Chapter 14: Ha! Idiot.

So I’ve come to Rome… without a camera. Yes, that’s right, no camera. Here in this hand we have my new fantastically brilliant camera with its fantastically brilliant photo taking abilities. In the other we have every tourist’s dream city with enough photo ops to take out a charging rhino. Shall we bring the two together? Eh, nah, not this time. I’ll just let my camera chill on my bed back in San Guistino for a bit while I take the sightseeing trip of my life. Yeah, smooth.

In reality the loss is actually for all you readers, not me, so I’m sorry. I’m actually quite lucky. I was THIS* close to forgetting my coat, and it is COLD here. Then in the last split second as I was scrambling into the car I remembered the coat—but not the camera.

Now, yet again, I know what you’re thinking (sheesh, I must be psychic, I know all your thoughts so well). You probably think you’re thinking “Well that’s nice that at least she’ll be warm even if she doesn’t have the camera.” Yes, well, there’s a tiny little part of you that’s thinking “Man, I wish she’d forgotten the coat and remembered the camera. Then the story would be twice as exciting and I’d have the pictures to prove it.”

Well to that disappointed half of you, I have some things to point out which may help. First of all if I had in fact forgotten the coat and remembered the camera, I’d probably be shivering so much that all my pictures would come out so blurry you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.

Secondly, this is ROME we’re talking about. Every picture I could possibly take has already been taken at least a thousand times before me by at least a thousand other slightly brighter minded tourists. I promise that if you type “Coliseum” into a Google picture search engine then the picture I never took will pop up right there. Here try this one out: http://www.applelanguages.com/en/gallery/italy/rome/coliseum.jpg. Amazing isn’t it? It’s like magic.

* A technical figure meaning really incredibly tiny.

Chapter 13: He’s Big

We went to Florence yesterday. Rainy rainy rainy. We started with the Uffizi gallery until we’d seen enough medieval nativity scenes to last through this life and the next several and were also hungry enough to last through this life and the next several. Florence actually wasn’t much easier than Assisi. We wandered the streets forever trying to find a restaurant that wasn’t 100% tourist. Finally we gave up and went to a trattoria that was located sort of out of the way but with which we hadn’t been too impressed when we’d passed it earlier. Turns out we weren’t wrong. The food was sort of mediocre half decentish at best. I got a plate of risotto which wasn’t very much like risotto and was very much like a pile of rice with a few mushrooms. Nothing to write home about. So naturally here I am writing home about it. Hmm…

Next stop was Michelangelo’s David. He was… big. Really big. And the other Michelangelos in the Accademia were gorgeous as well. Aagh, I just love Michelangelo, that man is brilliant. His sculptures are just so… gah, I can’t take them they’re so incredible. His unfinished works just look so alive and moving, like there are people trapped in these rocks who are trying to get out. They’re absolutely beautiful.

After that, I’m sorry to admit it, we ran out of things to do. Yeah, I know, I know, it’s Florence and we ran out of things to do. More accurately I should say we ran out of things that didn’t cost €6 to do. I was actually less impressed with Florence than I thought I would be. Again I’m sorry to admit it. Still, the day was nice even if it was rainy. As far as I’m concerned we could have had the worst time ever and it would have been worth it for Michelangelo.

Chapter 12: Saint Francis and the Cheese Fort

Assisi—well that’s where we went today. Go figure.

The journey started with us being totally confused as to how exactly we were supposed to get to Assisi, and then us being very proud of ourselves for being able to understand and communicate enough Italian to get us there without trouble (for once). We just missed the bus once we got to the Assisi station, so we took a detour to a church, changed some money (whoopee!) and got totally rained in. I mean, wow, it was raining. And then suddenly out of nowhere it stopped and we were free to go, leaving me thinking, what is this, New Mexico?

We caught the next bus, rode it up a long winding towards what looked like total awesomeness, and then found ourselves dropped off at the very top with absolutely zero idea of where we were, what we were doing, or how to get there. I at this point decided to use a very sophisticated method of decision making. I sort of flailed my arm about and then looked at where it ended up.

“Uh… that way.”

And off we went, straight out the gates and out of Assisi entirely. Actually it gave us a fantastic view. Then we decided it might be a worthwhile idea to actually go into Assisi since that’s what we came to see. We found a brown sign (brown signs mean “interesting thing this way”) that pointed towards the Rocca Maggiore and decided to follow it, even if we had no idea what the Rocca Maggiore was.

