The accident
Governments prefer the construction of roads. The argument is that it is cheaper than running a railway. People can use it freely with their cars and at the same time it can be used with trucks for freight traffic and postal or parcel services and busses for public transport. Hereby it is forgotten that this multipurpose use also made railways efficient and cost-effective. Already the first German railway from Nürnberg to Fürth on its first run carried a couple of barrels of beer next to passengers. More uses were quickly added. Soon even a minor station had a goods hall. Mail and parcels not only were transported but also could be sorted during the ride. The station agent not only sold tickets, but also received parcels and handled orders for freight.
View of St Petrer from the banks of the Tiber river
In most European countries the infrastructure for multipurpose use of railway lines has disappeared. The yards mostly have been reduced to a platform for the passengers. The sidings for the handling of goods have been torn up. If there is still staff at a station like in Italy or France their tasks are reduced to the sale of tickets. Freight is only handled in bulk between big terminals or factories. The goods halls in the stations remain as ruins without a track. However, reducing the use of a track to one purpose only makes it difficult to operate a line on a cost-covering basis.
The fountain on St, Peter's square, Vatican city
The other question is how costs are calculated. What is taken into account? A major part of the police force is occupied by regulating road traffic and handling accidents. Emergency wards of hospitals are mainly busy with the victims of traffic accidents. The long-term medical costs of collateral damage of road traffic are enormous. One of my friends lost his lower leg when he was hit by a truck at age six. Since 60 years health care has to deal with the consequences of this accident. Not only are the costs for a prosthesis enormous. Doctors also have to cope with infections and regular treatment. In the much safer rail transport system these costs do not occur. I have never seen that these consequential costs are cast into figures and taken into account in the comparison of different transport options.
Posing for pope at Piazza de Popolo in Rome
In 2025, around 19,400 people lost their lives in road traffic accidents across the European Union. A "road traffic fatality" includes any person killed immediately or dying within 30 days as a result of an accident involving at least one moving vehicle on a public road including pedestrians and cyclists hit by cars and cars hit by trains at level crossings. Level crossing accidents only account for 1% of the annual road traffic fatalities across the EU.
La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) sculpture from 1999 by Maurizio Cattelan of Pope John Paul II struck by a fallen meteorite in MAXXI
750 fatalities were counted as railway accidents across the EU in 2025. That is less than 4 % of the road accidents. Only 16 of these deaths or 2.1 % are actually train passengers. The majority, 492 deaths or 65.6 %, were trespassers hit while being on the tracks, 3.7% were railway employees. Fatalities at level crossings are counted here, under railway accidents, as well although they are entirely the fault of the road vehicle. They are the cause for 191 deaths or 25.5% of railway related deaths. Suicides on railways, 2357, count separately.
Emergency entry to Ospedeale San Spirito in Sasso
More than 1.15 million people were injured in road traffic accidents across the European Union in 2025. 100000 of these were severe, life-altering injuries like the accident suffered by my friend 40 years ago.
Ambulance entrance to Ospedeale San Spirito in Sasso
Forty years ago I went on an organized bus tour to Rome with a friend. The bus drove to Rome overnight. Once there, all of us were put into a hotel for three nights. We had four entire days for the exploration of the city before the bus would take us back on another overnight journey. Bus and bus drivers stayed with us during our time in Rome.
Hatch to anonymously dispose of orphan babies in the Ospedeale San Spirito in Sasso
40 years later I ask myself why we did not take the train. An endlessly more comfortable night train leaves Munich at 20.10 and arrives in Rome after a trip of almost 14 hours at 10 in the morning. The return trip leaves at 18.10 and arrives at 8.33 in the morning. There are plenty of hotels close to Roma Tiburtina station, where the train arrives. Even Tiburtina station is much closer to the historic center of Rome than the hotel where we stayed 40 years ago. At the time the national railway companies were offering corresponding city trips. They were much more expensive than an organized bus trip. Which is surprising since the capacity of a train is much higher and there is no need to keep and pay the staff at the destination for the entire stay of the tour.
The hotel where the bus tour stayed 40 years ago
The hotel where we were checked in was in the suburbs, the district of Primavalle. Across the street is Pineto Regional Park. It is far behind Vatican City. A bus stop is right in front of the hotel. It is a short bus ride to Cornelia. The metro reached Cornelia only in the year 2000. From there another bus has to bring us to the final destination, usually inside the Aurelian walls.
