The rocky start quickly became a very long, tumultuous
journey. I laughed, cried, and acted all together like a mad woman, doing
everything in my power not to yell. All I wanted was to get to France. That’s
it.
I had even prayed for the first time in ages, inspired by
the Vatican and an optimistic outlook on my upcoming adventures. I’m honestly
not trying to offend anyone. I’m just laying out the facts. Every. Single.
Time. I prayed for something, things got worse. I prayed for a safe, easy
journey for Cassie. From the moment she arrived in Italy, our trip was plagued
with misfortune. Even the weather took a nasty, unpredicted turn.
Upon arriving at the station on our final day in Rome, we
were informed that no trains were going out to Lyon. However, we were told we
could go to Milan, then catch a train to Lyon from there.
So we sped off to Milan. Once there, we took a number waited
to get called up to the ticket office. There were over 100 numbers ahead of us
so we decided to grab some food in the meantime. When Cassie reached for her
wallet, it was nowhere to be found—she had left it on the previous train. And
inside she had her ID, passport, credit card, and all her cash.
We hauled ass back to the terminal and found the train had
already moved on toward the next destination. After a near-panic attack and following
several failed leads, we ended up at customer service and were able to contact
a worker on the train. Luckily, someone had found the wallet and turned it in.
The train would be returning 3 hours later so we could wait around and pick up that
little, zebra print wallet that evening.
After that was sorted, we went back to the ticket window
where our number thankfully still hadn’t been called. I asked the Good Lord to
get us to Lyon, but when we got called up, we discovered the train we were told
to catch doesn’t actually exist. Which made sense, considering the luck we’d
been having. We could take a train to Geneva, Switzerland, then from there continue
to Lyon. Unfortunately the last train was leaving before 7pm and we needed to
stick around to get Cassie’s wallet back. Every other option would leave before
7pm as well.
Stuck in Milan, we made the best of our situation and
decided to drink the wine I had brought from Tuscany and dye our hair—maybe
even check out the Duomo that night! Of course, the weather was once again
against us. As we walked to our hostel, we were fighting the wind and rain,
until we finally ended up entirely soaked. At the last block we heard the low
rumblings of thunder and saw a flash of lightening. Clearly, we would be
staying in tonight. (Wondering around in thunder and lightening is never a
brilliant move, but Cassie has a deep fear of being stuck by lightening, so
it’s completely out of the question.)
Despite the lightening, we had a good time. Growing up,
there were three fool-proof methods my mom used to improve her mood, all of
which I tend to agree with: retail therapy, dark chocolate, and a glass of
wine. While shopping may have been out of our reach, chocolate and wine were
readily accessible. I took the souvenir chocolate I wasn’t able to send home
(dark cinnamon chocolate from the Lombardy region) and a bottle of red wine
from Tuscany and we began a very girly night in. By the end of the night, I had
bright red tips, Cassie’s roots were a shade darker, and we had made a new
friend from Singapore. Ash talked and drank wine with us and upon hearing the ferocious
growling coming from Cassie’s stomach, made us dinner at 2 in the morning.
It was at this point that I began to see a BIG silver
lining. I went online and was verifying reservations, when I realized I had
gotten my dates all jumbled and lost track entirely. Originally, we had planned
to take an overnight train to Lyon…which we both completely forget about. So in
the end we weren’t missing a reservation at all and had ended up with a place
to stay on a night when we didn’t actually have a reservation in the first
place.
After sleeping in, we took the metro to our first station (from
where we had been told we could get to Geneva). The lady helping us clearly
wanted us gone. She just said yes to everything and pointed vaguely behind her
and said to take the train leaving in 42 minutes. I was a little concerned
because the train we had looked up was supposed to leave in 28 minutes, and in
my experience trains are rarely delayed that significantly in Europe.
We got on, but I couldn’t shake this uneasy feeling. I
finally couldn’t take it anymore and asked the man across from us about the
destination. After laughing for a good long time, he told us that the train was
headed to Genoa, not Geneva. Lovely.
We quickly exited the train and went back to confront the
lady once again. This time I carefully wrote “Geneva, Switzerland” on a sheet
of paper and gave it to her. No such train existed. She sent us back to Central
Station.
By this point, I wasn’t frustrated or angry, just entirely
dejected. I had stopped having any reaction and just expected things to fail.
This was my rock bottom. We went back to Central station and found that Geneva
was (of course) not an option here either.
All I knew was, I needed to get to France. That’s it. I
needed to get out of Italy. Regional trains tend to be fairly regular and
simple to figure out, while the international lines were seemingly impossible. I
felt like Italy was quicksand and we were sinking at an inexplicably fast rate.
Once we got in the right country, we could figure it out from there.
With my broken Italian, I just kept asking for options. “No”
was not an acceptable answer for me. I had become determined to get my ass to
France. Nice? That’s gunna have to do. From there, we could get to Paris the
next day.
So now, we’re in the train to Ventimiglia, which should transfer to Nice. I’m not
entirely sure what happened to change our luck so drastically, but I sincerely
hope things start looking up.
And I’ve definitely learned my lesson about prayer…bad luck
seems to follow closely behind!
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