Olllllllllllki hu;ulhlubluh (Yeah, um, that was Elisabeth feeling she needed to contribute something to my blog. We can continue now.)

We soon found ourselves winding through the cutest streets you’ve ever seen in your life, or ever not seen if you’ve never been to Assisi—cobblestone streets, twisting houses, red tiled roofs, flowerpots bursting in every window, persimmon trees peeking out from behind garden walls, little balconies with laundry hanging out, ivy clinging around painted green shutters lying half open, smells of the absolute best food leaking out from said shutters. And absolutely no one to be seen anywhere at all. We also got some excellent views of the valley below as we hiked purposefully up towards a very stony looking fort thingy, just because it looked like the sort of stony looking fort thingy that one should probably hike purposefully towards.

It was a long and tiring trek up there, but luckily we got to take many breaks in the name of photography and finally we did make it up there. We climbed to the top of a grassy little hill and looked up at the formidable face of the fort thingy in front of us… and realized we were at the back and still had to go around to the other side.

So we set off heroically once more, battling slippery slopes and treacherous parking lots until we turned the corner and… were faced with another really freaking huge wall staring back at us. And when I say huge wall… I really mean huge wall. The whole place was just colossal, heightened by the fact that it was entirely solitary atop this hill and we were the only ones in sight except for a couple Asians who decided it wasn’t worth it and quit. And then it was just us and this huge wall. Felt like Frodo at the gates of Mordor.

We, however, valiantly strode on. I was at this point far too curious about the mysterious identity of the fort thingy to give up now. I would not be leaving empty handed, or empty brained as the case may be. Nevertheless we were both starting to feel somewhat empty stomached, the wind had picked up again, and little taunting sprays of rain had begun to lash down on us once more. Well according to Vanya it was beginning to spit, but I myself wasn’t one for that particular imagery. The sky seemed to say to us, “Haha! You better make a decision fast because I’m about to explode!”

I for one was really intrigued by what this fort thingy could possibly be. We had seen only one sign on the way up—the brown one pointing to the Rocca Maggiore (Major Rock? Big Rock? Best Rock?), and other than that the info count totaled zero. What was this mysteriously epic structure?

By this point we had finally figured out where the entrance was—an insignificant little opening in the side that looked more like a restoration site than a proper entrance. It was marked with some scaffolding, some rickety stairs, and a little booth with a sign announcing a €3.50 entrance fee into the fort (thingy).

Now the wind and the rain were starting to get increasingly threatening and we had to make a decision. To enter or not to enter? I personally was still very fascinated. Vanya, on the other hand, didn’t seem quite so thrilled. While she’d be willing to go in if I really wanted to go, there were other things in Assisi she’d much rather spend her time and money on, and lunch was a pending factor we were both eagerly anticipating sooner than later. I was about to submit to her preference when suddenly the realization hit me. This isn’t Albuquerque. It’s not like I can just hop in the car and come back next week without her. This is my one chance to be here, and if I want to see this then I better speak up, because the chance may never come again.

Phew, glad I had that thought.

Using the object of getting out the rain as increased leverage, I tell Vanya that I’d really, really like to pop in there, even if it’s just to see what it is and pop back out. By now we’re starting to get completely pelted with the rain, and my face is about the proper temperature for storing seafood, so I quickly shell out the €7, dash up the steps and through the door, and suddenly find myself faced with the most hilariously translated sign I’ve ever had the privilege to encounter personally (I have the pictures to prove it).

The fort thingy turned out to actually be a fort without the thingy and also, incidentally enough, turned out to be totally awesome. Towers and arrow slots and corridors and winding staircases and cryptic underground chambers and raging hearths and turrets—the whole lot, you name it. It was fantastic. I was so excited I was like a five year old.