The road in front of the hotel
On the third evening we ended up in a restaurant which would probably be considered to be typical. There were no individual tables. Guests were put together on long benches alongside big tables. There was no menu. Everybody got the same selection of an antipasti, primi, secondi and desert. The concept increased communication between the guests on the large tables. We had a great time and plenty of wine was consumed. It was after midnight when we eventually started our bus odyssey back to our hotel in the outskirts.
The bus stop in front of the hotel when coming from the city center
The city bus safely brought us to the bus stop across the street from the hotel entrance. While the bus pulled away we walked to the middle of the street to start crossing. Suddenly a car appeared out of the darkness from where the taillights of the bus were disappearing. What happened in the next split of a second I don’t remember. I think I was rolling across the bonnet and windscreen of the car. Then I do remember that I was lying in the street with my lower leg at a strange angle. I didn’t feel any pain. My friend was lying somewhere close to me in the middle of the lane.
A pedestrian crossing some way from the bus stop
The next glimpse of memory is from the inside of an ambulance. While the ambulance was moving they were busy cutting away my trousers and sweater. It’s a shame about the stuff, I thought. Various tubes connected some suspended bottles with fluids to my arm. Their comments in Italian were incomprehensible to me.
Ambulance passing hotel and bus stop towards Gemelli hospital at day time
On May 13, 1981 Pope John Paul II rode in an open white jeep during a general audience in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City when he was shot by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a 23-year-old Turk. He was
seriously wounded in the abdomen and hand. The Pope underwent emergency surgery at the Vatican hospital Agostino Gemelli and survived. The attacker was caught immediately and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. Later the Pope forgave Ağca and asked the Italian president to pardon him. He was deported to Turkey in 2000. Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005. The bullet that struck him was later placed in the crown of the Virgin Mary at Fátima. A plaque was placed in the ground where the attack happened, on St. Peter’s square. In 2009 a statue of Pope John Paul II was placed at the main entrance to the hospital.
Statue of pope John Paul II at the main entrance to Agostino Gemelli hospital
Rome has numerous hospitals which all look like cities in the city where doctors rule like kings without a crown. Agostino Gemelli is their capital. With 1,575 beds, it is the second-largest hospital in Italy, the largest hospital in Rome and one of the largest private hospitals in Europe. In 2015 alone, almost 95,000 patients were hospitalized and more than 45,000 surgical operations were conducted. 80,000 patients were treated in the Emergency Department, 10,000 blood dialysis sessions and more than 6 million radiological procedures were conducted. The hospital staff includes more than 5,000 employees, of whom there are almost 1,000 physicians and more than 2,000 nurses. Every day, the hospital premises and the whole campus host an estimated number of 30,000 people.
The main entrance to Agostino Gemelli hospital
The hospital had other famous patients like the politicians Giulio Andreotti, Walter Veltroni and Francesco Cossiga, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mother Teresa, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, soccer players Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi and Canadian filmmaker Damian Pettigrew. The popes, usually elderly men, are regular guests. Recently pope Leo XIV was treated there for lung cancer.
In the hospital bed after the accident
Agostino Gemelli hospital was just down the road from the hotel where the accident happened. I remember that they were pushing us on stretchers through some narrow corridors of the emergency ward and in the morning I found myself in a room with two other traffic accident victims. I was lying on my back. Both my right leg and arm were pointing up and stretched with weights. I still was able to move the left leg and arm as long as the upper body stayed put on the bed.
Visitors were few
Next to me in the center bed was Marco, a young policeman from Rome. In the course of time I learned that he had been hit while riding his scooter. He already had been here for a while and they were still busy treating a complicated fracture in his left leg which was pointing up like mine and fixed in an external fixator.
The main entrance of Agostino Gemelli from the top of the next building
Close to the door was Luigi, a middle-aged truck driver from Sicily. He had a frontal collision with his truck. His leg was crushed while he was squeezed into the cabin behind his driver seat. He also had been here for a long time, leg in a cast and pointing up.
