Return journey
I consider this as the most adventurous part of my Venice tour. My flight was scheduled to depart at 8 PM and I reached at the Treviso airport at 7:15 (was feeling bad to leave the city and was just roaming around), but to my and everybody’s surprise the flight was cancelled and there was no support staff from the airlines. Airport staff did a commendable job to calm down anxious passengers and asked them to exchange their tickets. I had no choice but to stand in long queue to exchange it for next (Monday) evening night for Brussels as Paris flight was full. But it was odd and I teamed up with some French guys to plan our return journey as soon as possible.
We went back to Venice to see if there is a train from Santa Lucia station to Paris. To our surprise, the information center and ticket counter were closed at the station at 9 PM. We heard from someone at the airport that there is a train Venice-Milan-Paris from Santa Lucia departing at 11 PM, leaving us no choice, I went to ask a Police commander if he can help us, he was kind enough to confirm us the time and asked us to get further information from train chief half an hour before the departure. Well, the time arrived and there was no sign of train chief. We confirmed with the ticket controllers about the bogies going towards Milan, they guided us to a bogie which would be taking us there, but shockingly, the train driver was not aware of it and told us that the train was not going to Milan !! Finally the train chief arrived on the scene and confirmed us the bogies going to Milan and that we can buy tickets on board. After this dramatic scene, we got some respite for 3 hours until we reached Milan.
We reached Milan at around 3:30 in the morning and as usual saw closed ticket counters and information desks, automatic ticketing machine was not showing Paris! We lost all hopes and decided to take a look at the station and have a nap in the waiting room. I liked this station. This is a huge station I ever visited with huge pillars and walls, even a camera can’t catch entire interior. Well… after having a short nap, we went to ticketing counter at around 6 to catch 6:43 TGV to Paris… the ticketing lady seemed to be novice in handling computer and took long time than usual to handle previous passengers, the time was running out and so was temper, I was calm though, just waiting for my turn to come.
Finally each-one of us had a ticket in hand and smiles of shoooo on our faces. Our car number was 7 and there was no car in the whole train by this number, another hiccup… somebody told as car n° 17 was 7. It was 6:41 !!!! Quickly boarded the train and started 9 hrs long journey to Paris.
But that’s not all folks, this misadventure was well rewarded as the car was too cold and the train chief offered us places in 1st class car!!
There is a phrase in Geeta : “Don’t wait for fruits, just keep working” it came into practice !
Hope my next tour would be more adventurous and exiting….
More to come, keep checking..
Yours
Pranay
