Last night we completed our extremely visit of Cinque Terre region and were reminded of how little we can afford touristic Italy. Walking around the town of Levanto looking for some remotely affordable food, we failed miserably and ended up eating pizza for dinner because it was the only option costing below 40 euro for both of us to eat. Having used all of our grocieries while cooking during the previous two nights, we had no option but to eat out because the shops and markets close early. By the time we returned from hiking between the small towns everything was closed.
This morning we find ourselves in the same boat as we need to eat something before leaving; we are desperate to leave the tourist coast and get away from the steep mountains conspiring to keep us here as long as possible. The plan is to take the train just across the mountains, therefore saving us an exhausting two day mountain bikeride requiring more expensive food and lodging. After checking out from the campground we have 2 hours to kill before the 15:30 train so we ride towards last night’s pizza place for a quick feeding session. Since most of the restaurants here charge you a silverware (coberto) charge between 1.50 – 2.50 euro each for eating at a table, I wait with the bikes at a plaza with benches while Katy goes to order the “carry out” pizzas. A few minutes later she comes back with the sad news, the pizza place is closed on Tuesdays.
We walk around the small town with our loaded bikes, checking out all of the menus for something reasonable and filling. Pizza by the slice is the only option we can find, so we get a piece to hold us over during our search. The slice shops have the rectangular pieces of pizza already prepared and sitting in their glass display cases, the customer specifies what size piece is desired, the piece is cut, and then weighed because prices are by the kilogram. I point to our pizza of choice and indicate a piece about 3 inches by 5 inches, which ends up costing 2.75, and it is served to us cold. I am not amused nor satisfied. We continue snaking back and forth down the streets checking out menus, but many places are closed and the open ones are out of our price range. The least expensive option ends up being a bar that serves simple pasta and pizzas, and we come back to it while the owner is standing outside smoking a cigarette. I pull up onto the sidewalk with my loaded bike, say hello to him, and Katy sees him laugh at us behind my back.
We are fed up and tired with this place, I feel defeated, and Katy will not stand to support the business of this man so we turn down his indication of where to park the bikes and walk away. Katy tells me she is just going to go back to the station to eat raisins and wait for the train, but I have to keep searching for food because I am afraid of being hungry during the 4 hour train voyage. We part ways and I ride up and down the streets looking for something to no avail. As I approach the beach I remember the campground owner telling me that one of the old rail tunnels was converted to a cycle and pedestrian path, allowing people to easily reach the next town down the coast about 4 kilometers away. I don’t want to spend any more of my money in Levanto so I race towards the tunnel, knowing I have about 70 minutes before catching the train.
The tunnels are long and cold, opening up briefly from time to time to a window of sunlight, waves crashing on rocks, with solitary sunbathers sitting in the mini private beaches. About 15 minutes pass before I reach the next town, seemingly smaller than Levanto, and I circle around the center. From what I can see during my 5 minute tour of the town, most lodging and restaurants are closed, and I find only one fancy resaurant, one bar, one gelateria, and one pizza slice place. I walk into the pizza place and am greeted by a fat man behind a tall counter who tells me I can get 3 pieces of pizza and a beer for 5 euro! Finally I am relieved to find some realistic prices, so I point out my 3 slices and say “caldo” to tell him that I want them served hot. Knowing I am racing the clock, I devour my three slices while cherishing every bite without wasting any time, then run back inside to order 3 pieces carry-out to take back to Katy, who is probably gnawing her fingers off at the station.
I throw the slices and the beer back into my pannier and see that my bike computer says I only have 30 minutes before the train leaves. I am racing out of the town and back into the tunnels, pushing the bike to speeds of around 30-35kph as I stand on the pedals pumping with a full stomach of pizza. I don’t even have to ring my bell as I approach pedestrians because I am going so fast that people can hear the hum of my bike tread on the pavement before I reach them. I fly back into Levanto 10 minutes later and head the last kilometer through town back up to the station, climbing up the hill to the platform and spotting Katy sitting on a stone wall in front of the entrance. My anxious face must have revealed my state of panic at only having 15 minutes before boarding time because she jumps off the wall and runs into the station to buy the tickets.
