Get rail ticket punched

In Paula Prindle’s article about Italy (July ’05, pg. 20), she said the conductor was not worried about their unpunched train ticket on the way from Rome to Venice. I suggest that travelers not rely on that as the standard for Italy.

As part of our November ’04 trip, my husband and I spent some time traveling by bus in Croatia and by bus and train in Slovenia. In both countries the bus and train personnel were fantastic. In Slovenia, even though we always knew where to get off the train, the conductor was always looking out for us. Also, on the trains in Slovenia we did not have to get our tickets punched.

We finished up our trip by traveling by train from Slovenia to Venice, Italy. While we were in Venice, we did a day trip to Padua. The platform our train left from was a new platform and did not have a place to punch tickets. We did not pay attention on the way to our platform and did not notice that the other platforms had places to punch tickets. We and a couple from Spain received a 50-euro fine for not having our tickets punched.

Interestingly, the conductor coming around to check tickets was speaking perfect English to someone else earlier but lost his language skills when he came to us.

ROSE KITZAN
Grand Forks, ND