Italian Ways

by Tim Parks

  I didn’t smile. The Scoutmaster insisted on showing us their group ticket. Sure enough, they had booked. But how could this be? ‘It’s the new rule,’ said the woman grimly, packing away her papers. ‘They don’t put up the little reservation cards any more. As of a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘So how do you know where to sit?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘You just sit until they move you.’

  The capotreno arrived. I asked him if it was true that we couldn’t know where to sit any more, that they weren’t indicating the reserved seats. ‘You obviously don’t read the notices we put up to explain the situation,’ he said. Squeezing through the crowded corridor from one carriage to another, I now had time to read one of these notices, posted in Italian only. ‘Seats 71–86 of each carriage [two compartments] cannot be reserved,’ it said. All the other seats could be reserved, but reservation cards would no longer be displayed. There was no explanation for this change. Passengers were kindly invited to show maximum willingness in giving up their seats to passengers with reservations.

  Overnight, then, the person who didn’t pay an extra €3 to book had become a second-class citizen. He could no longer know if a seat was free unless he was willing to go to the ghetto of compartments six and seven, which, of course, were always full. A couple of years later even this tenuous existence was denied him. All Intercities, Eurostars and now frecce would be a prenotazione obbligatoria, reserved seats only. ‘La comodità è d’obbligo,’ announced a Trenitalia slogan. ‘Convenience is a must.’ The implication, of course, was that the regional trains were not convenient, since there you couldn’t book a seat even if you wanted to. It was perhaps to make up for this that the old Interregionale was suddenly renamed the Regionale Veloce, the fast regional. When one thinks of all the expense of respraying carriages and re-recording announcements and reprinting timetables just to make this meaningless change, the mind boggles.

  So now you always had to know what train you wanted to travel on, even with an Intercity, and book for that alone, a great loss of flexibility. Since people who travel on expensive trains don’t want to hang around in queues, that meant you were more or less obliged to book online with a credit card. Obviously prices were adjusted to include the old booking charge. Then came what Italians call the beffa, a single word that means ‘the trick that adds insult to injury’. If you paid a further 25 per cent surcharge for a so-called Flexi ticket you would have the luxury, in the event of missing the train you were booked on, of being allowed to take the first train after that without paying any fine or surcharge. Otherwise there would be an automatic fine of €8; oddly, 25 per cent of an expensive ticket is often more than €8.

  To recap, then, while in the past one had maximum flexibility for price X at the slight risk of not finding a seat, something you could nevertheless sort out if you knew you were travelling at a busy time by adding a reservation for price X+Y, now you always pay X+Y and always have a seat but no flexibility unless you pay price X+Y+Z, when you have your seat and a little flexibility, but nothing like what you had years ago just paying X.

  The bottom line is that Trenitalia privileges computer-savvy passengers with credit cards who will occupy reserved seats on clean, fashionable, very fast trains and who will even be permitted to show their ticket as a PDF on their laptops, or an SMS on their mobiles, while those without cards are cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In 2011 the ancient ticket machines in Porta Vescovo were replaced by the new, rather beautiful and wonderfully efficient credit-card-only touch-screen machines; the speed of operation and discreetly presented range of options are simply remarkable. However, in the station’s little bar the charming barista tells me that the ticket-selling side of her work has more than doubled since the arrival of these breakthrough machines because none of the passengers using Porta Vescovo – schoolchildren, students, immigrant labourers – have credit cards. But of course these people don’t take expensive trains, so Trenitalia is not interested in them. More often than not even these splendid machines are broken because someone has deliberately jammed the place where you slot in your credit card.

