"Sciopero" (Italian word for strike)

I mentioned this before but I thought I would share some more.  As I was walking around town with a few people from my hostel a few days ago, one of the guys said there was going to be a transportation strike on Friday.  I got a bit nervous because Friday was my busy travel day but I was hoping for the best.  I did some research when I got home and quickly realized that strikes are a common occurrence here in Italy.  One Italian blog writer wrote “Strikes are so common in fact, that one of the first words I learned after moving to Italy was sciopero, the word for strike. After I'd lived there a few months, I got used to them as the Italians do, and learned another useful Italian word: arrangiarsi, to figure it out. Yes, strikes are inconvenient and disruptive, but you can't do anything about them.”  This week was a week filled with countless strikes.  On Monday, truckers and taxi drivers decided to protest the government on their plan to issue more driver’s licenses in order to increase competition amongst drivers.  The protest consisted of drivers parking their big rigs & taxi cabs across all major highways preventing any traffic from passing through. 

Pharmacists decided to strike this week as well and government lawyers will be on strike next week, but those are stories for another day so I can get back to the transportation issue.  The Italian train company (Trenitalia) decided to hold their monthly strike for 24 hours beginning 26 January at 9pm and continuing until 27 January at 9pm.  All regional train service was cancelled which meant that the only trains running were fast trains between the major cities in Italy.  That was good news for me since my morning train from Florence to Rome was still on, although delays were to be expected.  I couldn’t help but laugh as I walked into an empty train station this morning.  There were only two trains in the station, when usually all twenty tracks are filled.  The picture I took of the daily train schedule turned out a bit blurry but it is covered with the word cancelled.   My train was running thirty minutes behind schedule but I was so relieved to be on a train headed to Rome that I didn’t mind the late start.

I also had good luck at the airport since my flight made it off the ground just as the strike was beginning.  No one was sure whether our 13:30 flight would be delayed but I am now on the plane flying over Austria as I type.  FYI- Fly Norwegian Air because they offer free wifi on board all flights! 

Oh, and the bus, metro and tram systems in all major Italian cities also went on strike today but that didn’t affect me. 

Lesson for the day---If you are headed to Italy, do some research.  There are countless websites that allow travelers to read about scheduled strikes so they can plan their days around them.