My most recent adventure began on March 20. Steve and I had backed out of our Bulgaria, Romania, and Istanbul plan (flights were too expensive) and opted instead for Italy, falsely assuming the weather would be pleasant. We paid only about $100 for a round trip flight but we really didn't adequately prepare ourselves for a 10 day ass fucking on behalf of a currency known as the Euro. After a brief and unfulfilling sleep, I awoke to darkness at 4 AM and made my way to the airport. Steve and I missed our 4:50 metro ride and caught the next one at 5:00... ten minutes that, in hindsight, could have cost us dearly. The commute to the airport was misery beyond description... After sprinting through an endless procession of terminals, we arrived at the SkyEurope desk at about 6:00 and our flight was scheduled to depart at 6:20. The receptionist reluctantly granted us our boarding passes and the sprint to the plane continued. I kinda felt like I was in a tightly edited, fast paced, action sequence in a film. Just as the gates were about to close, we slipped onto the plane and high fived... said "fuck, yeah" multiple times.
Our first impression of Milan was indifference. The city, an economic hub situated just to the south of the Italian alps, lacked aesthetically pleasing architecture. Like Dresden and Berlin, Milan had apparently experienced the wrath of the U.S. Air Force during WWII. We arrived at our hostels and discovered that the receptionists knew little, if any, English. They offered us breakfast for 2 or 3 euros, which amounted to undrinkable coffee and pre-packaged toast and a croissant. As I attempted to spread margarine on the "toast," the food crumbled into a saw dust-like consistency. I turned to Steve with a demoralized look and chuckled. No doubt, this hostel was about as shitty as they come. Or so we thought in that moment...
Steve and I spent a mild and sunny afternoon on top of the Milan cathedral, the third largest in the world, discussing God and other such things. The cathedral offered 360 degree panoramic views of the city from countless vantage points. I had felt flu-like most of the day and the two of us didn't feel like staying out late, so we decided to make it an early night and head back to the hostel. I read a couple pages of Band of Brothers and passed our cold. I awoke the next morning to discover another human in a bunk across the room. When this person regained consciousness, he identified himself as Jerry and spoke with a British accent. When Steve, Jerry, and I attempted to exit our room, we discovered the door had no handle and we were locked inside. After a brief panic, assuming we would be subjected to a violent and torturous death, as depicted in the film"Hostel," we decided to climb out our window (thankfully we were only on the first floor). We spent the day walking around Milan with Jerry exchanging stories of our travels. Jerry had recently been and Rome and seemed to have enjoyed his experience, but told a shockingly horrible story: he had been walking down a street in Rome and observed some commotion ahead -- traffic moving erratically and a motionless object in the road. Upon closer examination, Jerry discovered that this object was a middle aged woman who had been run over by a vehicle. Blood had splattered the pavement, a bone was protruding from her flesh, and her foot was detached from her body. According to Jerry, the car responsible had vacated the scene of the accident, and no motorists had stopped to assist this potentially mortally wounded woman. Eventually, ambulances arrived but Jerry wasn't sure if the woman lived or not. It never ceases to amaze me how inhumane people can be toward one another and how easy it is for individuals to adopt a herd mentality.
That night, Steve and I boarded a train and departed for Florence. Because we paid such a low cost for our train ticket, we didn't get a reservation. After twenty minutes of riding, other passengers boarded and confiscated my seat, forcing me to wander from cart to cart, then eventually stand for the remainder of the three hour journey. We arrived in Florence to a torrential downpour and plodded through the streets in search of our campsite on the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately, I had neglected to bring adequate footwear. Stuck with my inadequate, shredded shoes, I plopped through mud puddles and quickly drenched my socks. After a couple hours of walking (public transit appeared non-existant) we arrived at the campsite and were guided to a non-insulated, canvas, tent-like apparatus with a couple bunk beds with thin sheets. Steve and I hung our wet clothes and crawled into our bunks and experienced a thoroughly unpleasant and frigid evening. When we awoke the next morning, my clothes (and most importantly socks) were still damp and unwearable. I switched to a fresh pair of socks, but within a few minutes of walking around in the morning, they were completely drenched. I felt like a GI in the first few days of a tour in Vietnam, slugging through the mud on the verge of contracting gangreen or trench foot.
That morning, I was struggling to store my stuff in a locker, which only offered instructions in Italian, and met a wildly energetic, random, and extroverted girl from Seattle named Miriam. She asked me if she could store her giant backpack in my tent. I saw no problem with this but was a little surprised this girl, who I had known for about ten minutes, was so trustworthy of others. She told me she had been crashing on couches for about two months, mostly around France and England, that she had never attended high school, and lived her life on the road. I wondered how this girl, who looked to be about 15 or 16 (I later learned she was 18), could financially support herself for so long... I also wondered what she was running from. The answer to my first question was answered. I still don't know the answer to the second.
Miriam, Steve, and I walked over to a nearby bluff and I was blown away by the sheer beauty of Florence. While Milan seemed like a modern, industrial hub, Florence was a historical gem with most every building preserved from the Renaissance. We walked down the hill and encountered mobs of tourists along the Arno River, and crossed over Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), one of the most well known parts of the city. We decided to find a restaurant off the beaten path, but Miriam insisted that we make it quick so she could get to The Duomo (cathedral) in time for "Free Hugs Day." I'm still baffled by the phenomenon, but she claimed it was an event in which scores of tourists congregate and hug each other for "free." Suffice to say, I wasn't too ecstatic about the idea...
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