If we open the topic up to other people's misadventures, I have a story I remember from over 20 years ago. My college Italian professor (Italian-born but American-raised) was taking the train back alone from Tuscany while his wife and toddler son were waiting in Rome. The train got to Tiburtina station on the periphery of Rome and he thought, fine, we'll be at the central Termini station in a few minutes. The train went on for a while and didn't appear to be in the city, so he found the conductor and asked,

We're still on the way to Rome, right?

No, we had our stop in Rome, Tiburtina.

The train doesn't go into Rome? What's the next stop?

Naples.

He was furious at the situation. The train slowed down and he hoped it was making an unscheduled stop so he could get turned around, but he heard the clicks indicating it was accelerating again. He made a quick decision to jump from the train. He was just outside a station and had some cuts but said he was fine to people who had concerns. He got onto a local train to Rome and had a way of ingratiating himself with Italian authority figures; he got the conductor to issue a ticket having him board later than he did and get a lower fare. I forget if he argued that he shouldn't pay much of any fare under the circumstances or if he didn't have the money for the full trip, which wouldn't have been much of a fare in the 1970s.

Andrew Missouri