This morning I had read on the TrenItalia website that bikes travel free if accompanied by their owners, and the 3.50 euro fee that we each paid to travel from Genova to here, was in fact only applicable to bikes travelling alone. I am not sure why this is so confusing, but a few minutes later Katy sticks her head out of the station to say that the ticket office is making us pay the bike fee anyways because we are travelling out of the region, and that bikes only travel free accompanied within the region of Liguria. She goes back in for a couple more minutes and I am in full panic sweat mode as I see the clock approach 15:10; the train leaves at 15:18.
The reason for sweating is that these stations are not handicapped accessible, and therefore not easy to pass through with fully loaded bicycles because they have stairs and no elevators. We are at the front of the station, which is at the level of the ticket office and adjacent to track 1, and our train is coming on track 2. To get to tracks 2 or 3 you have to go down into a tunnel to go under track 1 and then climb a set of stairs to reach the other tracks. The ramp entrance to the tunnel is on the other side of the station, requiring us to ride down the street to the road that goes under the tracks, then back up the other side towards the station and into the tunnel. As Katy runs out of the station with tickets in hand I push off and we dash to the other side and into the tunnel amidst a flood of people that are walking out from a recently arrived train. At the bottom of the stairs leading to track 2 we yank the panniers off the bikes and pile them next to the wall, taking up the bikes and the bags separately since the bikes are too heavy to push up the steps when loaded. We are loading the panniers back onto the racks as the train pulls into the station; I am panting from the combination of nerves and running up the stairs with all the stuff.
The bicycle car on the train is always either the first car or the last car, however this is not indicated beforehand so we have to watch the front of the train go by, looking for the bike symbol. If we see the bike symbol up front, we run towards the front of the train while it stops, and if we don’t see the bike symbol, we run to the back. Since the trains are about 8-10 cars long, this means we are running on average 4-5 cars down the platform dodging other passengers waiting to load, and those coming off the cars that have just arrived. We reach the last car and I look up in horror to a 2 step entrance with a wide doorway featuring two vertical bars spaced just narrower than my back panniers are wide. The bars are presumably for people to hold onto while they enter and exit the carriage, but they should not be in the doorway that is intended for cyclists to use, and the height difference between the platform and the bike carriage floor is an extreme difficulty for us.
As I stand there confused not knowing what to do, the doors close and I emit a loud noise of frustration at our disappearing chance to board the train. People on the platform start yelling something at me and I look around confused, then realize that I need to yank on the door handle for the doors to open again. I do so while protesting to them in Spanish and sign language that the bars inside are too narrow, and I see the train conductor up at the head of the train waving at us angrily. Suddenly an older man and woman come up behind me and start pushing me and the bike into the train carriage. I start lifting and pulling the beast of a bike up the two tall steps while they push the wide butt of the loaded bike in between the bars. My bike makes it in and then Katy is heaving and hauling while the couple push her bike from the rear, except her panniers are a bit wider and they wont fit in between the bars. In the seconds before the doors close she manages to twist the bike diagonally so that one pannier squeezes through before the other, and we’re in, sweating and panting in disbelief.
As we head towards La Spezia, our first transfer point, I am not sure whether we have to change physical trains or not because while the TrenItalia website indicated that train changes were necessary for many of the itineraries, it did not specifically indicate this for ours. Contradictorily our itinerary showed three different segments of travel with different route numbers. Not having much experience with the Italian train system I did not know if separate routes are always separate trains, or if trains go from one itinerary to another much like flights sometimes do. We come up with a plan that as soon as we arrive Katy will jump out the door, look at the departures screen to see if we are on the right track, and if we need to change we will do so as quick as possible. We only have 12 minutes between the arrival and departure at La Spezia, and our arrival train is running a few minutes late. As the passengers exit the carriage, Katy runs out and returns to say that we have to change trains, we’re on track 5 and our departing train is on track 1T.