There was one particular super creepy passageway that made the hair on your neck raise just to look at it. We found this especially interesting because, well, even dark staircases in forts, creepy as they may be, don’t usually make you feel that inclined to crawl out of your skin, and we were curious as to why this one did. So naturally I wouldn’t rest until I’d plucked up the courage to climb it and see what was at the top. After hesitantly peeking at it for about fifteen minutes on and off I finally decided to make the plunge, or the climb I suppose (I don’t think I could have brought my myself to do it if it was in fact a plunge). We dug through Vanya’s backpack and luckily enough managed to come up with a flashlight (there was absolutely no way we were climbing that thing in the dark). Then ever so slowly and tentatively I crept up the stairs, ordering my stomach to stay in place and trying to reason with my heart and make it shut up. Vanya decided to come after all, peeking around my shoulders as I winced with each step, hoping to avoid some invisible doom. We finally came over the top of the stairs and peered out at the landing. All that was there was a short passageway and a dead end. Not a clean dead end, but all sort of roughly shaped, possibly even caved in, or maybe hastily filled in later. Whatever the reason, it gave us the screaming heebity-jeebies. We couldn’t bring ourselves to go to the end. Just looking at the thing made you wish you could walk through walls and then fly so you could get out and away as fast and far as was inhumanly possible. Since we were and still are only human, we opted for going back down the stairs very, very fast, then proceeding to shudder a lot, dance the hokey pokey like nobody’s business to try to shake off the feeling, and then eat a yogurt, because naturally that’s what one must do when faced with a creepy staircase.

Overall the whole fort was fantastic. But the best part about all of it was that Vanya and I were absolutely the only people on the entire place. It was completely empty. This and the rain and wind and the lack of signs or anything else modern all heightened the eeriness, the adventure, and the general absolute awesomeness. I could totally pretend I was some soldier running around corridors and shooting people out of arrow slots, and I did, and Vanya sometimes thought I was crazy. I could fight phantom enemies on the winding staircases, I could duck behind the turrets to dive out of the way of imagined arrow-fire.

Oh, and the pigeons. Those things totally scared the crap out of me. Imagine climbing epically up a winding staircase, your imagination running wild, totally in your own little world in which you’re clad in clanking armor and you have no idea what awaits you around the next corner. Then you burst out of the top of the staircase and five pigeons scream in your ear. I nearly fell back down the whole tower I jumped so high.

Ultimately we were both really glad that we saw the Rocca Maggiore, which for some reason I suddenly wanted to call the Rocca Formaggio, which I think is much funnier. However it also put cheese on our minds, and we were quite satisfied to wave goodbye to the Cheese Fort and set off in search of a good Italian lunch. On the way down we found a most intriguing sight. There was a wall running along the road down, and at a certain section of the wall a short length of normal wire fence could be seen sticking up from behind. Every possible inch of this fence was covered in used chewing gum. It was absolutely bizarre. There was not a single piece of gum anywhere on the wall or the road or the trees or anything, but there was absolutely no space left on this fence from all the gum that had been stuck on it. Feeling quite perplexed, we took a few pictures and ventured onwards.

Now we were officially on a quest for lunch, which actually turned out to be much harder than one would expect in a land famous for its food. All the restaurants were on vacation. No really, that’s exactly what they said in the barred windows and locked doors. Sorry, we’re on vacation until next week, eat somewhere else. Which also incidentally enough turns out to be on vacation until next week, so go somewhere else, which also…. Well I think you get the idea. We got to see some excellent streets, though, and follow some excellently mispointed brown signs.

Oh those signs are hilarious. There will be a lovely neat stack of brown signs all one above the other pointing towards this church and this other church and this castle and this fort and whatnot, so you look in the direction that they’re pointing and there will inevitably be about four different streets that branch off and no further indication of which one you should take. So you take all four, and according to Murphy’s Law it’s always the fourth one which is right.

We eventually settled on getting a little panini thing in one of your average bars, which is a bar and a café and a panini place and a pizza place and a pastry shop. From there we saw another church, wandered more streets. Whenever we saw another interesting looking passage we’d just let ourselves get distracted, so we spent a good hour or two just meandering in the general direction of the Saint Francis church, the word general being used in its most broad interpretation here.

Once we found a giant arch looming over the road with one random spindly tree growing crookedly off the top. We found this to be somewhat hilarious to the point where I had to stop to take a picture. We were stopped at a bend in the road, and there was a persimmon truck rumbling towards us as I set up the shot on my lovely fancy new camera. Just as the truck reached us, camera still up to my eye, it let out a huge bang as it backfired. I nearly did a back flip into the next street. I mean holy watermelon monkeys that scared the living daylights out of me. The persimmon truck guys had to wipe their eyes on their sleeves they were laughing so hard.

