Off to Milan!

August 16th

This morning all hell broke loose. We were cleaning the apartment in preparation to leave for Milan in the early afternoon, and were about ready to leave when I realized that I couldn't find my Eurail pass. I usually kept it in my money belt, but it had, to my horror, disappeared. We were already running late, but I frantically threw everything out of my backpack to search for my pass. I threw rumpled (and slightly smelly) clothes over my shoulder, scoured my backpack, and began to panic when I still couldn't find it after a thorough search of all my stuff. Tim even looked through his stuff with the slight hope that somehow he had picked up my pass by accident. But it was nowhere to be found. My heart started racing: the pass was around $400, and I needed it for two more weeks of travel on who knows how many more trains. But we already had reservations for our train to Milan, so we set out for the train station via the metro. At the metro stop, Jessi came running up behind me: I had left a bag of electronic cords at her house! I was so relieved that she caught us in time. On the metro, hot tears began to form in the corners of my eyes- I didn't even know if they would let me on the train without my pass, but I didn't have time to buy a whole ticket before boarding. We rushed to the station, boarded the train, and sat down. And then I decided to look just one more time-just to be safe. But I still couldn't find it. Then Tim tapped me on the shoulder. He pulled out his wallet, reached inside, and retrieved my beautiful, wonderful, perfect Eurail pass. I didn't know if I felt like laughing or crying- whatever I felt, it was a very, very good place to be :)

On the train, Tess had a broken seat so the conductor moved us to this plush first -class private box at the very front of the train- it was so nice! After 7 hours we arrived in Milan around 9:30 PM, and had to wait in line to reserve our train the next morning to Florence. The air was sticky, but Italy already felt less stuffy than Paris in terms of the culture: everyone in Italy seemed a whole lot more friendly and relaxed, and it made sense! Italian sounded so beautiful, and even the little girls in line who were running around screaming their heads off sounded like mini enlightened poets- the rhythmic words slid off their tongues like smooth jazz, and I was in awe. Even the bus drivers in Italy were friendly. We timidly asked a bus driver perched outside his bus eating a slice of pizza dripping with hot cheese where bus #60 was, and he quickly whipped his head inside his bus and yelled in Italian: "Does anyone speak English?!" Everyone on the bus turned their eyes toward us, and shook their heads "no." Strangely enough, none of the passengers appeared annoyed by our disruption of their bumpy commute home. They all looked so darn happy to be sitting on a bus at 10:30 at night in Milan- don't ask me why :) Laura, who is regularly blessed with strokes of genius, said "sesenta" (60 in Spanish), and the driver let out a loud "Ahh!" and pointed us to the other side of the street. Our bus was just about to leave when we boarded- luck seemed to be on our side that night.

The only damper to the evening came when I attempted to pull my 35 pound backpack off my back and onto the seat just as the bus was pulling out. Apparantly, driving in Italy doesn't quite match the laid-back lifestyle of this pasta-eating, rhythmically speaking country. I slammed against the window, and my backpack slid down my arm, leaving a gnarly looking bruise. Defeated, I sat down to nurse my battle wound until we got to our hotel- or so we thought. We walked up a long flight of stairs to a front desk where a young Italian guy sat glued to the computer screen, watching a YouTube hip-hop video titled "Come Turn Me On" or something grotesquely and distinctly American like that. He quickly exited out of the page and turned his attention to us, but couldn't find our reservation! Before we could say "Ay, Mio!" he whisked out his phone, called someone, and then told us we had a reservation at the hotel next door. At the other place, we had a cute little room with four rock-hard beds lined up in a row, and a hideous flower painting mounted on the opposite wall. Since we had been on the rain for 7 hours, none of us were all that tired. So we all laid in our beds, staring at the cieling in the unforgiving humidity. Maybe it was the insanity of traveling, or the fact that we were in a strange, random place just for the night. But something struck, and we all began laughing hysterically for no good reason. It was glorious.