How to Get Lost part I

I've always prided myself with being good with directions and having mastered the Italian public transport months ago. The game changes at Bologna Statzione Centrale.
I had been touring Italy with my mom (real mom) and we had decided to hit up Parma, home of the famed Parmesean Cheese, on our way to Milano. My mom was excited about the notoriously good cheese and wines, whereas I was focused on the prospect of Parma's distinguished Ham Museum (any town that has an entire museum dedicated to the art of Ham has got to be pretty great). Parma is famous for abosulety nothing else but its ham and cheese, which, in my year long culinary crusade merits a quick visit.
Apart from being gastronomically significant, the Emilia Romagna region (or all of Italy for that matter) is also notorious for its lack of helpful signage. Once you set foot out of your hotel you are on your own to discern the tangled mess of streets that is the Italian Infrastructure.  Some train stations are much the same (Ahem, Bologna (not pronounced baloney)).
I bought our ticket and found the platform from which the train would depart. After half hour wait, the train arrived (though the board showed a suspiciously different destination from that which I had expected, no alarms were going off in my head to indicate the empending misfortune which was to befall us).
After lugging our heavy luggage onto the train and after stowing it safely away, I (being the slightly paranoid master of public transport that I am) asked one of the other passengers if this train was going to Parma. Which, in fact, it most certainly was not, the man kindly informed me as the train slid out of the station bound on a non-stop journey for Verona. After explaining in my most polite and frustrated-touristy Italian to the ticket-tacker our error, we hunkered down for the hour to Verona, and the hour trip that we would have to bring back. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that you are zooming in the complete opposite direction than that of your destination at circa 200 miles per hour through an albeit, glorious Veneto countryside. Picturesque terrain accompanyed us all the way to the heart of the Veneto region and Verona.