Europe Trip Day 7 : The race against Time.

23 April 2005

Since for most of the day we were racing against time, I am putting up this day s events in a different format. Things were not hectic in the beginning, as I said, we had to catch the 10 am train from Roma termini (which was the only train from Rome to Paris), for us to reach Paris in time to catch the flight to Mumbai the next day.

8 am: the first Shuttle bus from hostel to the Prima Porta station, we miss it, since a few of us were late to get ready and reach the gate. Set back by half an hour. Perhaps, an ominous sign of things to come.

8.30 am: Catch the shuttle bus to station. Reach Prima porta and are on our way to Rome.

9.20 am: Reach Roma Termini. About 40 minutes left for train to depart.

9.25 am: Reach reservations counter, only to find long queue which clearly would not clear in the half hour that we had.

9.45 am: Debate on whether to risk boarding the train without reservation or give the train a miss and somehow reach Milan by 4.15 pm – which is when the same train would depart to Rome, after an hour’s stoppage in Milan. Using that one hour buffer we had to some how reach Milan.

10am: The Eurostar train to Paris chugs out and we are stranded in Rome with the Option B of getting to Milan.

10.25am: Intercity express to Venice. We board it, the plan was to get down at Florence and from there get the next avail train to Milan which as per the timetable would reach at 4pm, giving us 15 minutes for the Paris train.

10.30 am: We get out of the intercity seconds before it departs since there is no place to even stand in it.

10.50 am: Board a Eurostar train to Venice, with the same plan as above, but our hopes of catching the 4.15 train are fast diminishing. This train also required reservation, but we didn’t take it, since Florence was the next station after Rome and even if they throw us out they could do that only in Florence.

11 to 12.30: The Eurostar is also full and we don’t get seats. We travel alternatively standing and sitting by the door, looking more like refugees than tourists. (The pic shows our plight , true, shubada was slightly overacting ,but that was to sum up our feelings)The Ticket collector is kind enough to understand our plight and doesn’t charge us for the non reservation travel.

12.45 pm: Alight at Florence station. We have already used up the one hour buffer and there was no hope that we would catch the 4.15 train from Milan. The next task was to somehow get to Paris by next day morning before 10 am to catch the flight.

12.45 To 1.15 pm: Roam around the vicinity of the station looking for Eurolines buses which could take us to Milan / Paris. Search ends in vain as we do not find any with convenient timings. The buses leave in the evening and won’t reach Paris in time. We also looked out for Ryan air / Easy jet options, but do not get any lead.

1.30 pm: Get back to the station and decide to take the Intercity to Milan, which would reach by 6.30 pm. The Paris flight was looking increasingly far away.

6.30 pm: Reach Milan central. The next train to Paris is at midnight, which was ruled out. We once again looked for buses / cheap airlines. We made enquiries at the station, but of no avail. Get a contact of a nearby Eurolines bus station.

7pm: Take the Milan metro train and go to the Eurolines bus stop. The bus to Paris had left at 4 pm.

7.30 pm: Reach back to Milan central. It was decision making time. The flight was as good as gone, but we still were booked on it. Have to cancel it and rebook it for the next day. And for that we need to call them.

7.30 to 7.45pm: All efforts of trying to call Air France go in vain. Only option left to us was to go to the Milan airport and hope that it had an Air France booking office. The trouble was that Milan had 2 airports, located in diametrically opposite ends of the city and we had no idea Air France served which airport.

8pm: Board the shuttle bus from Milan station to Malpensa airport. A blind and costly gamble since the trip costs a good 20 euros and if Air France did not have an office we would be wasting time and money. People were getting increasingly frustrated and nervous. Luckily no one had broken down so far.

8 to 9 pm: The bus takes what looks like an eternity to reach Malpensa. Obviously the airport is located very far away from the city and if the airport did not have the air France office we were positively screwed. We were also running low on money and a few of us had already exhausted their wallets.

9pm: reach malpensa airport, the terminal is mostly deserted. Thankfully we find an Air France office which was to close in 15 minutes time. This was the first lucky break for us the whole day, where otherwise every plan of ours had been thwarted.

9.45 pm: After weighing a few options, including insane ones like flying to Paris by paying 200 euros or taking a cab to Paris for 1100 euros, we decide to cancel our next day tickets and rebook ourselves for the Monday morning flight.

10pm: Decide to spend the night at the airport itself. We were short on money and had no clue where to get ourselves a place for the night. It didn’t seem wise to go out so late in the night and then search. There would a shuttle bus leaving next day morning to Milan station.

10.30 pm: the end of an extraordinary and physically and mentally exhausting day. What began as a normal day ended as one of the most unforgettable days of ours lives. Constantly racing against time, we were defeated time and again and ended up giving up hope of catching our flight. Here we were in Milan airport, going to spend a night, hoping that we do not miss any trains or buses the next day. We did not have a flight to catch from Milan, nor did we alight from a flight at Milan, but we were spending a night there. A strange end to a strange day.