The main hospital building
Luigi never had any visitors. That was different for Marco. Since he was from Rome a part of his extended family was there at each lunchtime. They brought fruit, snacks and in particular wine. The wine came in unlabeled bottles from the vineyard of Marco’s father. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand a word of their conversations.
Bridge linking different buildings of the hospital
Breakfast in an Italian hospital isn’t much more than a big bowl of lukewarm cafe-latte and a cracker. This deficit was compensated by lunch and dinner, both three courses with primi, secondi and a desert. Each came with a glass of wine, choice of red or white. The antibiotics I got, to deal with the open fracture in my leg, were washed down with a mouth-full of wine. Soon Marco’s father discovered that it was hard for me to subsist on one glass only, for each meal. So he regularly came with his bottles to my bed and with the words “bebe, ragazzo, bebe”, he poured a serving into my open mouth until the wine started to drip down the side of my chin. Then he stuffed me with his grapes.
Agostino Gemelli main entrance
Especially appreciated was the attention of Marco’s starlet-like, beautiful wife. She had soon noticed that I had some trouble getting the long spaghetti of the primi into my mouth or cut the milanese of the secondi into palpable chunks with one hand only. So each lunch time she sat down next to me and hand-fed me the most complicated parts of lunch. The staff did not have time for such personalized attention and therefore for dinner, which was outside the visiting hours, I had to manage myself and without the support of additional wine.
Bridge linking the hospital wards
If you want to supplement your breakfast or have water or soft-drinks you need some money and somebody to get it. The hospital not only has a supermarket but also canteens, cafeterias, one restaurant, one bookshop and two medical libraries. In 2015 the 130 seat MediCinema theatre was opened which can accommodate patients in wheelchairs and beds. There are locations for “cinematherapy” and relief therapy for patients and their family members.
The bridge again
Fortunately in the afternoon the bus driver arrived. He had collected my stuff from the hotel room and left it in the wardrobe. They also had informed family about what had happened. In a time without mobile phones and without a bed-side phone it was very difficult to get into contact with the outside world.
Outside stairway and lift of one of the buildings
Each day a serious and worried group of doctors around a little, dignified looking, grey and calm professore arrived to review the situation of each patient. Accompanying assistants took notes of the necessary measures. So also on my first afternoon here. Of course I did not understand a word when they turned to my case. Eventually it turned out that one of the assistant doctors spoke some English and could answer my questions posed in a mixture of English and Spanish. The open fracture in the right lower leg was splintered and had to be realigned with the weights. After the initial swelling was gone a nail probably could be inserted. The right arm was broken in the shoulder and probably would need an operation as well. There was no way that I would be able to leave this hospital in the near future.
Most of the staff, patients and visitors arrive by car
My friend was in the women’s ward. She had ended up with a broken leg as well. There was no way that we could be placed in a common room together. This is a catholic hospital. The kindness of the staff made it possible that we regularly exchanged written notes. A couple of times when one of us was hauled to radiology they also managed to move both beds into an empty room for a chat.
The main driveway on the hospital terrain
So I had to accept my fate to lie in this bed in more or less horizontal position for an unknown time. How to waste the waiting time between the meals? There was no television in the room and mobile phones still had to be invented. Fortunately I never travel without a selection of books which were in my bag.
Courtyard of the hospital
One of the books was “Deutsche Suite” by the German author Herbert Rosendorfer. The novel is about the rise of Hermanfried Schneemoser, a half-gorilla, who had been conceived during a Carnival party in the arts academy in Munich in 1931. The drunken aristocratic princess Gicki had taken the gorilla for a particularly well disguised fellow student. Despite his strong hair growth which obliges him to shave several times a day Hermanfried rises high in politics in Munich. I don’t recommend to read this book while you are in hospital and every minor movement causes a fit of pain. Because it is so funny that you don’t stop to burst out into fits of laughter. My room mates probably thought my alternating loud chuckles and sighs of pain were a sign of a mental problem resulting from the accident. I don’t know whether I was able to explain the essence of the story well enough for them to understand….
Main entrance to the hospital campus
Nevertheless my command of Italian began to improve somehow. After the initial attempt to use an Italianized version of Spanish I started to learn essential words, which, however, were strongly influenced by the medical environment. Words like “letto”, “padella”, “pappagallo” or “gesso” are still solidly engraved in my limited Italian vocabulary.