  HOWEVER, I SHOULDN’T COMPLAIN; a man curating a show about bankers with paintings by Botticelli and the Beato Angelico is clearly among the privileged and the blessed, and hence liberated from the purgatory of ticket machines. Like Cosimo de’ Medici & Co. he has bought his place in paradise. Freed from all restraints – disembodied, it sometimes seems – I journey back and forth from Verona or Milan to Florence, from Florence to Milan or Verona, at extraordinary speeds and with remarkable punctuality, showing the inspector my first-class ticket, generously emailed to me by Palazzo Strozzi, on my laptop. In first class I have a choice of orange juice, wine or coffee when I get on. There is also a power outlet for my laptop. The air conditioning is reliable. The toilets are relatively clean. What more could one want?

  Naturally, I soon grow accustomed to these blessings. I try a trip to Rome and discover that the train really does make it from Milan to Rome in under three hours. All at once train travel makes sense. This doesn’t feel like Italy at all, I tell myself. I have stopped noticing the Regionali and the poor folk who use them. What a relief. I can read, I can work, but seriously work, and I can travel centre to centre faster than by car or plane at cheaper prices with no, or next to no, hassles.

  I can even feel virtuous. ‘Congratulations,’ my ticket tells me: ‘By choosing the train you have helped save the planet from CO2 emissions.’ It gives examples. Travelling from Naples to Milan I am responsible for emissions amounting to 31.

  But 31 what? It doesn’t say. Presumably 31 bad things. By car I’d have emitted 76 bad things, by plane 115. It doesn’t say whether we’re talking about full planes or empty planes, full cars or empty cars. It doesn’t say if it makes any difference whether I travel in first class or second. The important thing is that I feel virtuous – wealthy and virtuous – like those old Renaissance bankers. Isn’t this what it means to be bourgeois, after all? A state of mind invented in Florence in the fifteenth century: the virtuous, forgivably self-satisfied businessman. While those bankers spent vast sums building splendid churches and commissioned fine paintings, we save on CO2 emissions and make our small contribution to one of the most expensive railway lines in the world. Either way the money is not going to a lot of people who might feel they have a better claim to it. The same was said of the Medicis and Strozzi’s lavish spending on their grand palazzi.

  In any event, it must have been all this ease and sophistication that led to my last and greatest bust-up with a capotreno. I hesitate to tell the tale, since I come off rather badly, and perhaps the reader feels he has had his fill of capotreni. But this was a truly defining moment, both of my relationship with Italy and of my understanding of the new Trenitalia. I shall tell it, and then promise you there will be no more. It will be an easy promise to keep, since this was the bust-up that ended all bust-ups. I will never again allow myself to be drawn into an argument with a capotreno.

  Basically, the unforgivable mistake I made was to act like a privileged Freccia person on a proletarian Regionale; I tried to mix the two worlds. But let me explain.

  Until the summer of 2012 you could only buy Trenitalia tickets online for fast trains on which booking was obligatory. The Regionale or Regionale Veloce tickets had to be bought in the station, were valid for two months, and needed to be stamped on the day of travel. The Intercities had been pretty much phased out at this point, at least up north. So when I returned to my humble Porta Vescovo life, I was still having to deal with the idiocy of ticket machines and ticket windows. Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when sometime in spring 2012 I discover that you can now buy regional tickets online. There has been no advertising campaign for this, mind you, no overt encouragement to use these cheap trains, just that all of a sudden, while checking the online timetable, I notice that there is now the little circle you have to click to show th
at you want to buy online. Of course you have to specify your train, time and date, which are then indicated on the PDF they send you, and the ‘ticket’ is considered as already stamped and valid only for that train. So no two months for usage, but who cares if I can buy so easily only minutes before a train departs? I bought my Regionale Veloce ticket at once and put it in background on my laptop for display to the inspector exactly as I always do when travelling the frecce.

  Yep, this is truly fantastic; I patted myself on the back, heading for the station. Very soon I shall have to stop complaining about Trenitalia, which actually offers me a wonderful service at very reasonable prices. I’m a lucky man. I like trains, I live in a country that has trains, and at the highest level people are working hard to make those trains easier for us all.

  I salute them.

