Here is a word which all travellers to Italy need to know for their own sanity: SCIOPERO.

It means strike and happens quite regularly on Italian Railways. Of course, you don’t know about it until it happens: no notices in stations, announcements on trains a few days before only in Italian, nothing on the news.

Websites are particularly unhelpful. If you check the timetable, it comes up as normal, suggesting nothing has changed. If you look up other relevant websites it will say, for instance. something unhelpful such as “some trains are confirmed but not guaranteed”. In my village there were no trains all day for the last two strikes (April and May) and greatly inconvenienced a friend who came to stay with me.

We only knew it was happening because a friend tipped us off about it. If you ask an official, they will always say “But signora, the whole point of a strike is to inconvenience people.”

The day my friend needed to get to the airport dawned bright and sunny, and eerily silent due to the sciopero. I live close to the main line between Venice and Rome. We began making plans. A friend who lives in the nearby hills offered to drive her to Padua. Then another complication arose. Did we know that the Giro D’Italia cycle race was that day, and it was passing right past her cottage? No, we didn’t. No posters, no mention on the news. The road was closed so she couldn’t get her car out.

There are no taxis in my village, but I found a number and eventually the solution arrived at midday. There was no knowing how congested the roads would be. Eventually my friend was dropped off at the bus station and had to pay extra for not having booked her seat. How were we to know? She was lucky and got the last seat. From then on it was plain sailing, but rather slow. She got there.