Belated MLK Holiday

While everyone in the states enjoyed a nice long weekend thanks to The King, we spent Monday doing our usual lessons. But on Tuesday we were given a belated holiday.

We got up at 6am as usual to get ready for work in time to catch the 7:20 train to Rome. When we arrived at the station we thought it was a bit odd that there seemed to be a larger number of people waiting around in the building. We went inside to check the schedule board only to discover that the trains were running an average of one hour behind schedule!

The next train scheduled to arrive was the 6:44 train, and so everyone who was supposed to be on that train all the way to everyone who would have caught the 7:20 train with us was waiting to get on any train that would take them to Rome so they could begin their day.

Finally, the first of the trains arrived, actually 70 minutes late, and as you can imagine the crowd at the station had grown exponentially in this time. Of course, Zagarolo is not the origin of this train, and so the same problem was happening at every station before us, and even as it arrived in Zagarolo this train was packed full.

We stood near the doors hoping maybe for a millimeter of space to squeeze into, but it was a chaotic mass of scrunched bodies. We looked at each other and backed out of the crowd. After a short discussion, we decided that the next few trains were probably going to be just as ridiculous, and we more than likely won't make it into Rome in time for our lessons.

The solution: Go home! Yay, a day off, thanks to TrenItalia! We called our boss and let him know the situation, and he called our students to tell them we wouldn't be able to make it in. The rest of our day was spent napping, reading, and just enjoying an unexpected holiday.