Caught in an Italian train strike

We were caught by surprise, we had arrived at a local train station and all services were cancelled, Noriko had read on some Japanese web site that a cheaper ticket could be purchased here, we were not going to hang around some local station in a strike with no informaion and limited services - it was dirty too.

We headed down to Milan's central station where information would be given in Italian and English.

Noriko knows little about industrial relations, I didn't have time to explain strike action, rolling stoppages, work to rule and other industrial tactics - we had to immediately leave and head to Milan central station. Apparently industrial action doesn't feature strongly in Japanese industrial relations, I unfortunately have a fair amount of experience in dealing with wage negotiations and conditions.

We got to central station, she needed to use the toilet - that's ok, but what made me angry is when she wandered around looking for an ATM when I was sitting minding the bags. We needed information, were services going to be up and running? No value blowing limited opportunities to catch a train when to have a pocket full of money going nowhere - priorities, forward planning and actually thinking about the situation need to be addressed.

When she came back at 11:20 with information there is a train departing at 11:25, I knew I didn't have time to strangle her so I instead rushed off to the ticket office to get whatever ticket I could. Even if we had tickets, there was little chance we could get to the platform in time and then get in the carriage before the doors slammed closed and the train pulled out of the station.

The lines for the counter was long, really long so I tried the electronic ticket dispenser instead. Most cheap tickets had already gone on the next two trains, only first class remained - not what we needed. Italian organisation is famous for all the wrong reasons, if we could get moving, great, industrial action escalates rapidly, we could be stuck here for days.

Fortunately for us, imediate strike action was lifted just before lunch with some limited services returning, we didn't need to spend the night sleeping at the station, that was fortunate as I had pre-purchased accommodation in Venice. Able to get some limited 12.30 tickets at a reasonable, still plenty of cancellations listed on the boards.

Ok, platform announced, all of us staring at the departure board move rapidly towards platform 4 and board the train - we are off and moving.