We clumsily perform the entire boarding procedure in reverse, except without the pushing couple since we’re now going down instead of up. Once on the platform we search up and down for a way to get to the other tracks but the only options we can spot are the stairs down to the tunnel and a tiny elevator that is about 1 meter by 1 meter. I am specifically looking for ramped crossings over the tracks, which are illegal to use, but as a German man said to us in Spain, “sometimes rules just have to be broken”. I can’t see any and I tell Katy I am going down the steps with my bike, but she is going to try to hold her bike vertically balancing on the back wheel to go down the elevator. My bike is just too heavy to lift up in that fashion, having already done this several times without any bags on my bike I know it is very difficult. I slowly descend the stairs one step at a time with my hands on the brakes of the bike while walking next to it; the bike is heavy and loaded and makes a sound with each step, cachunk, cachunk, cachunk.
Down in the tunnel I wait for Katy’s elevator to descend and it comes down ever so slowly. I see her come down into view with a strange expression in her face when I notice the elevator has no walls, it is just a platform moving inside of a shaft. She must hold the bike vertical without touching the walls of the shaft because they move as her platform descends. To compound matters, this elevator requires the occupant to constantly hold the button for the destination level while the elevator is in motion, or else it stops moving. When I realize this, I hold the button from the outside so that she can concentrate on holding the bike vertical. Finally she comes out of the elevator and we move towards the stairs leading up to track 1. There is a line for the elevator, so I start removing my panniers while two American guys waiting in line help Katy push her bike up the stairs to the first landing. They exclaim at the heaviness of the bike and don’t help her ascend the second flight of stairs to the level of the tracks, so she ends up having to take the panniers off anyways.
We repeat the bikes then bags procedures as in Levanto and rush as fast as we can to clip the bags back onto the bikes. The station clock reads 16:12 and the train is supposed to leave at 16:12; the bags are clipped and we are running down the track as I hear the woman on the loudspeaker announce that the train heading towards Parma will now be leaving the station. The conductor is on the steps of the train up ahead and I see him blow the whistle while looking at us running towards the train with large bicycles; the train starts to move as we are reaching the rear carriage of the train. Defeated once again. We walk back in the glorious sunshine towards the station to see when our next train to Parma will be leaving. Unfortunately that was the last itinerary of so called “bike accessible” trains to Emilio through Parma for today, but upon further request the ticket office gives us an alternate itinerary requiring 3 more trains to get there by 22:00. We realize that our new train will be leaving from track 5, the same track we just came from, so we have to go back through the process of descending into the tunnel and taking the bags off to climb up the stairs to track number 5. During the 90 minute layover we now have, I am eager to get away from the Italian bike train nightmare.
While Katy relaxes on a bench guarding the bikes I walk down the street from the station to find a grocery store to buy some extra food for tonight. The part of town I pass through is seriously run down and I pass several seemingly homeless people sitting in abandoned doorways. I walk into the nearest market to find that the produce section is almost bare, the few remaining vegetables and fruits are mostly rotting, so I pick the most firm tomato, carrot, and zucchini that still look edible. Most of the cheap tags on the shelves are for items that are sold out, and the remaining items are the expensive things that nobody buys. I can’t find much, so I just get a baguette to be able to make sandwiches, and go in search of another market for something to cook with the curry and rice we have in our panniers. I manage to find an Asian African market a couple of blocks away near a plaza area that is swarming with children, people hanging out, and several men and women yelling across the plazza. Walking into the old crusty market there is no lighting inside and rays of sinlight peek in through the dirty windows; I can see the dust lingering in the air. The shelves are almost bare, with only one or a few of each item sitting there, reminding me of the “front” stores in Baltimore that pretend to be real shops while serving as a facade for some underground business. After seeing that a small can of coconut milk costs 2.50 euro I walk back to the station to catch the next train.
