A travel essay by Martin D. Hirsch
Curator’s Note: In his travel essay, Martin D. Hirsch recounts an eventful train journey from Domodossola to Turin during his vacation in Italy. Expecting a first-class experience, Hirsch and his wife run into a mix-up with their train tickets, leading to confusion and confrontations with other passengers and conductors. Initially annoyed with a fellow traveler, they bond after a humorous mishap involving dropped sunglasses and a shared laugh. Through this experience, he reflects on misunderstandings within the travel system and the importance of communication. The journey ends with a lesson learned and an unexpected friendship.
What do you expect when you ask the booking clerk at a train station for a first-class ticket to your destination?
What do you expect when you ask the booking clerk at a train station for a first-class ticket to your destination?
You expect to get on the train in the first-class section, sit down and enjoy the ride, right?
Not necessarily. My wife and I did just that at the train station in Domodossola, Italy, en route to Turin on our recent vacation. We expected to sit back and enjoy the scenic ride we’d read about when planning our trip to the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Stazione di Domodossola opened in 1888, and it’s got some catching up to do.
Its ticket agents, in particular, need some training. Ours wasn’t prepared to deal with international travelers — even experienced ones like us.
The first-class car my wife and I boarded was nearly full, with most seats occupied by people in a tour group from Norway. But after finding two vacant seats, we settled in and geared up for the panorama ahead.
Shortly after the train started, the fun came to a screeching halt. A nerdy guy who bore a striking resemblance to Barney Fife but didn’t speak a word of English pointed a ticket at me with a number on it. I soon discerned that the number corresponded to the one on the seat I was in.
“Here’s my first-class ticket to Turin,” I told him, holding up my stub and receipt. But he wouldn’t relent and called the conductor.
Ugly American that I guess I showed myself to be in that moment, I continued to argue with the conductor until he called his boss into the fray.
When I still wouldn’t budge, the conductor’s boss put me on the phone with his superior, who informed me the next elevation of the dispute would be resolved by the police, if that’s what I wanted.
I relented and moved to a cramped sort of half-seat at the very front of the car, with practically zero leg room and about the same amount of view. My wife offered to switch seats with me every 30 minutes on the journey.
When my first half-hour was up, my wife came to spell me and I walked back to take the single seat opposite my adversary. I was not in a friendly mood.
Still annoyed, I took in his nerdy countenance: a blue baseball cap with a mountain logo atop what appeared to be a bald head, offset with big, dark-framed glasses; a gray polo shirt with black and white diamond shapes and a purple sweater draped around his shoulders; denim shorts; brown and white hiking shoes of a brand I’ve never seen before; and a pair of sunglasses in his hand.
He saw I had a water bottle in my hand and pointed to the bottle holder under the window. But I wasn’t in the mood to accept his attempt to be helpful.
Soon my irritation diminished and my attention was captured by the view: Alpine mountain peaks, Piedmont vineyards, an azure blue sky with white puffy clouds. I realized that both of our heads were turning back and forth from the window on the left to the window on the right, as if we were watching a tennis match.
At one point I noticed that he was fiddling with the sunglasses in his hand and then he dropped them on the floor beneath his seat. Having gotten over the ticket mixup by then, I bent down to retrieve them for him, at the precise same instant he did the same.
Bang! We cracked heads hard and looked up at each other in mid-bend, huge grins spontaneously widening across our faces.
And just like that, my adversary of just a couple of hours ago had become my fellow human being — something akin to a new friend.
Talking later to someone from the region who’s familiar with the peculiarities of the train system, I concluded that both the ticket agent at Domodossola and I had committed an important error of omission. She didn’t tell me that for a specific reserved seat on a first-class train you need to pay a few Euros extra. And neither my wife nor I had thought to ask.
I thought back to the scene on the train and saw it in my head as a silent film starring the nerdy guy and me. Our silly bump of heads instantly turned what started as a drama into a classic slapstick comedy. It had a happy ending that neither of the only two spectators in the audience could have imagined.
Martin D. Hirsch is a retired journalist who also writes on Medium. You can learn more about his background from the attached interview conducted by Dr Mehmet Yildiz in 2024.
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