When I signed up for five months of Italian culture, I admit I was focusing on the pasta-eating, siesta-loving side of things, rather than the levels of bureaucracy and probable corruption that turn the simplest admin task into an obstacle course. And not a fun obstacle course like on 50:50 or Jungle Run. An obstacle course involving hours of queuing, being sent to a different person/building/city by everyone you meet, and, when you finally find the person who can supposedly help you, you discover they're on their 3-hour lunch break, or that their office is only open from 7:12-9:53 every second Tuesday of the month and only if there's a full moon. Another intregal part of the not-so-dolce vita is coping with the infamous Italian strikes, and this weekend I got to experience my very first sciopero, as a general strike descended over Italy.
The main problem for me was the public transport strike, as I live a 50 minute walk out of the city centre. This is usually no problem for me as having lived in a tiny Cheshire village miles from civilisation for all my life, I'm a bit of a public transport pro - should you ever need expert advice on the cheapest tickets, timetables, or life stories of assorted Warrington bus drivers, I'd be happy to oblige. And I'm proud to now add to this exciting repertoire of specialist subjects: Public Transport in Northern Italy.
Against all expectations and accepted stereotypes, I've hardly had any problems so far with Bologna's buses. My bus stop is nice and near and my bus is frequent, takes the quickest route to the centre, and runs until 1am. The trains are a different story. Although Bologna has one of the main stations in Italy and it is in theory easy to get around, delays are common and a favourite pastime of whichever jokers do the announcements is to change the platform of your train approximately one minute before its scheduled departure. Cue a mass exodus of everyone on what you had all foolishly presumed to be your train (based on the fact that, um, it said it was going to your destination), which is now heading somewhere entirely undesirable.
You then have to fight your way to the new platform - this can involve just standing in the midst of a crowd of seasoned Italian travellers and hoping you get swept along in the right direction. My worst experience so far was getting the train to Riccione for a day at the beach, which underwent a total of three platform changes.
Whilst running around the station (I'm 99% certain of all the station staff group together at this point watching the CCTV screens, cackling as they observe the chaos they have created), we were simultaneously trying to communicate each update to Tom, who, alongside a disturbing tendency to start all discussions about future plans with the phrase "When I run my own dictatorship..." had already taken on the role of 'the late friend'. We finally made it on to the right train in true dramatic fashion, just as the doors were about to close.
But back to the buses. As luck would have it, my bus to work was for some reason not taking part in the strike, arriving if anything more punctually than usual. I arrived at work only to find out the strike had sent the office into an even more chaotic state than usual as no one knew what was going on, and after an unproductive morning I resigned myself to the long walk home.
By law there has to be a creepy-sounding 'skeleton schedule' or reduced service during strikes, and for reasons best known to themselves, the strikers took a break from half 4 to half 7 anyway, when normal service was resumed so that people could get home from work without disruption. I'm not convinced the Italians have understood the general concept of a strike to be honest. But any and all buses going in the direction of my house were conspicuously absent, and none went by during my walk so I'm glad I didn't hang around waiting for it. My Italian friends were quick to point out the bright side of all this palava - "at least now you are experiencing real Italian life!", but somehow this wasn't a huge comfort. Why can't I just eat my bodyweight in gelato instead? Not fair.
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