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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