Our second train we have to take only for two stops before switching trains again in Sarzana. While waiting, the station momentarily clears of trains and I notice there is an at-grade crossing of the tracks down in the other direction, and people are walking back and forth across the tracks every so often without repercussion from the authorities. Had we known this the last train probably would not have been missed. The train pulls in and we see there is no bike symbol up front so we run towards the back. Another man loads his mountainbike as we run up and the two giant steps into the carriage are so tall that I can’t lift the bike up, and I am seriously worried about hitting my large chainring on the metal edge of the entrance steps while struggling with the bike. Katy leans her bike on the train itself and helps me by pushing from below while I pull from the handlebars. Once my bike is in we pull her bike up and into the passageway of the bike carriage. The other biker in the train is alarmed because we have just had such a hard time entering the train and we are completely blocking the exit doorway. He communicates that he needs to get off in two stops and we tell him that we also need to get off at Sarzana. During this short ride one of the train conductors comes into our carriage to check our tickets, the first time anyone in Italy has checked our tickets for any bus or train that we have ridden.
At the Sarzana station we wait for 30 minutes for our train heading across the mountains to Fidenza. In the meantime I see several trains pull into the station with wide doors and carriage floors that are at the same level as the platform or only one step up, except none of these trains are marked for bicycles. We position ourselves near the back of where the train will stop and we see the bike carriage roll by in the front of the train as it pulls into the station. We are running as fast as we can to reach the front of the train in time and I get to a narrow doorway with three giant steps to get into a narrow passageway. What kind of joke is this? I start heaving and grunting, not getting past the second step, when a bulky passenger comes out of the carriage I am trying to board and helps me pull the bike up into the car. He helps with Katy’s bike and we thank him gratiously “grazie mille!” We are supposed to be on this train for 90 minutes while crossing the mountains and we are standing in this narrow passageway just wide enough for the two bikes.
A conductor walks up and indicates that we are supposed to put the bikes in a luggage room through the door behind Katy, so we struggle moving the bikes back and forth and turned sideways to go through this door. Once in the luggage room he indicates to hang the bikes from these hooks in the ceiling, and I think to myself he has to be kidding. In Spanish I tell him the bikes are too heavy to lift up and ask him if we can lean the bikes somewhere. Thankfully he points me to an unoccupied corner of the luggage car where we strap the bikes to a pole in the wall. He then checks our tickets and tells me we are on the wrong train and will have to get off at the next stop. I ask him if he speaks any other language, “parla espagnol, inglese, o francese?”, and he tells me he understands Spanish. I explain our plight to him and the missing of the train in La Spezia due to the track change, and the rerouted itinerary given to us at the ticket office there. Luckily he allows us to proceed on Fadenza.
My body and brain are exhausted and this is not even a day of biking. I fall asleep in one of the train seats while Katy researches information with her tablet. By the time we reach Fadenza it is dark outside, and we have to descend from the train by ourselves when the train reaches the station. The three giant steps are too much to handle and Katy almost topples over with her bike when it reaches the platform at an almost vertical angle. I do the same, stumble backwards, catch myself before falling over with the bike and come face to face with a woman conductor just standing on the platform staring at us in disbelief. After the train pulls away we search for and find an at-grade illegal crossing of the tracks to go from our arrival track to our next departure track. I am done with dealing with these ridiculous stairs and tunnels and miniature elevators the size of small closets.
The last train is similar to the second train, so we use the one person pulls from the top while the other person pushes from the bottom technique. We finally reach Reggio Emilia at 21:45 tired and spent, walk down the platform, and find a large elevator with room to spare. Katy walks out of the elevator and into a bike lane in the tunnel under the station. On the walls are bike murals made with photographs of other objects arranged in manners that resemble different types of bikes. As we come out of the station tunnel on a ramp leading to the street level we see giant rows of bicycle racks filled with bikes. It is dark but people are still riding by on the streets and the sidewalks on old cruiser bikes. We are only 1.5 km from the hostel, heading into the historic center of the town, passing cheap Chinese restaurants and kebap counters, and we realize we had to travel with our bikes through the inferno of the Italian train system to reach this bike mecca.
