Race against time, Train and Murphy

For two crazy Indians bent upon saving pennies and making merries, even fractions of a second can seem like a fringe between life and death. As we wanted to extract at least 2 months of travel out of a 5 day holiday and 250 Euros, we made an unsaid vow of not wasting time on such trivial chores like eating, sleeping or even easing ourselves on a stationary equipment. As a direct consequence, when we left the hostel (Country Club Rome) for the Rome railway station, we still had 75 minutes before the departure of our train to La Spezia - a fairly comfortable margin given the experiences from our previous misadventures.

Now, being an Engineer, I can confidently assert the universality of Murphy's law. But we were so obsessed with moving ahead of history that we refused to learn anything from it, and instead wasted time on breakfast. When the Metro stopped for 5 minutes at a random station, it didn't seem like much of a delay. But when it didn't move for the next 15 minutes, we started daydreaming Murphy and begged him not to play a spoilsport this time around. He 'perhaps' obliged, and the Metro finally started dragging. With 10 minutes left before departure, we switched into the connecting Metro and finally reached Roma Termini just a few seconds before time. We ran, and ran really hard, to find the train barely standing on the platform, with moments left for departure. Without wasting anymore time in thinking, we jumped into it, and the doors closed, and my bag got stuck in them. Somehow the guard saw it, and the train stopped after a few meters, the doors opened again, and hence I was able to free myself from that unexpected 'trap'.

It was blissful - a hard earned pursuit! Sweat was trickling down the skin, leaving behind a tickling sensation onto the overworked arteries. The heartbeat was orgasmic, and in order to calm those senses, we got into a coupe and laid ourselves down. To the three Italians sitting inside, we must have appeared like convicts escaping from a prison, and this was quite visible from their startled-owl like looks. But for us, it was a indeed a redemption!

Talking about convicts and defaulters, we soon saw the ticket checker. Confidently we showed him our tickets and the Eurail pass. Ignorance is bliss, somebody said once, and oblivion is the best way to escape embarrassment. The problem in this case was that, we were not allowed to remain ignorant or oblivious to the fact that we had got into the wrong train and our tickets were invalid.

For a moment, I felt that Murphy himself had come to see us, masquerading as that Italian ticket-checker. I tried to look deep into his face, but could only find a look of obvious disinterest coupled with a gentle determination to punish us for our misdeeds. Since I didn't know (and still don't know) how Murphy looked like, I decided to play safe and handed him the amount of penalty. As he left, I was expecting him to turn back and flash a cunning smile to prove that he indeed was Murphy. He did turn back eventually, to my surprise, but instead told us how to get to La Spezia easily without spending extra bucks. He wasn't Murphy.

We reached La Spezia at 12 noon, had a short lunch of packed palak-paneer and bread, and got into the Ligurian local train for a 10 minute journey to Riomaggiore, our next destination and the gateway to Cinque Terre, the jewel of Italian Riviera. I found this place after a lot of research, and we were missing out on Pisa and Florence to come here - all the more exotic!