  I even salute the mad new announcement they have recently introduced to replace the old warning that a train is arriving:

  ‘Trenitalia Regionale Veloce 2106 proveniente da Venezia Santa Lucia e destinato a Milano Centrale arriva e parte dal binario quattro.’

  ‘Trenitayliah Fast Regional 2106 from Veneziah Santa Luciah with terminus at Milanoh Sentralay arrives and departs from platform four.’

  Arrives and departs!

  Who thought of this? If the train arrives at platform four, could it depart from anywhere else? It seems that high-speed technology, Internet connections and general modernity in no way inhibit a flare for the absurd.

  So I board my train, which does indeed arrive and depart from platform four. Thankfully, I find a seat at once, in second class; I am sitting next to some diligent young students, all bent over their books. Remembering that there is no electricity supply in this train, I decide to write down my ticket code, just in case my computer should run out of battery. I find a scrap of paper in my bag and jot it down: PCWNG2. Again I am filled with pleasure and a deep complacency at the thought that after twenty years I am now entirely free of Trenitalia ticket lines and ticket machines. I can always buy online for every train. I am master of the situation, empowered, in control of my life.

  The ticket inspector arrives shortly before Peschiera. ‘Is there anyone’s ticket I haven’t seen?’

  What a friendly way to approach his clientele! Presumably he has already checked this carriage before I got on and so is simply asking if anyone has boarded since he last checked. Our inspector is feeling relaxed. The Net has many chat rooms where people discuss the various techniques for avoiding payment on Trenitalia trains. Awareness of the mood of the inspector is considered crucial.

  Normally I might just continue my work and pretend that my ticket has been checked. I’m reading, of course. Actually I’m overwhelmed with reading for a literary prize I’m supposed to be judging, the International Booker. But today is a big day: the first day with an electronic ticket on a Regionale. So I say, ‘You haven’t seen mine.’

  And I show him the code on the piece of paper.

  Of course by now I’m familiar with all the inspectors on this line. This is an elderly man – the capotreno, in fact – with deep dusty wrinkles and cobwebbed eyelashes, dry papery skin, a shrewd, calculating look. I once saw him being very tough with a Slav girl who claimed that she hadn’t bought a ticket because the machine accepted only credit cards. On the other hand, he regularly turns a blind eye to the freeloaders in first class.

  ‘This ticket needs to be in una stampa,’ he says. Printed.

  All around me eyebrows are raised. Over the years passengers become connoisseurs of ticket complications, and I may be the first person they have seen who has tried to travel on a Regionale Veloce with an electronic ticket purchased online.

  I decide to say nothing.

  ‘I need to see all the details,’ he says. ‘Your name and an ID card.’

  ‘I always give the booking number on the Freccia. They seem to think it’s enough.’

  ‘This is not a Freccia, signore. Does it look like a Freccia? I don’t have a fancy little computer with me to check your booking code. I can’t know if the details are correct.’

  ‘But I have the details on-screen.’

  I open my computer, which is in sleep mode, and wait for it to fire up. Everybody is silent, intent. The inspector, who had seemed so relaxed when he merely enquired whether there were any tickets he hadn’t checked, now seems disturbingly grim and purposeful, as if he’d encountered an unexpected pocket of enemy activity deep inside home territory. Perhaps he is a traditionalist, entirely against the introduction of electronic tickets. He fears that one day these tickets will cancel out his job, as they have already cancelled out the jobs of thousands of ticket sellers. It occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that I regularly travel on the frecce. Perhaps the inspector now feels that this well-to-do foreigner has no business cheapskating on his Regionale Veloce, which is a social service for the poorer traveller. He’s a Communist of the old school, maybe.

  Needless to say, the computer takes an unconscionable time to fire up. The train rattles along. Since the air conditioning isn’t working, everyone has the windows open, and the blue curtains are flapping and fluttering all down the packed carriage. It looks like a cinémavérité production from the 1950s.

  ‘I need to see a printout,’ the inspector repeats. ‘On paper.’

