Bra Bus

I’ve been in Italy 2 days, and already have had some great adventure. I spent the first two days in Torino with Nathan and his mom. We ate a lot. I had a meeting with some folks at Slow Food on the day Mrs. Leamy had to fly out, so I left on the train early in the morning with plans for Nathan to meet me in Bra (the town) later that afternoon. It seemed very simple: I had train ticket to Carmagnola where I was to transfer to a bus to Bra, arriving with an hour and half to spare.

I was at the door as my train approached Carmagnola, ready to jump out, but the button that opens the door didn’t do a thing and I found myself still on the train as it pulled out of the station. What to do but stay there and get out at the next station and then try to figure out how to get to Bra from there? Fortunately, the woman in the ticket office spoke enough English to understand my story and give me a ticket back to Carmagnola (fortunately, towns in Italy are very close together). I got to Carmagnola and things got a little more complicated. I had already missed my scheduled bus to Bra and wanted to find out where and when to get the next one. The station was tiny – basically a platform and a few chairs – and no one in the ticket booth. I found a bus and driver waiting out front and tried to ask the driver about getting to Bra. He didn’t speak a word of French or English and I thought I was out of luck and about to miss my meetings. I was wandering around, trying to decipher the posted schedules, when he motioned for me to come back. He took my bag and motioned for me to get on the bus. I followed, thinking that this must be the Bra bus.

The driver put me in the seat next to him, and that was when I noticed I was the only one on the bus. Then the realization: “Oh my god, he’s going to give me a ride to Bra!” Seemed crazy, but we had no shared language so I went with it. It took 45 minutes to drive there, during which we somehow conversed about all sorts of things in our separate languages. He didn’t know my hotel, so called the number I had to find out where it was. I told him I was a tourist, and a student of agriculture. He told me he lives alone in a big house in Liguoria where he hosts students on some sort of hospitality basis. He told me I should come stay there instead of my hotel. I wanted to halt that idea pretty quick, so told him, by moving my ring to my 4th finger and trying out a few words, that I was meeting my “husband” at the hotel. At first I think he thought I was asking him to marry me, but I eventually go the point across. He wanted to know if my husband was Italian, so I told him he was American. He asked how old I was and was surprised to learn my real age. And he kept telling me I was a “bella donna Canadese” (a beautiful Canadian woman) and he was an Italian....something.

We drove into Bra and I told him I just needed to go to the station. He kept driving past it, at which point I started to get a little nervous. Turned out he was just taking me closer to my hotel. He dropped me off at the side of the road and pointed in the direction of my hotel which was down a tiny street near a little piazza. I don’t really know how this all happened – the bus trip or the 45 minute conversation – but I was pretty glad it did. I got to Bra just in time to drop my bags at the very cute B&B and grab a really great Italian coffee on my way to my meeting. More about all that later.