I am travelling to Italy soon and downloaded the Trenitalia app to my phone to book train tickets. I went to register and it wants country of birth…but there is no selection for USA. Afghanistan…sure. Almost anywhere else seemingly but not the USA.
Why would they do this? I am mystified. It’s not like there is a shortage of American tourists to Italy.
I have been told I can still purchase tickets but then need to print them since they will not be on my account. But I have found no explanation for this overt omission.
Can I just say I am Canadian and get on with it or will they arrest me?
Can anyone recommend another app that works for Americans?
According to this discussion it’s there, but the app uses the Italian name:
In looking under the S instead of the U, I do indeed see Stati Uniti D’America.
That worked! Thanks so much! Huge help.
Still mystified why they did it that way but problem solved.
Thanks again.
I noticed that the app is in English but the choices are all in Italian so, unless you speak Italian, it is difficult to discern what choices you are making.
Indeed, or … “When in Roma…”
I don’t deal with Italian stuff much. But I do deal a lot with various Spanish language stuff in Latin America.
It is exceedingly common for Latin American websites to have English as a choice for the main UI, but that dropdown lists of various choices are all en Español solamente.
Pretty quickly I learned that my home country is “EE. UU.”
Point being, I expect that you’ll encounter this kind of thing a bunch on your trip, not just on the railway app and not just about your country of origin. Forewarned is forearmed.
I bet you’ll have a wonderful trip. Please give a us a travelogue post when you’re done.
I just used the Trenitalia website on my phone to book tickets when I was in Italy in May. Didn’t even occur to me to use an app. You order tickets on the website and they show up in your email.
Strangely, I must have traveled 8 or 9 train segments and got asked to show my ticket just once.
We were there in March. Venice to Bologna, Naples, and Rome. We were asked for our tickets every time.
Milan to Bologna, got ticket checked on the frecciarossa. After that, Bologna to Florence, Florence to Siena, Siena to Vernazza (3 trains), Vernazza to Milan MXP (3 more trains). Now that I think about it, the segment from Levanto to Milano Centrale also had a ticket check. So 2 out of 9.
Odd. Either luck or the labour actions that have been going on with the Italian unions. We were even stopped by fare inspectors on the metro in Naples and Rome.
My experience is that many Italian websites, menus, etc. have a lot of English, but they are often translated a bit weird.
I just opened the Trenitalia website and went to the language selection, which is set to Italian as default. I have the following choices:
Italian flag = ITA
UK flag = ENG
French flag = BETWEEN
German flag = DEU
Chinese flag = WHO
No idea why France is between and China is Who. If I choose English, the languages are correct. But normally the languages should be according to the ISO code for languages. And BETWEEN is not a language.
I went to another website today to look at a timetable. Supposedly it was in English but I did not have the option to “Accept”. I only had “accettro” (or something like that - I don’t remember the exact word
