Day 5 was mostly spent on traveling. We had a morning train to catch from Venice to Rome. This was a Eurostar train and hence a reservation (R) was compulsory. Even though we had the Eurail passes, to get into one of these R marked trains, one has to shell a few euros more. In this case it was a substantial 12 euros per person. The train was comfortable but shockingly sparse. We were wondering why on earth we had to get reservations for such an empty train, but we didn’t have much of a choice.
Our initial plan was to visit Florence on the way to Rome, but then decided against it, since we were not sure of the train timings and we did not want to land up in Rome in a very unearthly hour. We did touch the city on the way, but all that we saw was the railway station and whatever we could see from inside the train. It was sad missing what many call one of the most beautiful cities of the world. But we were on a tight schedule and a tighter budget.
We reached Rome in the evening. The Roma Termini was a bustling and modern railway terminus. It was crowded and noisy. Felt like being in a train terminus in India. We had to choose between hauling our backpacks with us and going for a tour of the city or retire to our campsite for some rest. We decided on the latter. The camp site was located in the suburb of Prima porta and initial enquiries told us that was pretty far away. Unlike Paris, which has like 8 metro lines, Rome has only 2 and a glance at the map revealed that we had to use both of them to reach our campsite.
Before departing to the campsite, we had food at a restaurant outside the station. The waiter was a Bangladeshi. I think I have failed to mention this before but we came across Bangladeshis in both Paris and Venice. And not just once, they were present in every place we visited. Most of them were street vendors or shop owners. Since we had two people knowing Bengali in Ruchika and Kamal , we never had a problem communicating with them and in the process driving a hard bargain. We also came across Indians here and there, but mostly as tourists or office goers /students.
After having lunch we walked to the Roma Termini underground Metro station and we were in for a shock. The scene resembled a peak hour Mumbai suburban station. There was a huge crowd and the train that came in was choke a block. Also the trains were old, painted with graffiti and also small. There was no way we could get into one of them. So we had to miss a couple of trains before catching one. I never imagined that in some European city I would miss a train for being crowded, especially since I am living in Mumbai and used to getting into trains where seemingly air also can’t enter.
We changed trains at the Fluminio station and took the over ground suburban train to Prima porta. The metro train as well as this one was small in size with a pair of seats on either side of the narrow aisle. Most of the metro trains in Paris were also small. Thankfully they need not take the kind of traffic the suburban trains in Mumbai take.
We reached Prima Porta after a 30 minute ride. We had to wait for sometime for the pick up bus from the hostel. The good thing about these European hostels is that, even though they are located far away from the cities, they have pick up buses running to the nearest station. The campsite at the outset looked better and more comfortable than the Venice one. The rooms were basically trailer vans and the whole place resembled one of those trailer parks.
After freshening up, we hit the campsite restaurant and helped ourselves to some delicious pasta. We were ready to explore the eternal city the next day
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