Main road leading from Cornelia to the hospital
Rosendorfer was born in Italy and worked as a judge at the court in Munich for 24 years. Nevertheless he was able to write a large variety of different works, novels as well as books about history, theater plays and movie scripts. Some of his novels also play in Italy and he has written books and guidebooks about Rome which were published after the events described here had happened.
In the background the Dome of St. Peter
Like in any hospital the staff was overworked. My Italian room mates commented this with additional vocabulary which I remember but do not want to repeat here. The trauma ward had a particular good hand in selecting lovely and good-looking nurses to cheer their patients up. One of the events where their help was indispensable was when the “padella” or “pappagallo” had to be used. With all the good food and wine intake there had to be some residue to be disposed off. For the use of the first the nurse had to lift the body onto the device and later remove it. The latter I could manage myself. Sometimes after the corresponding activity was finished it took a while until the nurse came to remove the full device. After a particularly extensive use of the “pappagallo” I must have fallen asleep before the nurse arrived to take the full container away. It toppled over and soiled the bed to a degree that the bed sheets had to be exchanged.
The entrance to St. Peter
Meanwhile a new attraction appeared. 1986 was the year of the soccer world championship in Mexico. Marco’s family managed to get the permission and brought a television into our room. For all I know it was the only television in the entire ward. Only the games where Italy played were followed. This gave our rooms the undivided attention of both fellow patients and staff on duty.
St. Peter square
Italy played in group A which also had Bulgaria and South Korea and the future world champion Argentina. Especially in the game Italy – Argentina our room came to boiling point. Every patient of the ward who was able to move and stand was there. The conundrum must have been heard over quite a part of the hospital. It was in particular tragic that the Neapolitan hero, Diego Maradona, played for the adversary. And in minute 34 he scored. The game ended in a draw. Eventually Italy was kicked out on June 17th in the round of 16 against France. Afterwards the television disappeared. Diego Maradona, the traitor, kept playing and won against Germany in the final.
The colonnades around St. Peter square
After some weeks I was ready for surgery. While this went well with the leg it had to be repeated for the shoulder. Afterwards much of myself was hidden behind a cast: the right leg up to the groin, and the entire upper body with the right arm extended at right angles at the shoulder and the elbow with only a couple of fingers able to move. But protected as I was in this armor I was allowed to get up and be moved around in a wheel chair if I found somebody willing to push me.
Inside of the dome of St. Peter
That is how I met other long time residents. A chubby polish guy with a cast along his entire leg with a couple of hoses sticking out slowly but regularly paced up and down the aisle, walkman on his head. At the time that was not only a quite recent gadget, but also a new development… the beginning of an era where the bigger part of humanity is closed off to the influx of the outside world by having the ears covered by some device of variable size.
The nave of St Peter
The guy had come from Poland on a bus trip to visit the holy sites of the catholic church in Italy. First stop was in Assisi. When the poor pelgrim took a rest from the exhaustion and the wealth of impressions on the perimeter wall of a fountain which probably had already served as a resting place of holy Franciscus a bus backed up and hit the wall. Between bus and wall was his leg, which was squashed. He was brought to the emergency ward of the hospital in Perugia, where they did not see another measure than amputation. Fortunately for him an assistant doctor who just had graduated from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore whose medical faculty is based at Agostino Gemelli hospital had the idea that they might be able to help him there. Consequently he was flown to Rome by helicopter. That had been a year ago. In the meantime the magician doctors at Gemelli had puzzled back together all the little parts left of the bones in his leg, added some missing parts from elsewhere and he was of good hope that he would be able to walk again, albeit with a stick.
The university Cattolica dell Sacro Cuore Agostino Gemelli
The reputation of Agostino Gemelli is such that everybody in Italy knows the hospital. If there are complicated cases where other hospitals are at their limits they try to get them taken over in Rome. The fellow patients as well as the staff came from all over Italy. And foreign countries...
