Italy – May 2022

When I decide to continue my trip down Italy from Naples to Sicily, I have several options for transportation. Of course, the fastest (& possibly cheapest) would be the plane. As I want to travel overland, this one is immediately eliminated. The most uncommon is the ferry to Palermo. However, it’s very slow too and therefore ruled out for now. The buses are disqualified because they’re the most uncomfortable option. This leaves me with the trains. I like train travel, and so I buy a ticket for the 6-hour journey from Salerno to Catania.

My train leaves at 10am on a beautiful summer day. Perfect conditions for a train ride along the western Italian coast. I’ve brought a bunch of snacks, water and enough Hustenbonbons because I caught a cold in Sorrento. I have plans to pass the time studying some Japanese, watching shows I downloaded on Netflix and getting some writing done. However, due to my laziness, the beautiful views and the exciting crossing from the mainland to the Island of Sicily, I get almost none of the above done.

Now let’s talk about the latter reason for my unproductivity. Of course, I knew that Sicily is an Island, and we’d therefore somehow have to cross the Mediterranean Sea at some point. However, in my mind, it was clear that we’d do that by crossing a bridge. Spoiler: there is no bridge between San Giovanni on mainland Italy and Messina on the island of Sicily. As I didn‘t know that, I was caught off guard when the train stopped in San Giovanni for an uncomfortably long amount of time. After 30 minutes of waiting, I am almost certain that the few other people in my carriage and I have been forgotten and abandoned on an empty track in this strangely big station.

I get even more anxious when people start to get off the train, but am somewhat relaxed when I recognize the conductor smoking on the platform. And then the Spanish couple a few rows down gets back onto the train. They are facetiming with someone and very loudly ask the other person to „Guess where we are!“. Of course the lady on the other end has no clue, and so they excitedly explain. „We’re in a train that’s going to be boarding a ferry to cross the ocean!“ I am as surprised as the lady they’re talking to on the phone and, not for the first time in my life, glad that I speak Spanish.

I don’t listen to the rest of their conversation, but am thinking about HOW they will be transferring the full lengths train on a boat. It might be a large ferry, but surely it can’t be THAT large. Moments later the train slowly rolls backwards, stops again, and then switching rails rolls forward again. We go around a curve and suddenly there is a gaping hole in front of us. It’s the lower deck of a boat. We roll past men in yellow security vests and come to a halt once we’re inside the ferry. Then the power is cut, the lights turn off, and all of us sit in the dark in complete silence.

Nobody seems to know if we’re allowed – or even able, considering the power cut – to leave the carriage while on the ferry. There was no information given by the conductors or the staff on the boat. So all of us stay where we are. It’s kinda weird knowing that the boat is moving, but being under the deck and INSIDE another vehicle, you don’t really feel the movements. We could be going backwards, forward or in circles… I honestly wouldn’t know. Then I get this thought: what if the ferry sinks?! I’d first somehow have to get out of the train in order to escape from the boat. And I’d probably only notice we’re sinking when it’s too late!

But even this thought doesn’t make me leave the carriage. And fortunately, we don’t sink. Around an hour after we got on the ferry, the train finally starts to move again, and we disembark out into the daylight. Another 15 minutes later, we arrive at Messina station and from there continue our train ride south along the coast to Catania, as if we didn’t just emerge from a boat. That portion of the trip is rather uneventful, and I am already thinking about my return journey to the mainland. Should I really take the passenger ferry to Livorno, or instead look up trains to Firenze?

Note: I did end up taking the night train from Palermo to Firenze – which I highly recommend! I had my very own compartment with a proper fold-down bed. This time, I talked to the Italian man in the next compartment when we got onto the ferry and asked him if we were allowed to get off the train. He said yes, and I walked up the stairs to the sun deck. There, I heard the announcement that it’s prohibited to stay in any vehicles on the lower decks. Too bad that the people downstairs are unable to hear that… first it’s kinda dangerous and secondly they’re missing out on the stunning views.

Finally, when the ferry docked in San Giovanni, I solved the last mystery. How does such a long train fit in there? There were several tracks next to each other on the ferry. As I was in one of the first carriages, we rolled in and out of the boat a few times. Each time they connected another couple of carriages to the locomotive until the train was finally complete again.

A day trip for the books