  Why, then, is he waiting to see what I am going to show him on-screen? Again I choose to say nothing, but realise that I’m getting nervous. My right hand is trembling. This is ridiculous! It’s just a ticket inspection.

  The screen glows and there, at once, ready and waiting, is the PDF. The date and time of travel, the stations of departure and arrival. The class. Second.

  ‘As you see,’ I tell him, ‘there’s my name, which you can compare with that on my ID.’

  I pull my ID card from my pocket, my Italian ID, and offer it to him. He refuses to look at it.

  ‘The ticket is only for this train, so I couldn’t use it again,’ I tell him. ‘How could I be cheating?’

  ‘I need to see a paper printout,’ he says.

  I object that it doesn’t say anything about printouts. Surely if there was some major difference between this and the other online tickets they would have warned the buyer.

  ‘Of course it says so. Look at rule three.’

  He is standing in the aisle bending over the screen, which is on my knee. He is enjoying himself now, absolutely sure of his position, like someone who has a good hand at poker and is just waiting for the pleasure of recording a win and, even better, registering the dismay on his opponent’s face.

  ‘Where is rule three?’

  He sighs, as though wishing he were up against more experienced opposition.

  ‘Scroll down to the bottom of the page.’

  I confess I had never done this before. The PDF as it pops up on my screen ends with a long and unexplained code number, KK8-9EY-U5K-UVJ. I scroll down. Sure enough, written in a much much smaller typeface there is a heading, AVVERTENZE. Cautions, warnings.

  The first says: ‘This transportation contract is governed by “Conditions and tariffs for the transport of persons on the FS”, which can be consulted on www.ferroviedellostato.it and on www.trenitalia.it – Conditions of transport.’

  The second says: ‘This ticket is named, personal and untransferable. It is to be considered as already validated and can be used for four hours from the time and date indicated on this receipt.’

  The third says: ‘At the request of the inspection personnel, this receipt must be exhibited together with a valid ID.’

  It’s the first victory to me. ‘I can’t see anything here about printouts,’ I say triumphantly. ‘I’m showing the receipt in PDF and I have my ID where, as you will see, the name corresponds to that on the receipt, Timothy Parks.’

  It’s a crass mistake on my part to sound so damn pleased with myself.

  ‘Look at rule four,’ he says, unperturbed.

  I scroll down another click.

  Rule four sa
ys: ‘The ticket bearer cannot depart before the time shown on this receipt.’

  Reading it out, I don’t even bother to remark that he seems to have slipped up. I departed exactly at the time indicated on the receipt, though the rule does raise the interesting question of whether one could legitimately travel on a train that left early.

  The students are chewing their pencils, nudging each other. They like my style. The thought that a public official is being proved wrong is always sweet to an Italian. It appears to be happening. Only later would it occur to me that the inspector had made me read the irrelevant regulations to drag things out, to build up my hopes and hubris, to have me fall harder when the blow came.

  ‘Look at rule five,’ he says.

  Perhaps the reader could remember here that this man has a job to do checking tickets on an extremely busy train. It must already be absolutely clear that I have paid for my ticket and can’t reuse it or cheat in any way. So why isn’t he getting on with his job? But of course I know why. Deep down we all know that the rules are invented precisely to create the conditions for these confrontations, and when they occur they are immensely more important than merely checking that people have paid their fare or, in my case, reading some novel.

  Rule five says: ‘The passenger cannot change the ticket or the class of the ticket.’

  The passengers around me on both sides of the central aisle are beginning to smile broadly.

  ‘Which leaves rule six,’ the inspector says with a sigh. Something in his voice makes me look up at him. Our eyes meet. His dusty dry lips are twisted in the triumphant smile of bureaucratic Italy celebrating another victory.

  I read out rule six; it says: ‘The passenger who is not able to show this receipt in printed form or does not present a valid ID is to be considered as travelling without a ticket and regolarizzato – regularised – according to current norms [ticket price + €50, or a regional fine].’