Finally we made it to the church of Saint Francis, a really beautiful church I have to say. As we were coming up the path towards the door, we passed behind a huge life-sized nativity scene that was set out across the whole lawn. All the figures were dressed in real clothes. The wind was buffeting the fabric about so that you couldn’t quite tell if it was just the clothes moving or if it was the people themselves, making the whole thing look alive. It was really neat. We could also see more people walking along the path on the other side of the scene, but if you just stood back and let them blend in with the rest of it, it made the whole thing look even more real.

So, as I said, the interior of the church was gorgeous, all painted in beautiful colors with this mottled star-studded blue ceiling stretching over everything. It was really nice. No pictures allowed, though, so I was forced to buy postcards. That’s the most frustrating thing about having a fancy new camera. You’re not allowed to use it anywhere interesting.

Downstairs was Saint Francis’ tomb which was incredibly peaceful. I felt like I could sit there for hours, it was so friendly. I liked watching all the people who would come to sit or pray at his tomb, every one of them bringing a different life with them, every one of them here to be alone with a friend. That’s what it feels like sitting there. No matter how many other people are sitting around you, it’s just you and a friend and nobody to put anything between you.

After the church we decided to head back towards the bus which would take us to the bottom by the train station, and then we decided to be stupid. We could not for the life of us find any place where one might be able to purchase bus tickets (in Italy you can’t buy tickets on the bus), so we decided to assume that our earlier tickets might still be valid for the bus ride back. They were in Italian, it was perfectly plausible. Besides, no one would be checking. If they did it would be the first time anyone had done so on any of our Italian transportation.

Yeah, uh huh, €30, that’s what that kind of thinking cost us. Murphy’s Law. Gets you every time. I don’t want to tell the rest of the story, because it was just irritating. Just think of a really unfriendly controller with zero English and us being completely confused as to what’s going on with half a step up from zero Italian. Use your imagination.

Between that little episode, our total exhaustion (Assisi is a hill town), our increasing headaches, our thirst, our 45 minute wait for the train… well you can imagine that we were no longer in the highest of spirits. On the way back we boarded the wrong train at our connection stop, went entirely in the wrong direction, then leapt off the train and onto the right one just as it was pulling out of the station, none of which did anything to assist with the headaches, the exhaustion, or the stress.

However, we did finally manage to make it back to Sansepolcro and then home. At that point my mood had been lightened by the announcement that my bag had FINALLY arrived and was sitting just behind me in the back. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the math that I haven’t been giving you, this is a full week and a half after my initial arrival in Munich. Well that was absolutely fantastic news.

However.

Upon arriving back at the house, I found that not everything was entirely as expected, or at least as not hoped for. My bag arrived thus: A) totally crushed and B) drenched in maple syrup. And no I’m not kidding. I will address point A first as it is intrinsically related to point B.

The crushed things were as follows:

1. My nitnem case. Alright, I had had a suspicion that this poor thing might sustain a crack while in transport. A crack, as it turns out, is a serious misjudgment. Completely shattered would be the phrase I’d use in this case.
2. My brush. Now this was interesting. Every one of the bristles on my brush had been shoved inward so that only about half an inch was poking out from the rubber. I had to pull them out one by one.
3. A CD. When traveling with a CD in a case, you are generally aware of the possibility that the case may become cracked. Again a serious understatement. The plastic shards of my *ahem* crushed CD case actually managed to scratch all the way through the electronic film on the CD, rendering it unreadable.
4. Not the brownies. Miraculously enough.
5. My Eurailpass travel schedule books. The covers have been entirely ripped off.
   

And last but certainly not least…

6. A bottle of maple syrup.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What the heck is this bottle of maple syrup doing in your bag anyway? And why is it out free on a rampage? Well let me enlighten you.

I had received a request from my hosts in Italy to bring a bottle of maple syrup and a bottle of Cholula hot sauce. It was a last minute order so I was unable to get the hot sauce (thank god) but managed to throw in the maple syrup at the last minute.

