Oh, Alitalia

In case you were worrying, at  2:30 on Friday afternoon, an envelope arrived from the consulate with all the documents I was hoping for:  visa, passport, and letter of permission.  Finishing pony camp, grading papers and running last minute errands, I was too tired to even cheer (but not too tired to curse a time or two; so much for being graceful in the process) when the visa arrived.  Saturday morning, after staying up half the night to finish my work, I hopped on a plane for Philadelphia, waited through my three-hour layover, and finally caught the flight for Rome.

For weeks I have been worrying about the journey.  Not the flight, but how in the world I would wrestle my backpack, overnight bag, and two suitcases from the airport to the apartment.  I hate the Rome airport with a passion I reserve only for…wow, well, the Rome airport.  To be fair, I should say it’s really not the airport I hate, it’s the transportation system.  There are no buses or trains out of Fiumicino where the airport is located, so you have to first find your way through the inaccurately labeled hallways, avoid the fake taxi drivers offering to take you into Rome proper for twice the price of a legal cab, drag your bags to a shuttle (10 euros) crowded with a mix of lost tourists and pickpockets, then find an overpriced (45 euros to Siena) train to wherever it is you are going.  This is still preferable to finding your way to the bus station, which is located in sort of a parking lot under a freeway and has to be reached by cab (40 euros).  To prevent the loss of time, money, and possibly luggage I booked an additional leg to Pisa, counting on the easy bus access to Siena (around 14 euros directly from the airport). I decided I could survive on the bus since the bags would be stowed for the trip.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

As we taxied onto the runway in Philadelphia, the pilot came on to let us know there were mechanical problems but it would only take a minute to fix them.  The mechanical problems triggered a panic attack in a passenger who then had to be removed from the plane, so two hours later – and I had only an hour between my flights from Rome to Pisa – we took off, making up time as we flew.  I should have missed my connection, but with the final leg being on Alitalia, my flight to Pisa had been delayed and the gate agent held the entire plane so I (and two other people) could make our connection.  If we ran, he said, we could make it.  So we ran.  At the gate (of course), no one had ever heard of us and sent us upstairs to check in.  Then (also of course), they proceeded to close the flight and took off before we made it up the stairs.  My landlord was supposed to meet me at 3:00 and the next flight to Pisa was at 4:30, so I decided to brave the Roman gauntlet and asked for my luggage.

Assured that my luggage was someplace in the airport, I agreed to wait the few minutes to find it since it had to be handed off from USAirways to Alitalia.  After an hour I was reassured that the luggage had not gone on to Pisa without me.  Italian law states that luggage cannot travel without a passenger, and since I never checked in for my flight, really, there was no way my luggage had left the airport.  Really.  After another hour, I was sent to the baggage retrieval in T3 (that would be Terminal 3, which can only be reached via boat ride through Hades, or something similar, with directions like “turn left after you pass the Gucci store and descend the stairs” – there are no stairs - and “the police will meet you at the door – there was no door - be sure you have your documentation.”) where, after finally finding the correct passenger assistance window – a different one for Alitalia and USAirways – I was told that, yes, my luggage was in the airport, but there was a strike and no one could handle it for me.  I just needed to file a complaint and they would deliver it to Siena.  Problem solved!  I could still make it in time to meet my landlord and NOT have to wrestle the bags on a train!  I happily filed my complaint and navigated the train to Florence, walked across the street to the bus station, and caught the Siena Rapida to my favorite city on earth. 

Oh, Alitalia.  If only the phone hadn’t rung in the middle of my first Italian class with an irate woman at the other end berating me for not picking up my bags in Pisa (illegal since I wasn’t there, impossible!), then berating me for not filing a complaint (which I had done, in triplicate), then berating me for not having the number of my complaint (which had no number on it) then…let it just suffice to say that I found myself on three trains to Pisa yesterday since the irate woman insisted that I bring the bags through customs myself.   At this point, you can probably predict that in fact, I did not have to take the bags through customs as they had already been checked.  After charming the irate woman with my terrible Italian and baggage claim papers, I did catch the bus home and, despite having to take the Siena Normale from Florence (which stops almost directly on the horse trainer’s doorstep and at the castle where he put me up last Fall), I made my way home with my luggage and no breakdowns.

So now I am here in my beautiful room on the Piazza San Francesco. Pino, my landlord, met me on Sunday with a bottle of local wine and sat with me on the balcony for a taste.  I slept through the night for the first time in months.  Last night I drank prosecco on the Piazza Del Campo with a colleague from home and today I was awakened by the church bells at five, staying awake to listen to the cooing of the thousand pigeons that live in the walls of the basilica outside my window.  There is so much more to tell: the classes, new friends, new experiences, but for now, know I am safe, that the journey was worth it, and I am at home in Siena.