Monzay - Friday

I've come to the conclusion that the Monza GP organisers really don't want people to get to and from the track.

I'd heard the transportation wasn't fantastic, but nothing prepared me for the reality of it.  Nor anyone else, evidently.

Monza is somewhere between 15-20km out of Milan central.  Probably 15km, as the crow flies (or train runs).  This 15km trip too me over two hours this m morning, and that wasn't including the 15 minute walk from my hotel to the subway stop, then the subway ride to the Central Railway station.

You have to buy your train tickets by machine, there are no people (or weren't this morning, at any rate).  Figuring that out is fine, so long as the machine doesn't randomly switch languages on you half way through your transaction - I guess they like to keep you on your toes.  The problem is the fact that, you type in the machine that you want to go to Monza, it prints out on your ticket that you are going to Monza, but there is no information anywhere - either on the monitors, the ticket machines, your tickets - and there are no paper timetables anywhere - telling you which line Monza is actually on.  So you have no idea which train to get on.  Anyway, I eventually found other lost looking GP fans, and after much investigation, we found the correct train.
  
If you were wondering, Monza is on the Tirano track. 

It was then about a 15-20 minute train ride out to Monza. Then a half hour wait for the free shuttle service to the track. Another half hour on the shuttle, which drops you off on the very outskirts of the park where the racetrack is, and it's another half hour walk at least to the actual gates. As the shuttles are few and far between - and it takes several to get a single tain load to the track - you are jammed on like cattle.


There is no signage. Anywhere. You wouldn't know a GP is on. There is no extra public transport, no extra trains.

This was after I was standing at the ticket machine about to get my ticket, and a 'helpful' Italian asked me where I was going and quickly typed it all in for me.  And then wanted to be paid for doing so.  At which point I told him to bugger off, as I never asked for help in the first place.  He tried to do the same to the people behind me, but seeing what had happened, the told him to bugger off too. 

THIS, was after spending the morning trying to change hotels.  Despite prepaying, it was worth losing that money and going to another hotel - that's how bad this place is.  The reception staff are terrible, which I've already said, the room is sweltering - despite being advertised as an air conditioned hotel, which is all good and well, but they don't turn it on in the rooms, only the reception area.  AND I am getting no sleep. 

However, as I suspected may be the case, Milan is totally booked out, unless I want to pay, at the cheapest, 420 euro per night.  Which is tempting, I'll admit.  But at least I have earplugs from the track now, so I'll just have to deal. 

How do you like that.  I need earplugs for the idiots in reception and their disgraceful Italian 'music', but not for F1 cars.  Go figure that one out. 

So.  The worst hotel on earth, difficultly getting to the track, god awful shuttle and sticky walk to track.  

But once I got to my seat for FP2 (missing of course FP1 in all this saga), I realised that it was all worth it, as soon as those cars came out. 

Of course, that was after I found the ultra secret tunnel leading to my grandstand.  Every other grandstand is clearly marked with number and name, except, of course, the one I am in.  Which has an entrance (without the grandstand name) that looks like one of the places on the track I wouldn't be allowed in with my ticket, and like I said, there was a tunnel.  I'm right on the start finish line - well, grid place 4 or so.  The seat is excellent.  I'll need binoculars or something tomorrow though, because the screens are rather small, but mostly, just on angles from where I am sitting that I can't read names or positions, so I had no idea who was where in FP1. 

It took 1 1/2 hours to get from the gate back to Monza Station.  Half hour walk to shuttle, half hour wait for shuttle again, half hour trip.

Phew.  Two more days of this.  I need to get up even earlier, and leave over two hours earlier than I want to arrive.  And it wasn't even busy today...

The general consensus of everyone I spoke to, or overheard, who have been to other GPs, is that Monza is the most terribly organised race on the entire calendar.  Of course, being the Monza GP, it still sells out, so I guess the organisers don't see a point in spending money organising things properly.

Picture one of those YouTube clips of trains in China, where they have people at the stations literally pushing people into the trains so they all fit.  That was the shuttle.  Only ten times worse.