There are sleeping capsules at the Bergamo Orio airport. They cost 9 euros an hour. Expensive, but rest is a valuable thing, especially if you have a long flight and are sleep-deprived. I would have tried one, but I had no reason to, I arrived right on time for the flight. Though, it was delayed for an hour. I'm sitting here, drinking a delicious latte, delicate, just the way I like it. There are no empty tables, for the first time in my life I sat down at someone else's table. While I was at it, I bought a small trdelnik sample called a cannoncino.
I'm flying into rain and cold, but at least I'm going home. The flight is an hour and a half late. The vacation was good, lots of beauty, no conflicts, and the price seemed fine. The only thing was that the heat was getting to me.
The day somehow got off on the wrong foot. I woke up an hour earlier than I planned, at 6:30. The flight to Vilnius was delayed by an hour and a half. It turns out I have to take the next train, not the early one.
Once I arrived in Vilnius, I tried to buy a bus ticket to the center. You can only buy one from the driver with cash. Okay, I install the app. For some reason, there are two of them. One has a super low rating, I decided to skip it. The second one promises a free ticket for installing it — awesome! I try to "buy" this very same free ticket — it demands a minimum top-up of five euros. While I was torturing the apps, two buses left, at this rate it wouldn't take long to miss the next train, too.
I gave up, started looking for cash, found two euros. Got on the nearest bus, afraid of being late, bought a ticket for a euro from the driver.
Turned out, the bus wasn't going to the center. Got out in the middle of nowhere, ordered a Bolt. An electric one arrived quickly, awesome. No complaints about Bolt, gave me a breezy ride.
But I do have complaints about the Lithuanian railways. First of all, they still don't let people with non-Lithuanian IP addresses buy tickets. Clearly defending against DDoS attacks, but that doesn't make it any easier for me. If you didn't know, your IP address while roaming will belong to your mobile operator, not your host country. Accordingly, with my LMT I can't buy a ticket on the website, and I have to go look for a ticket office.
And I hadn't eaten anything since the morning, so first I went to get some grub. I didn't want the local kebab due to a bad past experience. Grabbed what I saw: pirozhki. That didn't work out right away either: they needed cash again. I ran to an ATM, thought I'd have to pay a commission because I'd reached my limit. Turned out I could still withdraw some.
Okay, I bought the pirozhki, which were slightly suffering from gigantomania, and went to the platform. But there was no train to be seen. I peered into the schedule PDF — and there was a little Christmas tree drawn there. Apparently, it meant this route was only for holidays.
What can you do, I sat down on a bench, took out the food I bought, and started slowly gnawing on it. Its composition didn't inspire any enthusiasm, so essentially I fed the grub to the pigeons. They devoured it instantly, even though it was like two huge pirozhki.
I dejectedly trudged to the supermarket for some better food. On the way, a guy intercepted me, looking totally normal. Wearing glasses, dressed in jeans and other regular clothes of a young man. Said he'd lost his wallet and needed a ticket to Klaipėda. I replied that I could buy the ticket, but I know there are a lot of scammers, and I was ready to do it only if he got on the bus right in front of my eyes (so he couldn't return the ticket and get the money). That was my past experience with the Riga train station talking.
The guy didn't seem to mind, checked the routes, and it turned out there were no seats on the next one. Okay, but the following route was after my train, which meant I wouldn't be able to verify the reality of the situation. The fact that he agreed to my conditions and shared details about his situation calmed me down a bit. In the end, we went to a ticket machine and I bought him a ticket contactlessly with my card. He asked for my number so I could send him my account details, so he could transfer the money to me later (these details will be important later). He also asked for some water, since it was a four-hour ride. I gave him my mineral water.
As for me, I stocked up on new food and liquids, and dragged myself back to the station to catch my train. There wasn't much time left, I was trying to figure out if the train was leaving from the first platform. And right then my Revolut bank sends an SMS with an authentication code. I didn't ask for any SMS, and my paranoia level instantly spikes, especially considering the previous events.
I'm afraid I'm being cleverly scammed into having my e-bank hacked, so I reset my password and set everything up again, taking a selfie and all that other crap. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the train is still not there, and the scoreboard seems to be showing something wrong. I run to the other tracks, but they seem to be empty too.
I don't go all the way to the end, because it's hard to imagine the train arriving at the last track when there are a bunch of options before it. Alas, as it turned out, that very 17:42 route was departing from track number 9!
And that's how I missed the train. Suspicions immediately crept in that the previous one was also in some weird spot, and I was just too dumb to realize it (even though there are scoreboards everywhere).
I'm already stressed out because I urgently need to go to the trauma ward for an X-ray, and here I am seemingly stuck in Vilnius. There don't seem to be any buses to D-pils from Vilnius.
Fortunately, there was another train at 19:50, which I got on without any particular difficulties. Before that, however, I managed to drench my duty-free purchases in mineral water.
Avoid sleep deprivation and hard ~~drugs~~ meds, kids, otherwise you'll be making the same screw-ups. On the other hand, I just want to yell out something I overheard during the flight: RyanAir – we don't care.
How everything would have played out if the aeroplane had arrived on time, we'll never know, unless we learn to communicate with parallel universes.
Personally, I don't think the guy was a scammer. He didn't look like an addict or an alcoholic, introduced himself as Roman, a massage therapist, and said he'd blocked his Monese issuing-bank card from the app when he lost his wallet, but couldn't unblock it yet.
In Revolut you can freeze a card temporarily, but who knows how things work in Monese. Besides, he's not obligated to be an IT expert and do everything perfectly.
So it goes. Overall, I lost half a day, but got off lightly — except maybe spending 8 euros on a second ticket and 4 on some not-so-tasty pirozhki. Later, by the way, I bought some coarse wholemeal bread at Iki — very interesting.
As for Lithuanian public transport — they have some work to do. Starting with the fact that foreigners should be able to immediately understand that you can't buy a ticket online. And ending with the fact that there should be enough power outlets near the benches at the train station. My power bank drowned in coffee when I took a tumble in the Dolomites, and without my phone I'm completely lost.