Thorsten uncensored – via IM

Thorsten: jetzt wollte ich das auf facebook posten ,aber der text ist zu lang

nils: ?

Thorsten: „Bienvenue en France“? Ha! „Bella Italia, Ciao“!! So I thought France was disorganised… But then there is this conference trip to the beautiful island of Ponza. Easily planned and booked: * Flight to Rome and back, * Taxi to Anzio (the harbor) and back (pre-booked for best price, train would have taken too long) * Hydrofoil ferry to the island and back. Everything with plenty of slack to make sure… Trip to get there works beautifully. Perfect time at the venue, good presentations, nice people, all seems well. So the day of the departure arrives. And with it the rumours, the hydrofoil would not leave the day after. Being German you go to the ticket centre to make sure you get your ticket and a place on the ferry at 2.25 pm (as planned). 12 pm, nobody there (of course! there could be customers!), but the lady at the hotline is reassuring – the ferry at 6pm would probably be unable to leave because of high waves, but 2.25 wouldn’t be a problem, „just be there 15 minutes in advance!“ (no cloud in the sky and the ocean as flat the French Riviera when Davide wants to go surfing) . 1.30 at the ferry, nothing but a pretty print out: „The ferries at 2.25 and 6 are cancelled because of bad weather, today“. „Putain Fait Chier!“ one would have said in France, without really being surprised. So why be surprised in Italy? Quick check: another slower ferry is leaving at 2.30 to „Formia“, another hour by car further south than Anzio. Run to get a ticket, since there’s no other chance anyways. Francesco, friendly enough, calls the taxi to Roma, but they say there’s no chance to get from Formia to the flight in time and offer a cancellation (let’s see what they’ll charge :D). Ticket bought to Formia and ferry taken (not the slightest breeze of wind on the whole trip, beautiful sun shine, and the sea as smooth as glas – so I guess the weather is simply too nice for the hydrofoil captain to want to be working). The best of all girl friends in the mean time finds alternative flights, 9.20 from Rome to Basel, with personal pick up service (2.45h from Darmstadt, big trip! And it’s her birthday tomorrow!). Arriving in Formia at 5, with a planned inter city at 5.25 (perfectly informed, thanks to Luca’s iPad and intl. roaming!) that flight is easy to catch (1h to Rome, max 1h to the airport). But in Italy things are different. Arriving at the train station after a short sprint a planned IC at 5.25 may well only be planned: the three ICs before (one per hour) haven’t arrived yet, and the ETA stays a constant amount of time in the future. Anyways, tickets bought, at the platform it turns out there is a regional train (and it turns out that no ICs are going to service Formia throughout the rest of the day anymore for some dubios reasons). REG scheduled to arrive in Roma at 7.16 pm, with a taxi the flight is still easy to catch. Until it turns out that even the slowest Italian train of all can still run late (40 minutes, >40% to be exact) – so arriving in Roma, the last flight home is unreachable. I’m slightly impressed. McDonalds has free wifi – so let’s see how to proceed (a different flight? night train? hotel, but near which of the airports?). McDonalds found, big „free wifi“ sticker identified, menu ordered, „Internet only for Italians! Only with Italian SIM, no with international phone, no laptop!“ (honestly: I was happy she at least understood English…). OK. Giuseppe suggests hotel broker at Roma Termini. After getting shafted frequently by old ladies who jump the line at the hotel information counter they clerk sends you to the next Internet café („You pay 20 Euros only for our service! But there’s an Internet point at the corner of the street where you find all the hotels we find, too“ – there are too good people in the world!), but the best girlfriend of all has already booked a hotel. So here we go, next chance to fly to Germany is 9.35 via Zurich, tomorrow. We’ll see if that’s gonna work. One thing is already certain: I won’t be surprised about anything.