Duolingo to the Rescue

Our third attempt at taking a train went even worse than the previous two. We had arrived on Thursday night and headed off for Ventimiglia market on Friday morning. We strode confidently through and behind the Old Town, down beside the botanic gardens, to the sleepy little station at Garavan, a single platform either side of the rails. There’s no ticket office, no station staff and no timetable. There is an information screen at the end of the platform that is completely illegible in the bright sun, and there is a cat flap. I bought return tickets and in customary fashion we simply dozed in the heat, waiting.

After an hour Dex and I walked up to the screen and squinted. He could make out a few individual words and I put them into English. There was a rail strike on the Italian side, so there were no trains since Garavan is the very last stop before the border. Christsake. We gave up and headed down to the sea front. It was now lunchtime and, grumpy, we flopped into a terrace at a little bar and ordered pizza & salad, and photographed the light glowing through the diabolo menthe glasses. I mentioned to the owner that we had hoped to get to Ventimiglia and he told me there was a bus ‘on the hour, every hour’ from outside the old customs building on Pont St Louis.

We dragged our dubious feet up to the bridge and, sure enough, a gaggle of Italians was climbing aboard a minibus. Who knew? I had started to learn Italian when we were down here at Easter with Duolingo, an app on my iPad. I was now almost all the way through the course, having faithfully done its esoteric tasks every day for 150 days or so. I could speak, understand, read and write a cacophony of useful phrases such as “we moved the bed nearer to the window” and “the boys follow us every night” and “all these babies are dead”. Duolingo ought ideally to include a feature to make the experience a little more authentic. Learning vocabulary and grammar is all very well in the classroom but what you really need when you step up into a minibus and declare clearly and loudly, and with a little dramatic flourish “Vogliamo andare a Ventimiglia, per piacere” is some sort of preparedness for the driver turning to his regular passengers to ask how they normally buy a ticket; for eleven people to respond simultaneously with as many different explanations, some to the driver and some to me and my little English family, some waving towards the sea, some to the mountains, and all of them laughing. In Duolingo this would be the new In Public button. There would be exercises such as “It is dark. You are at the funfair. A pickpocket has your wallet. You need to pee”, or “At a football match, a racist chant catches your ear. There is no mobile signal. What time is it?” In fact these exercises are easy. As soon as your feet leave France you enter a Bermuda Triangle of bureaucracy. The driver resolved the situation in the only sensible way. He brought his shoulders level with his ears while turning down the corners of his mouth, his hands held out, palms upright as if carrying a large tray of canapés. “Oggi, è gratuito”.

By now it was nearly ten-to, and if we waited any longer the departure was in danger of coinciding with the advertised time and even I could see that wasn’t on, so he kicked the gearstick and, stroking the steering wheel as one might caress a pigeon, he swung the little bus around and set sail for Ventimiglia. We were finally happy. “Bueno!” I pronounced. Cue Duolingo: “You are in a bus full of old Italian people and you have just shouted a Spanish word by mistake. Everyone is laughing at you and you’re going to spend the next 30 minutes squirming in shame. What is your favourite cheese?”