Let me relate a recent travel experience to you. Just over two weeks ago, Emily and I set off for Switzerland to spend a very restful 4 days or so by a Lake with my parents. Travel in itself is usually pretty exciting anyway, but this particular journey had the added excitement of being in my hands – my administratively rather slippery hands. The excitement, or risk, depending on one's perspective, involved when travelling with me has to do with a peculiar phenomenon, namely a completely unfounded voyager's confidence that seems to grip me as soon as I drag my wheelie suitcase out of our front door. Whilst many adopt a traditional, look up, write down, check, then check again approach when it comes to knowing where to go, how to get there and when to leave, I seem always have an overwhelmingly strong feeling that I know the answer to those three questions, even though I haven't checked it, no one has told me it, and if I did once have the information I have either forgotten it, or my brain has quite inconveniently adapted it almost beyond recognition.
The day started badly with a late wake up and a quick discovery that our flight was leaving an hour earlier than I had so confidently advertised. General pre-flight stress levels rose markedly in the house. Next I found myself trying to check in online, only to fall foul of Ryanair's rather cynical idiot-punishing money extraction strategy, whereby if you leave your online check in too late you have to pay a hefty sum. Emily was annoyed, patient and very forgiving. By this stage you would think my gung-ho approach would have mellowed slightly, but I was still going strong. We arrived in Italy and took the bus to Milan where we would board the train to Switzerland. As we entered I saw the departures board with the two trains that Mum had mentioned to me, but they were over an hour away: my eyes fixed on a similar kind of train leaving at exactly the same time as the other two – a quarter past the hour. We approached a ticket machine and bought two tickets, although it seemed to me that this foolish device was refusing to acknowledge that there was an early train available that would spare us another hour in the station. Unperturbed I insistently pointed at the departures board where the Turin train was soon to depart. 'That's Italy for you', I thought. This was obviously the right train, I thought, since I thought I faintly recalled my mum saying something about Turin, or some Italian city, or what is a German one?, possibly in connection with trains, at some point in some conversation over the past few months, perhaps . Sufficiently reassured by this extremely vague memory, I dragged Emily onto the train not permitting a moment to buy some refreshment, and we headed off.
After a few minutes' travel, I picked up the phone with a certain pride, ready to communicate to Mum that we would be arriving earlier than planned.
Mum who is always very positive, was her usual self until I mentioned Turin. That's Western Italy, she intoned – you're going in completely wrong direction.
We'd been travelling for 10 hours at this stage, and because of my earlier blunders I was already right out of brownie points anyway, and contemplated briefly how I would explain this to Emily. I decided to go for the 'don't give me problems, give me solutions' approach, and bee – lined for the conductor to work out what the damage was. He said we'd have to get off at the next station, 30 minutes from then, wait for an hour, go back another hour, in order to be back in Milan. From there we could get the last extremely slow train of the day to Switzerland, not have any reserved seats and share our extended journey time with 10 bicycles a couple of prams, and some deeply unimpressed-looking interrailers in the luggage overspill section at the rear of the train. I returned to our seats and ate humble pie, and had seconds as well. Eventually, we arrived on the train of shame, just under 3 hours later than planned, pretty scratchy and grateful that we no longer had to sit on an aluminium bar anymore.
