All The Romance of Crime Central

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Italian trains may always run late, but this is easily forgiven when you discover that all the seats in a compartment fold down to form one big bed. There were five of us in the carriage, which was a bit cramped, but a good nights sleep was had by all nonetheless.

We woke in the morning to discover that the girl nearest the door's money belt had been opened and searched. Some money and a credit card were missing, but luckily her passport, travellers cheques and Inter-rail ticket were still there. We had been warned that Italian trains are rampant with crime, but we were still a bit shocked. There were some seedy looking characters milling around in the corridor and we felt like beating them up and checking their pockets, but we were lacking a little something known as evidence.

Like Paris, Venice was another romantic spot that I was visiting on my own - the other people in the carriage and I did group together, but that's not what I mean. We wrote off any chance of getting any accommodation, and our first priority was to report the incident on the train. For insurance purposes, some additional things were added to the list of what was taken and one of the guys also reported his watch as missing. I was disgusted by these deplorable tactics of course.

Venice is an essential part of any tour round Europe, but consequently it is just one huge great tourist trap. Nothing but shops and crowds of Americans in bad taste clothes. They don't dress like that in America, so why do they feel the need to when they're abroad?

Despite that, you need more than one day and I was planning on stopping off again later on the way back up from Yugoslavia.

The shops did not hold much attraction to us as everything was out of our price range and our back-packs were heavy enough already.

We spent the evening playing cards and chatting to people on the steps of the station. Someone in every group had been the victim of some kind of crime since they had arrived in Italy, so the reputation is very well founded.

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