September 7, 2010

I slept poorly on the overnight plane from the States, then slept poorly for two nights in Milan, my room being right next to the antiquated elevator that I never rode, preferring the stairs.

My train from Milan to Ancona departed at 1230, but it was raining in Milan and I was tired and not feeling all that great so I spent the morning in my room reading and trying off and on to get some sleep, which somehow still eluded me.  At 1130, the latest possible checkout time, I checked out and walked the 5 minutes to the train station and looked for a place to sit and wait.  Most the seats in the station were taken and those that weren’t were covered in pigeon shit, so I found a place to sit on the floor with my back to a wall and waited for the big board to tell me which platform my train would depart from.  From the looks of passersby I garnered that it was not considered normal to sit on the floor, but I was tired and had a headache and didn’t care to stand or sit in pigeon shit.

The train finally arrived, I got my in the first class car, and we departed.  The car was nice, clean, and nearly deserted.  As with the train from Zurich, it was surprisingly quiet and, once we cleared the Milan suburbs, very fast.

The area from just north of Milan to about an hour or so south is pretty boring.  Not unpleasant, but simply flat semi-agricultural land with occasional nondescript towns.  Then, just north of Bologna, you start to see some pleasant hills to the south.  These hills eventually grow into smallish mountains that are very beautiful, with charming small villages and farmland leading up to the foothills, replaced by forested tops.  Think the rolling farmland of Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but with Italian villages.  Bologna seems like it would be a nice place to visit.

I dozed off and on after that before suddenly realizing we were at the Adriatic coast.  We passed numerous small resort towns sporting deserted beaches covered with orchards of umbrellas in neat rows and columns.  It was slightly windy, but I otherwise could not figure out why these places were so deserted.

 

The train got to Ancona, and I had first to take a bus to the ferry terminal.  I got on a bus that had self-serve ticket dispensers and we were moving before I realized I had no change.  I told the driver who appeared somewhat perplexed, then stopped the bus in the middle of the street to make change for me as cars honked since he was blocking traffic.  I had to exit at the ferry ticket office to get my ticket on the overnight car ferry to Split, then got on another bus to the loading area where everyone had to wait an hour before boarding.  This was all rather confusing, with numbered loading zones and no apparent way to get to the number I thought I remembered the sales agent telling me, but one learns to be patient and there were plenty of others equally perplexed, some of them Italian, so it apparently wasn’t just a language thing.

Many more people arrived during the hour and pretty soon were queueing up, so I joined them.  First Italian passport control, then another queue, then a walk to the ferry, then another queue, then everyone got to carry their luggage up a steep passageway on the ship breathing exhaust fumes from the buses loading onto the ferry, then another queue at a ticket collection point, followed by another long steep passageway and yet another queue at a check-in point where I could get a key to my room.

I had paid about 20% extra to have a private room, but had gone for Cheapo Class, so it was way forward, and way down.  Way by way.  I locked my stuff up there and made it back to the lounge area were I paid too much for a cheap ham sangy and a couple of beers while admiring the pleasant town of Ancona at sunset.  It really was an attractive seaside town with not only an active ferry port but also a commercial shipping port.  I got to thinking I maybe should have spent two days there instead of Milan.

 

While waiting in the terminal at Ancona, I noticed a nice-looking very young German couple who were backpackers.  I barely noticed, but they made a point of being at the front of the line to get on the ferry, lugging their heavy backpacks, I assumed they were going to sleep in the boat’s lounge on any available chair (per the budget travel guide recommendations), and I smugly thought of my private cabin with a soft bunk.

By the time I had my gear stowed below and made it to the lounge finding the only food (short of the exorbitantly-priced restaurant) to be shrink-wrapped ham sangies, they had staked out a couch in the lounge for sleeping, stowing their packs there to claim it, had grabbed a table on the aft deck complete with sunset views of Ancona where they laid out their delicious-looking picnic dinner and a bottle of wine all of which they had purchased at a market in town.

So who had the last laugh?  Sure, I had my bunk in steerage, but the blond kid had a beautiful girl, a picnic dinner with a romantic Adriatic sunset, a bottle of wine, and a couch small enough that they would have to snuggle to sleep on.  Smart kid.  I hated him instantly.

Within an hour the ship was underway at 2030 and I stayed on deck for a half hour before making the trek into the bowels of the ship to my room in steerage.  Exhausted, I looked forward to sleep.  There were no sheets, only a pillow and blanket, but I didn’t care and flopped down in hopes of blissful slumber.  I had thought that the lull of the engines would help with sleep but I was in the bow and there was zero engine noise.

Then, as we cleared the breakwater, we started to get some swells.  No biggy.  Then the swells got bigger.  Okay.  Then bigger still.  Not horrible, but soon, about every second or third swell there was a banging sound.  Hell, this was the Adriatic.  How bad could it get?  I was so tired I didn’t care and dozed for maybe an hour before the swells picked up more and the banging sounds came from multiple sources.  So I ventured out in my chones (this area of the ship was pretty much deserted) and found first a utility closet door swinging open.  It had a hasp, but no lock and would not stay latched, but I rigged it closed with some wire from inside the closet.  I made similar fruitless attempts to close two toilet doors, but they would not stay latched so I gave up and returned to my bunk.

I dozed a little more until about 0100 when the swells increased and now there was an occasional really loud bang.  Like scare-the-crap-out-of-you loud.  This wasn’t a small door and was clearly metal on metal – loud enough to shake my part of the ship and, frankly, a little disturbing.  This continued for several hours before I guess the swells decreased as I think I got about an hour of fitful sleep before finally getting up at 0600.

The ferry was supposed to arrive at 0700 and I was looking forward to the 6 Euro continental breakfast advertised in the ship’s lounge since the only thing I had to eat since the previous morning was a box of crackers and a piss poor ham sangy.  For reasons unfathomable to me, there was no breakfast.  Though signs proudly proclaimed English as the official language of the ship, all announcements were in Italian and German, and the crew spoke almost no English.  I managed a stale croissant and some bottled water.  Mit gas.  Europeans simply do not understand the concept of breakfast.

Exiting the ship was the same process with lots of queueing and lugging bags on steep passageways, but clearing passport control and customs at Split was a breeze.  Split is a very pretty, bustling, Croatian town.  The seaside areas looks quite pleasant.  I will spend the night there before my flight back and have the option of spending an additional night there or staying on in Dubrovnik one more night.  The bus terminal was an easy five minute walk and I had only to wait about 15 minutes for my 4.5-hour bus ride to Dubrovnik, followed by a 10 minute taxi to my rented sobe (room in a private house) where my hostess offered me a Croatian beer.  Bosnian beer is better, but that’s not something to say out loud to your Croatian host.  I had barely slept, was still wearing the same clothes from the previous day, and hadn’t shaved since the previous morning.

Twenty-seven hours of train, bus, bus, ferry, bus, and taxi.  Not the most arduous journey in the world, but definitely high on my list of interesting getting-there-from-here experiences.