight of the Bumblebees and something Gershwin, all brilliantly performed. The sheer romance of it all was overwhelming.
We delivered the car to its private garage (no vehicles are allowed to park on the streets in the centre of Parma – hurrah!) and then meandered back through cafes and past hundreds of similarly blissed out locals and tourists alike, promenading as dusk fell. All the buildings are cleverly lit so that the city has a warm, honey tone (many of the buildings are incredibly old – it’s hard for us Aussies to conceive that people have been promenading these streets for 900 years or more). Several parties of young men were touring the streets and singing (tunefully): they weren’t threatening or aggressive at all, and seemed to be celebrating something but I don’t know what. Pat got talking to some Mormon boys from the USA, who said they had been in Parma for 12 months and it was always like this – always so much happening and always pleasant.
However, I suspect we’ve come at a particularly good time because Parma is celebrating Verdi this month and there’s a Correggio exhibition on right now. Then, just to reward us further for our difficult journey only hours before, we stumbled on a public performance of some of Verdi’s most popular operatic songs being held in a huge open hall at the entrance to Teatra Parma, the local opera house. Just as we arrived, a beautiful red-haired young soprano took to the stage and sang one of the famous solos from Rigoletto (I think) and then the choir performed the chorus from La Traviatta that everyone knows but I can never identify.
Quite apart from the quality of the music and the incredible acoustics of this open-sided hall, I was amazed to see people floating in and out carrying children, pushing bicycles, munching on food, answering mobile phones and having chats with their neighbour – it was as though this kind of thing happens regularly and so it was no big deal! To me it was perfection. I tried to capture some on video but it was useless and it would be impossible to adequately convey the magic of that experience.
We wandered across the Piazza to a small café and ordered a light meal of lasagne, tortelli with spinach, and risotto with funghi, all made with local ingredients (and generously sprinkled with Parmagiano Reggiano cheese, of course) and all were superb. We washed them down with Italian beer (which was pretty good) but decided to stop there, even though I’d decided earlier on that I was going to get good and proper drunk when the day finally ended. Oliver ate the whole plate of tortelli and then scoffed more than his share of the two desserts – tiramisu and tartufo, of course!
It was time to wander home then, only two blocks away, to our palace and our jacuzzi and gorgeous king-size bed. What a day. All of that in fewer than 12 hours. Can you believe it? I can’t.
It’s 5:30am on Saturday (11th of October) and today is market day so I’ll head off to bed for a few hours sleep if possible. But I can’t end this without saying how incredibly proud I was of my gorgeous son and how grateful I was to have Pat there today for his support and camaraderie. We travel well together, us three.
Oliver is such a trooper and my heart swells when I think about how he coped with today’s (and all this journey’s preceding) dramas. He has been homesick again and asks occasionally when we are going home to our old house, which I find really painful, knowing that we don’t know where home is right now. I try to remember and comprehend how hard it must be for him to grasp what is happening. To us it is exciting and stimulating and a dream come true. To Oliver, it is a blur of new beds and scary situations and strange people. But he rarely grizzles. He keeps up as best he can and has a go at most food and experiences we put to him. And I often forget that he’s only three-years old. Nearly four. God I love him so.
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