European Journey Part 3- Terracina to Munich

So Thursday morning rolls around and we want to get an early start to make sure we get to our next destination, Terracina, nice and early so we can spend as much time on the beach as possible. While looking for train tickets, we found our two choices were either a train at like 5am or 3pm. Lourdes looked into the bus schedule for us as found the bus leaves at 10 and we would arrive around noon. Perfect. We made sure to take the metro to the station nice and early as we had to find an ATM to get some money for the bus ticket. We arrived to the station at like 9 and found an ATM and bought our bus tickets. We sat and waited and next thing we notice its really close to 10 and no buses are here. There are a few people, but not buses. Then, a lady comes up to Audrey and says "shopporo" (I don't know how to spell it in Italian and the internet and google translate have been no help) and shows her some signs that are in Italian. Turns out no buses were running that day from 8:30am until 5pm. Unbelievably unreliable transportation we think. Can't really trusts the buses to get to our destination. So we head back to termini to get some train tickets and book the train arriving at like 5pm and then we book the return train for 5pm the next night, which is scheduled to get in at 6:30 to Termini, giving us 30 minutes to get to our night train. Surely we can trust the trains.

We arrive to Terracina and find our little B&B as scheduled and went to spend some time at the beach since there was still daylight and it was pretty warm still. We sat around for about 2 hours before heading back and getting ready for dinner. We went to this wonderful restaurant and had a fantastic meal. We got some wine

Temple of Jupiter from the beach

and it was one of those fancy places that pours a little in your glass and has you try it to make sure you like the bottle. Being that this was the 2nd time in my life I have ever had wine while out at dinner, I had no idea what was going on and why the waiter was standing there staring at me holding a bottle in my face after pouring a sip of wine in my glass. Audrey told me what to do, and I took a sip and amused him by saying it was fine, I really had no idea if it was good or bad or what, but it was wine and tasted okay by me. From there, we ordered fried mozzarella, which we were expecting to be like cheese sticks. Nope--they were these 4 hunks of fresh mozzarella that were battered in the light breading and fried. We ate 2 and a half and decided to save room for our main courses. We each ordered a pizza, Audrey got some kind with Salmon and some sauce, and I got the best pizza man has ever created. It's called the Lasagna, and had tomato sauce, mozzarella, skinny pieces of ham, and 4 huge spoonfuls of ricotta cheese on top. It was beyond amazing, words can not describe it. Needless to say, we did not finish off our pizzas. I tried so hard because it was so good. We were at dinner for about 2 hours and I was so determined to finish the pizza, but I just couldn't. Audrey is currently at home working on perfecting this pizza for my return. We got back and went to sleep to go spend another day at the beach on Friday.

We went back to the beach Friday, this time with all our stuff as we had to check out of or place. We also had no towels, so we were using dirty shirts to lay on and stuff. I'm 90% sure everyone thought we were homeless people. We (well, I) decided against going to the beaches you have to pay to use that come with chairs and umbrellas and go back to the free public beach. We laid there for about 3 hours and baked in the sun (and I am now peeling and look ridiculous since I put on no sunscreen). We got hassled by numerous people walking the beaches trying to sell all sorts of crap. I could careless about buying sunglasses, and I really doubt they were authentic Gucci, Prada, and Ray Ban sunglasses they were peddling on the beach. From there, we walked to one of the places you have to pay for and snuck in to use the showers. I changed my shorts on the beach and we went to get food where Audrey used a bathroom to change. We then got to the train station about an hour early since we had nothing else to do.

Around 4:30, 25 minutes before our train is supposed to arrive, a man comes over and starts blabbering in Italian about who knows what, but we hear the "shopporro" again. So we start freaking out, and Audrey asks some people who show up to the station and luckily one guy speaks English and informs us they were checking out to see if trains were running, since there would be an Italian rail strike that day. Wonderful. Instead of taking the 3pm bus out to Rome since the buses can't be trusted, the trains aren't running because of a strike. Magnificent. The man who told us the trains aren't running is going to Roma, and tells us to follow him. I'm pretty sure Audrey thought he was going to take us to a field and gut us and sell our organs on the black market, but I had faith in this stranger. And we really had no other choice. We got on a bus and I figured out he was taking us to another train station that is possibly running to Roma at 5. Well we get there and that on is not running. The next train to Rome is at 6 and we have to be there by 7 to leave. It's a 70 minute train ride. We sit and wait since we have nothing to do, and its all out of our hands. There were trains scheduled to come before ours and none show up. An announcement comes on and we find out the train is coming, but its 5 minutes late. We are silently freaking out and I think we both started planning how to spend our night in Rome and get home to Copenhagen. We got on the train and sat in silence for the whole ride. As we arrive to Termini at 7:20, I see a European train leave, so I'm trying to stay calm, but am really thinking great we're stuck. We get off and start running to the platform to see where our train is leaving from, and see just a ton of people hanging out at Termini. We look up and don't see a platform by our train. Next to it, in red it says 19:25---our train had also be delayed, we had made it!

So dirty, but happy we made it!

We both looked at each other and let out the biggest sigh of relief. Needless to say, our train would be delayed until about 9, so we had plenty of time. A train from Terracina even arrived before we departed. It was one of the most tense, suspenseful moments of my life. We sat around and got some McDonald's since it was right there.

The night train was pretty smooth. The staff knew about our ticket issue and was great with it all. We were in a compartment with 6 beds, basically bunk style with 3 on one side, and 3 on another. Audrey and I were lucky to have the lowest ones. There was a younger girl on one of the second ones, and a nice, older guy one the other. He mainly stood outside and watched the scenery. There were various stops throughout, and our entertainment came sometime throughout the night as an older, out of shape (to be nice) Italian lady came into our compartment. Auds and I are sleeping and I'm pretty sure she woke up as I did listening to this lady. She climbed about 4 steps up the ladder and started panting and making some kind of noises and speaking Italian to herself for a solid 5-10 minutes. I tried to sleep, but it was extraordinarily difficult. I finally popped in my iPod and rolled over and slept as she was talking to one of the train people having someone translate the Italian to English. I guess nothing got resolved because this lady just slept on the floor in our compartment. It was so annoying because she moved for no one as they had to leave. She just laid right in the way. If she did move, it took her about 5 minutes to get up and she was pressing on our beds to get up, like grabbing my arm that's on my bed and using it to press herself up making the same noises as when she was on the ladder. I was just wondering what she was thinking when she booked the bed, that's all really.

We arrived to Munich at like 8am and had all sorts of time before meeting our friends from Truman, the Brinks. I'll get into that part next time to let you fully digest how lucky we felt to have made it to Munich!

Best delayed train ever!