14. There and back again. An examiner's tale.

Well, here I am back in the UK. The journey from Naples to London was pleasantly uneventful - even managed a little nap on the train to Rome and then the flight. Never a bad thing.

One thing to note about the whole trip though, was that towards the end, I was being asked directions and information by Italian people with a surprising frequency. In the beginning I was clearly too pastie-looking to look like I knew anything at all about timetables, buses and opening times, but something must've changed. Perhaps it was the fact that I went a little pink as opposed to being the anaemic white fostered by an upbringing in Scotland. I wouldn't like to say. Either way, the result for the Italian questioners was generally the same:

"Scusi. Non ho capito...."

However, this wasn't always the case . On Thursday when I was travelling from Benevento back to the polluted hive that is Napoli, the train was replaced for part of the journey by a replacement bus service. As you can imagine, this was greeted with as much enthusiasm as it would be in the UK, except that there was one difference - no one was told about it until it happened. This at least kept passengers in the dark until the last minute, thereby avoiding all that negative expectation. What an idea.

Problems continued when a whole train tried to get onto a single bus. There were rumours of a second bus. The station attendant certainly seemed to think so. But if there was, where was it. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing later, one confused passenger turned to me (clearly knowing what was going on, of course) and asked me something about 'un altro autobus'. Knowing that I knew what she was asking and knowing that I couldn't respond, I fortunately came over all Italian and knew exactly what to do. Looking around in an exaggerated fashion before fixing my eyes on her, I turned my palms skywards, stuck out my bottom lip and gave an expressive shrug while articulating that oh-so-useful Italian sound, "Buh!". No sooner had I done this than I realised communication had been made as she nodded and did the "buh" shrug as well. I got on the one bus and she took her chances with the mystery second one.

And there we have it. Communication. Verb declension tables aren't needed over in Italy - just some wild over-expressive gestures and barely articulated sounds. What was I thinking of enrolling on an Italian course before I came out? What a waste of time.

Back to the journey, things got more confusing when we had to leave the bus (and oh what a rush there was to get off; you'd have thought there was a golden goose awaiting the first person to board the train) because the station attendant was quite doubtful that the waiting train was for us, despite the driver's protestations. In the end it all got quite heated as to where the train should, or shouldn't have, been going. Finally, however, off the train went and we did get to Naploi. Slowly. It's only 70 km from Benevento to Napoli but they do like to take it gently, taking 1 hr 45 (the faster train!), just in case they hit anything. Well, you can't be too carful, can you? Quite the contrast to the city driving, though.

I was asked another question on the train to Rome (isn't it exciting?) but I was taken by surprise and couldn't answer (not so exciting). Turns out the very attractive young lady was just wondering what the seat number next to me was. Perhaps some more Italian lessons wouldn't be such a bad idea after all...

Anyway, that's it. Another journey and another blog done. It's got late and I do rather think it's time for bed now.

Goodnight.