Now again I know what you’re thinking. It’s just idiotic to let a bottle of maple syrup float free, even if the top is hermetically sealed with a vacuum that could rival outer space. Well I realize this, and I would take full responsibility for the whole ordeal if the obvious had indeed been what happened—that the plane had managed to break through even the toughest seal and leak sweet syrupy goodness over everything I own. Given the circumstances, however, I feel fully justified in my complaint. This bottle had a crack through it that would make the aftermath of a 9.8 scale earthquake whimper in inadequacy. I mean it was quite plainly… crushed. And its gleeful contents had already long vacated the premises. There was not a single drop left in that remains of a bottle. And quite a bit more than a single drop left soaked into absolutely every single article of clothing in my bag except two—a skirt and my suede boots (again I thank the mercy of the maple syrup gods).

Oh, did I forget to mention that my entire suitcase was sealed shut with crystallized syrup that had leaked through the entire length of the zippers? I think I’ll stop using super glue from now on and just use maple syrup. Took us 45 minutes of prodding, scrubbing, steaming, and heaving just to open the thing.

Nevertheless it could have been worse. None of my electronics were hit, the only one of my books which got the syrup mercifully has a plastic cover, and my mbira happened to be wrapped in the one skirt which didn’t get it either. As I mentioned earlier, as far as stupid luck goes, I was pretty thankful.

Ah yes, you remember the smooth green shininess of my former suitcase? It’s now smooth green scuffed and scratched ness. You remember the single sentinel luggage tag they put on at the Albuquerque airport? It’s now a streaming fountain of tag, a bouquet of redirections. I think they’ve attached an entire novel to the top of my suitcase.

Florence in the morning. The adventure continues.

Chapter 11: Mmm, crunchy…

I just ate the loudest meal of my life. I picked up a crouton, bit down upon it, and almost leaped three feet into the air as my ears suddenly exploded with the sound of a thousand nuclear bombs going off in the kitchen. Man. That was a really loud crouton.

Then, with my ears still ringing, I decided to explore further my deep interest in this phenomenon. I innocently took another crouton, handed it to Vanya, and suggest she try eating it. Ah, the look on her face as she bit down and had her eardrums blown out. Priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy. For just those things, there’s croutons.

Chapter 10: Market

Today we went to the local flea market in Citta’ di Castello. Every Tuesday it’s in a different town. I had my first Italian macchiato (aaaah…) along with a “coroneto con crema” as it’s called. Then Vanya and I had our first adventure with paying in Italian and discovering that in Italy lines are in fact obsolete.

Then we wandered around and looked at what lovely pieces of nothing people were selling for far too much. We found a poetry book written in old Italian (one of those old books where all the S’s look like F’s) and tried to translate one of the poems to the best of our ability. We managed to glean some things about angels and death and oblivion, but I think in general we missed the point. We also found an antique milk steamer which looked more like something the evil snow queen would keep in her dungeon as a torture device.

I did eventually end up buying some old pen-and-ink sketch because hey, I’m a sucker for pen-and-ink sketches and I figured hmm… in twenty years when I think back on this trip and look at the few bits of memorabilia I have remaining, which will I find more interesting? Some silly little plastic figurine of Michelangelo’s David from a souvenir shop or a neat pen-and-ink sketch that I haggled prices over with some old Italian guy in an antique market in Citta’ di Castello? I mean seriously, I do not think I need to point out which one has more personality.

Chapter 9: Phew

The Austrian snow queens were the best part of the train ride. After a while they sort of melted into milder hills, and then at some point you could just tell you were in Italy. Something about the way they planted their orchards, or the way they tiled the roofs. And the way they spoke Italian instead of German.

The sun sank lower and glowed redder and fuzzier through the haze, the sights grew less and less interesting and more and more foggy, I waved to Romeo and Juliet as we passed through Verona, I recited some Reduced Shakespeare Company, and then the sun called it a night and that’s what the day turned into.

We finally arrived in Arezzo, where we would be picked up. Some little girl tried to ask me what my turban was all about, but as it was my first experience with Italian it didn’t go over so well and she finally gave up on me.

We had a nice long winding drive back from Arezzo through absolutely beautiful countryside. Of course it was pitch dark but that’s not the point. We drove through the little towns that huddle together in the valley below Passano, and then we drove up the long dirt road towards Passano itself.

Passano means “place of safe passage.” The house we were staying in is Passano, a place of safe passage built around the 5^th century where passing pilgrims could find refuge as they went on their journey. Kind of like us.

