Remember that scene in Titanic when word gets out that the ship is sinking, and thousands of passengers try in vain to squeeze into a handful of tiny little rowboats? Then all the chaos and panic that ensues when some people are thrown off the deck once humans stop behaving like human beings and revert to some pre-evolved animal-like state?
Yeah, that happened to me tonight.
I had a good time being touristy in Milan this weekend, but the six-hour train ride ended on an equally chaotic note. My train was supposed to go 30 minutes from the border of Italy into Nice where I would have a transfer to another train to Antibes. However, upon arrival at the last city before the French-Italian border, the train agents told us all that the inter-country rails were closed down and those of us continuing along would have to take buses into Nice with the French rail agency. Ok, in theory this sounds plausible.
However, as soon as we got off -- we being 10 cars with about 160 seats in each car -- there was this mad dash out to the front of the train station where ONE single bus awaited for about 75 people.
I don't know how, but I was one of the last dozen people to get on the bus, even though I was sitting in the 10th and final car at the end of the train. Maybe it was because the hundreds of people shoving through the crowd kind of crowd-surfed me towards the front of the line.
Either way, I got lucky and made it back to Nice in time for my transfer.
Oh mon Dieu! I'm not ready to ever go through that again...
Yeah, that happened to me tonight.
I had a good time being touristy in Milan this weekend, but the six-hour train ride ended on an equally chaotic note. My train was supposed to go 30 minutes from the border of Italy into Nice where I would have a transfer to another train to Antibes. However, upon arrival at the last city before the French-Italian border, the train agents told us all that the inter-country rails were closed down and those of us continuing along would have to take buses into Nice with the French rail agency. Ok, in theory this sounds plausible.
However, as soon as we got off -- we being 10 cars with about 160 seats in each car -- there was this mad dash out to the front of the train station where ONE single bus awaited for about 75 people.
I don't know how, but I was one of the last dozen people to get on the bus, even though I was sitting in the 10th and final car at the end of the train. Maybe it was because the hundreds of people shoving through the crowd kind of crowd-surfed me towards the front of the line.
Either way, I got lucky and made it back to Nice in time for my transfer.
Oh mon Dieu! I'm not ready to ever go through that again...
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