The journey of hope

Writing at the end of a couple of worried days. Two days ago I was ready to take the car, get to the airport after a couple of hours drive and fly to Britannia again.

It is easy to say it, not so to put into practice. The flight was on Thursday early morning, and, as punctual as death (this may be a wrong translation from Italian, it means perfectly punctual - black humor), tuesday night became as white as paper with snow. A lot of snow, so fascinatingly coming down and slapped around by the wind.

"I am not going anywhere" I thought. But I forgot that wonderful thing which global warming is. Next morning, around midday, there were 6 degrees, taking all the snow away from the roads, which were completely clean.

Britannia was under a heavy snow attack as well, but the weather high pressure on thursday morning let my flight take off and land without trouble.

Once on the other side of the sea, that was when my trouble started. I got to the train station at around 12.30 and I managed to sit on the train due to leave at 11.20.

"There's a problem somewhere on the line. We're stuck at the moment" is what they tell me, suggesting to sit on the train and wait. As if I had anything better to do, with a suitcase and a rucksack of 12 kg on my back.

After half an hour wait, a sad announcemnt tells the passengers that that train is canceled, not going anywhere.

A couple of trains more, some time spent with the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, and another change in Newport, and I finally reached Caerdidd. Almost four hours instead of 50 minutes. Not bad!

And you know what the funny thing was? Nobody was complaining, nor angry; actually, most people were taking it philosophically, smiling and bitterly laughing. And me too! In my homecountry, people in such a situation would go mad at anyone whitin reach.

Still, there is a major difference between the two situations: when these things happen in Italy, and they DO happen, the carriages are overcrowded, with no heating in winter and no cooling air in the summer, and dirty.

All the trains I took yesterday were clean, confortable and with enough seats for almost everybody. If you had to wait, at least the place makes your waiting less tedious and annoying. And this means a lot.