The university building
The university Cattolica del Sacro Cuore occupies the northern part of the extensive grounds of the hospital. Parts are in historic buildings. On-site housing for medical students is provided. The admission test of the School of Medicine "Agostino Gemelli" is highly selective. There are written and oral entry tests. In 2017 there were 8907 candidates for 300 seats. The hospital hosts facilities for both basic and clinical research. In 2015 alone, 1500 scientific papers were published, with 323 scientific experiments underway and 17 patents developed by internal researchers thanks to €16,000,000 in research funds, provided by Italian, European and international agencies.
Swiss guard and nun at the entrance to the private part of the Vatican
The Pole’s problem was that he did not have any money. His Polish zloty were not convertible and worthless in the western world. He was not even able to buy a bottle of water. And here we come back to John Paul II who had started his career as Karel Wojtyla in Poland. In his despair he wrote a letter to the pope asking for his help. And not for nothing. The pope offered him a monthly pension of 100 $ for the time he had to stay in the hospital. That was an amount of money he never had before. It was enough to buy the necessities during his stay in the hospital and the walkman and tapes. If he stayed here long enough he would get back to Poland a rich man.
The swiss guard, the army of the Vatican
That actually raised the question in my own head who would pay for my treatment. Nobody had demanded an insurance card. I asked the doctors during their daily visit. They said that they where here to cure the patients and not to collect their money. Payment would be the problem of the administration. I did not have the feeling that the bureaucracy of the hospital were their favorites. In fact, Agostino Gemelli provides free medical care as part of the Italian national health system. However, they also have hotel-style wards for those willing to pay for private assistance. Eventually I handed in my insurance details and I never heard anything from the administration.
Store selling workwear for the clergy
During my wheel chair wanderings along the aisles of the ward I had another accident. An old woman pushing a wheel chair collided her patient with my wheel chair. My broken leg was in between. Although it was in the cast it hurt quite a bit since the other wheel chair got stuck on my unprotected foot sticking out from the cast. I guess that didn’t help a lot. But worse was to come.
Devotionalia sold in Vatican city
After around 5 weeks they told me that they it would be acceptable to let us be flown to a hospital in Germany. A top-rank orthopedic clinic specialized in accident traumas was ready to accept me there. The question was how to get there. I did not have a travel insurance. Lufthansa required the booking of at least 4 business class seat, two for us, one for an accompanying doctor and a nurse. Eventually Al Italia was able to do it with just a business class seat for each of us.
In 2012 the pope was Benedict XVI
An ambulance brought us to the airport where a little engine was waiting for its passengers to Munich. Entry was via a ladder but they had an ingenious device with three wheels on both sides which could be used to pull us up like in a wheel chair. My friend was pulled up and positioned in her seat without difficulties. Then it was my turn. Getting up there was no issue. However, between the entrance and the cabin was a narrow gangway with a toilet on a side and the kitchen on the other. With my stretched out leg and extended arm in a cast I did not fit through. Eventually they pulled me out of the three wheeled chair and horizontally lifted me through the narrow passage in a cork screw way. A had much less weight then, I guess. The plane took off, it was a quiet flight. Oddly enough I had taken the same flight on a return trip from a visit to China only 2 month before.
In contrast to Rome the plane was connected to a jet bridge in Munich. The Italian cabin staff now knew how to corkscrew me out of the plane onto the bridge. At the base of the bridge an ambulance was waiting to bring us to our next hospital, more than 150 km away. To get us into the ambulance we had to be transported on a ladder again – now downhill. Again it went smooth with my friend, I guess with a girl they took special care. Or I was a bit heavier. Anyway, they let me drop halfway down the stairs. I did not break any of the unprotected parts. The fractures were protected by the cast and fortunately it was quite solid. Only the cask of the arm which extended outward broke loose somehow.
A selection of holy virgins for sale
I spent another two month in the German hospital. But this story is about Agostino Gemelli in Rome and the rest is another story. It took almost a year to heal the consequences of the accident. Since the time the position of the right foot is a bit odd. Maybe as a consequence of one of the subsequent mishaps. However, this did not impose any limits on my activities. A check up 10 years later in the German hospital confirmed that the damage had healed good enough that the planned hiking trip in the Patagonian Andes would not be a problem. It is a pity that I have lost touch to Luigi, Marco and the Pole – I hope they recovered well.
Sources:
Herbert Rosendorfer, “Deutsche Suite”, Diogenes, Zürich 1972, ISBN 3-257-01493-7
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