It’s just as well that I haven’t really got any work to do today, because it’s meant that I have been able to spend most of the working day making travel arrangements for our upcoming holiday in Croatia. At least now it’s a holiday in Croatia. Until this morning it was a holiday in Venice, that being the closest place we could get an even remotely reasonably priced flight to at short notice. Now I’ve at least got us as far as Split on the Dalmatian coast, via an overnight ferry crossing from Ancona, in Italy (on which, for comedy value, but mostly owing to it being rather fully booked, we will be travelling out in a first class cabin, and back in–hopefully–a seat each). That arranged, I just had to get us down to Ancona, and I may or may not have booked that journey via the TrenItalia website, given that the online booking only appears to work in the Italian version of the site. Italian being a language I don’t speak, I had to stumble through with a mixture of educated guesses, based on my knowledge of French and Spanish, and Babelfish.
Ok then, mostly Babelfish, but fantastic tool that it is, it does seem to mostly come up with things like this, from my confirmation email:
Kind MATTHEW ARMSTRONG, we confirm to Them that l’acquisto of the travel from demanded She e’ state concluded with happening. In the ringraziarLa in order to have chosen Trenitalia.com we supply Them here of continuation the relative data you to its purchase.
(I mean that’s just sloppy: it hasn’t even bothered to translate some of the words, half of it is just gibberish, and even I can work out that “con successo” means “with success”, not “with happening”).
So, really, I could have booked anything. Which sort of adds to the fun, really.