Correggendo il mito dei treni italiano

Livorno, some street or other leading away from the harbour

There is, I think, a widespread belief in the UK (one that I subscribed to before coming here) that Italian trains are the epitome of a comprehensive, efficient and punctual train network. Something to do with "At least Mussolini got the trains to run on time..." etc. Was that Thatcher? Anyway, it's bollocks.

We must have been on about 30 trains in the last seven weeks and can recall precisely two that left and arrived on time. The delays are rarely short, more normally approaching half an hour. The Seffalice's field trip to Livorno yesterday should have taken 50 minutes (Lucca-Pisa 25 minutes, a 10 minute wait at Pisa then Pisa-Livorno 15 minutes), but ended up taking over 2 hours both there and back.

The most frustrating thing is that you'd have thought that if all the trains were late it shouldn't make any effective difference to travelling; the whole timetable should push on so you could arrive knowing that your scheduled train was probably running late but that the previous one should be arriving in its place. But for reasons that science can't explain time is bent, squeezed and stretched so it never happens that way.

Nor are the trains particularly quick (the bus from Lucca to Florence is faster than the train by about half an hour), and while they approximate regularity they're not frequent - twice an hour on any route is as good as you'll get. There's also a curious mid-morning lull between roughly 9.30-11.30 during which you should have no expectation of a train on your route at all, certainly not one that falls in with the timetable pattern earlier or later in the day.

The Seffalice's advice on Italian public transport is to take the bus whenever possible.


In other news, our iTunes briefly slipped into some easy listening yesterday evening. I was already aware that the lyrics of Louis Prima's Just a Gigolo were pretty damn depressing, in contrast to its jaunty tune, but had never paid attention to those of Scott Walker's Jackie before. They're temporarily my new fourth favourite lyric, after Positively 4th Street, Your Revolution, and Goody Goody. Not that I keep lists.