Both Vanya’s and my faces broke into excited smiles as we pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of the house. Move over snow queens, this place was awesome. All out of yellow stone, various crumbling, ivy-tangled ruins standing about like friends, flowerpots in iron holders hanging beneath each window, a front door with a keyhole just made for listening to whispered secrets, and, best of all, a watchtower. I don’t know about you, but you put me in a room in a watchtower and you’ll never hear the end of it. It was freaking awesome. Not only that but we had a little tiny arched balcony in our room where you could stand and lean on a lovely iron railing and look out over the entire vast expanse of pitch black with some little lights in the valley down below.

That night we went to sleep content with anticipation and a long satisfying day, letting our thoughts drift us into REM mode. Mine mostly consisted of: Oh my god I’m sleeping in a watchtower. I can’t wait to tell Saibi.

Chapter 8: Smashed!

Ok, this is what it’s like trying to go to the bathroom on a train. Ever tried walking down a moving hallway? Ah, I just LOVE getting smashed to the other side of the train. So then I spend about ten minutes hauling on the bathroom door trying to figure out how on earth you’re supposed to get it open, finally giving up and smashing my way back to our compartment.

“Vanya, I can’t figure out the bathroom. I give up.” I sit down to look at some evil snow queens.

Three minutes later Vanya returns to tell me I’m crazy and everything is about as simple as blinking. Yeah, turns out as I’m vehemently trying to brace myself against the wall and yank the door open, there’s one minor detail I’m missing. The door opens inward. Yeah, way to go genius. Don’t get smashed on the way back.

Chapter 7: Train

I would like to talk about the craggy snow-capped peaks that we saw on the ride down from Munich. No really I’d love to, but I’m afraid I can’t, you see that would evoke all of zero imagery except that of me sitting in a moldy basement trying to think of the most overused cliché I can. I mean I don’t even want to know how many people have tried to talk about craggy snow-capped peaks until now. You know what craggy is? Craggy… is a vulture. With spectacles. No seriously. You say craggy and I think of a vulture with spectacles. I don’t even use the word spectacles, but that’s what the vulture’s got if you try to bring up the word craggy. And snow-capped? That sounds like something you’d screw on to your Lego land.

So, I assure you that I saw a lot of mountains on my way to Italy, but I also assure you that none of them had any vultures, nor any spectacles, and none of them had clip-on snow. So I guess I’ll just have to describe them to you, since obviously neither snow-capped nor craggy are gonna do the trick. Apologies to any bespectacled vulture activists / Lego enthusiasts out there.

Now, if I were to stay true to the style of this train ride, I would tell you about them occasionally in German, sometimes in Italian, and then every once in a while in English, just to mix things up. I would sometimes pick two of these languages to translate into, more often than not just use one, and then very occasionally if the mood struck me I would go ahead and use all three. My main objective, however, would be to make sure that absolutely no one speaker of any of these three languages can understand everything that is said. Keeps them on their toes.

Here is a rough transcription of what a mountainous description would sound like (in English) over the speaker system of Trenitalia: “Crshtyr sdghieh merhhug shetiuujkj skhei gyrho pehrlyyhh eueryshjhl crackle crackle crackle sdkoeur screeeech serouslekryil srlkoe ryrttt seorjkl hmmmmm eoruuiukelj swororujkf click lcikc crakcel tyryhje kachunk.”

Got all that? Good. Take notes. I may have to test you on this later. Ok, back to the story.

Last you heard we were pulling out of the Munich train station, a brand new crystal day (no not clear, just crystal), everything brightened by the recent storm. Well, if not brightened then at least broken. Soon we were out of the ugliness of wires and graffiti and rusty metal and looking instead at fields so green they would send a tree frog into a fresh bout of soul searching. The fields gave way to hills, the hills gave way to higher hills, the higher hills gave way to mountains. A crackly voice came over the speakers announcing that we had just crossed the border into Austria and suddenly BAM! there was a kangaroo. Oh, no wait, that’s Australia, sorry. I mean… bam, there were some spectacles and a vulture playing with his Legos.

I looked out the window and prodded Vanya in the knee.

“Hey look, some Alps.”

“Yep.”

