Trek to Tirano 🙏
Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…. and tourists! This holiday has been humming along like a well oiled machine, a circumstance that should probably have left us feeling a little uneasy. Just as our level of confidence was reaching its peak, our departure from Como brought it all crashing down.
To this point, our experience with the Italian rail system has been stellar. We’ve been here twice in three years and every train we’ve booked has been on time, comfortable, and a great way to get around. Today, all the good will the Italian rail folks had generated with us got kicked to the curb. We arrived at the Como station to find that this was the day chosen for a rail strike in the Lombardy region, which was the exact region we were standing in.
We had heard about these rail strikes in Italy, which they often have the audacity to schedule. Until now, we’ve never been affected by one. No one knows why they are on strike. They just are. I think they may be lobbying for more strike days.
We thought for a while that we had dodged the bullet again, because the schedule board in the station showed every train cancelled except for two, and ours was one of the two. The other one loaded and departed on schedule, but the time for our journey came and went with no sign of a train. We tried asking employees at the station if we should expect there to be a train. We got a variety of answers, the average if which seemed to amount to, “Who knows?” There was no good way to know what to do. Even if our train finally showed up, our objective was to take it just 60 miles down the track to Monza where we planned to transfer to another regional train to continue on to Tirano. Monza would be just as affected by the strike as Como, so we would likely just have a fresh can of worms there.
Two young women on the platform next to us decided to take a 150 euro cab ride to Milan. We contemplated renting a car. Just as we were about to set off to figure out how to make that happen, the arrivals display lit up on the board next to the track we were standing beside, suggesting the possible approach of a train. There was no train number listed, just a destination. Monza.
Sure enough, a few minutes later a train did roll in. We decided to roll the dice and jump on. We han an entire first class carriage to ourselves. During the ride, it was announced that the mystery train that we were aboard would travel no further than Monza because of track maintenance on the next segment heading for Milan. We didn’t care. Monza was our goal.
Once at the Monza station, we sought out a railway rep and asked her how we could get to Tirano. She looked at us with a sad face and said, “Not today. There is a strike.” As we turned away, our dreams of being on the Bernina Express the next day pretty much dashed, the woman suddenly pointed at a schedule board and said, “No! Wait!” You can take the 1:08 to Lecco and then the bus. The 1:08 was the only line on the board that did not say “cancelled”.
We had a short wait before the 1:08 arrived right on time, and we didn’t even mind having our suitcases between our knees for most of the journey to Lecco. During the ride, it was announced that there was scheduled maintenance being done on the tracks between Lecco and Tirano, and no trains would be running today or any day until November. The announcement went on to say that a substitute bus shuttle service would be available with a bus leaving every 15 minutes from the Lecco station.
We were ecstatic. The track maintenance was or saviour. If the strike was our only obstacle, we’d have been hooped. With the maintenance issue thrown in, there was a built-in solution. We ended up with a very pleasant trip north on a very uncrowded bus, enjoying views of Lake Como during those rare moments when we weren’t in an insanely long tunnel. (Como, Monza, and Lecco are three points on a triangle, so we were right back on the lake we started from.)
Now we’re in Tirano, only a couple of hours late. We’ve got our laundry done and we’re excited for tomorrow’s adventure. We weren’t sure earlier, but yes, it’s a good day.
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