Wednesday, May 30, 2012

the big wheezy...



I’m not travelling with anyone who can sprint. Ever again. Turns out that Exotica of Beaver-hat fame has been keeping her Usain Bolt talents hidden from me.  She’s always been a bit of a natural athlete (how annoying, if she weren’t so fun I’d divorce her) but the day she revealed her full potential, was the day we caught the train to Florence.

We’d already researched ticket prices at the station and had decided that we were happy with the 17Euro’s cost to travel on the (extremely) slow train to Florence. Exotica felt we could get a better deal as, fool I was, I’d showed her the Trenitalia website where it had shown ‘tickets from 9Euro’. 

So, while we were cocking around the ticket line for 9Euro tickets that don’t actually exist, our train to Florence was warming up, unbeknown to us, on the furthest possible platform from where we were standing. It might just have well been IN Florence.

Once Exotica had realised (I like to think that my newly learned Italian hand movements hurried along this realisation) that we would miss the train before we got even close to the front of the line, the fun started. 

With unnerving agility she released ‘The Bolt’, her silhouette becoming increasingly small as she pulled away with remarkable speed. Now, picture me bringing up the rear (both figuratively and literally). It was like one of those war movies where the slow person shouts ‘just go on without me!’ Except, I had the bloody train ticket so I somehow had to keep up.

I coughed up a lung that day and there it still lies, on Roma Fucking Termini Train Station, platform butt-fuck nowhere. I had sprint-induced asthma for the entire day, which was only very slightly relieved by our lunchtime beer.

Exotica thought this was hilarious and still had energy to trawl souvenir stalls to find the just the right ‘Ciao Bella’ T-shirt.  Ciao feckking Bella indeed. I just wanted more beer, broken only with incidences of wine.

I think it’s entirely unfair to tell your travel companion that you’re ‘soooo un-fit’ then pull a move like that. Rotten show-off.

Footnote:  I bought a ‘Universita Firenze’ sweatshirt that day but no-one’s falling for it. Damn.

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