They were big Alps. They were a long shot from Big Tesuque. Big Tesuque is smoothish. These Alps looked like something that an orc would be proud to wield. I look at these Alps and am overcome with a sudden burning desire to go defeat some evil Snow Queen who inevitably lives in them. And then once I defeated her I would be able to climb to the top of the tallest spire and already be at the front door of those guys who live in the clouds (you know, those guys). And then if I found any trolls that needed defeating on the way back down I would be able to just pick up the whole mountain and those little trolls would be so terrified at the very sight of so many spikes and cliffs that they would run crying home to their mothers who would stroke their ugly heads and make them vulture soup. If I tried to wield Big Tesuque at some trolls they would probably forget to kill me and decide to go sledding instead.

We passed through Innsbruck and I waved at the former Olympics. I also tried to take a picture of the former Olympics but a tree swept in front exactly at the crucial moment. Somewhere not long after Innsbruck we stopped at a little station in the middle of nowhere and received a very polite and concise message from our German crew telling us that they were now passing us over to the Italian crew and they wished us a nice remainder of the journey. The train ride got a little jerkier after that. And we never got another announcement.

Chapter 6: Moving On

Alright, now that you’ve been caught up on the suitcase deal, we can continue with the story. Me and Vanya got to the Munich train station, which was now much more empty, much more in perfect working order, and much more like Germany instead of a country that’s a little more broken, such as the one we were headed to. Everything went smoothly, even with time for a coffee, we got our own compartment with window seats, the whole deal was just generally very uncharacteristic of the trip so far. To be quite honest with you, this made me a little nervous. It made me wonder what doom was lurking around the corner if these few hours were so problem-free.

Claus called while we were waiting on for the train to leave and let me know that my bag was in Heathrow and they hoped it would be flying in today and then on to Italy as soon as possible. I thanked him and assured him that between the essentials we had bought and the clothes I had borrowed, I should be fine. The train started to move, and we were off.

Chapter 5: This Is A Suitcase. A What? A Suitcase. Oh, A… Wait What?

Going back in time a little bit… I feel I must inform you of everything that has happened concerning my luggage. A little recap. You remember when I last saw it? That’s right, green and shinyish, one little sprig of luggage tag, blinding label, yeah, you remember. Ok, and we remember a giant Easter Island head instead of said luggage? Ok good, y’all are doing fine. Ok, so let’s take it from Morning 1 in Munich. Lights, camera, action.

While I was busy taking my jetlagged sanity rest my first morning in Munich, my uncle Claus was in fact on the phone with British Airways trying to find out where my bag was, how long it would take to get here, all that sort of thing. When I finally woke up he had been trying to find help all morning until he finally reached one lady who seemed to actually know what was going on. She was able to punch in any British Airways luggage number and track any piece of luggage from where it had come from, how far it had gone, all that sort of thing. Problem was, there was absolutely no record of my bag. None. Zero. British Airways had never received the bag. As far as they knew, the thing might not exist. However, she promised she’d keep trying.

With slow horror the memory of the United Airlines luggage office seeped back into my brain like a messenger of doom. Why those incompetent little… [edited for content]. Since we were eight hours off the American schedule, I said I’d call my dad later that night and see if he could try and get in contact with United Airlines during his day time.

That’s when we went off into Munich and saw things (see list above).

When we came back home British Airways had not yet discovered anything. I called my dad and he said he’d see what he could do about the United half of it. The next thing I heard from him the following morning while he was on his way to sadhana was that United was convinced that they had most definitely handed the bag over to British Airways. I was less convinced. I must admit I was pretty poorly impressed by both these airlines overall, but given the circumstances, I was taking sides with the English on this one.

Later, as we were out shopping for those essentials (it seemed pretty apparent by now that my bag wasn’t coming tonight), we got a call from a lady in Munich saying she apologized for the inconvenience and assured us that they were doing everything in their power to deal with all this baggage stuff. She also told me that a rather bizarre thing had happened. Ok, you know the luggage tag they stick on your bag when they check it? It has its lovely little identification number and all that? Well it turns out that by freak coincidence, there was a bag in Seattle, still open in the system from a luggage disaster during Christmas travel, that happened to have the exact same tag number. You see what this means? You type in the tracking number for my green, shinyish, pink enhanced bag and some boring black thing shows up in Washington State. She said the chances of two bags open with the same number are like winning the lottery. In fact, she’s not sure it’s ever happened before.

My brain: “Oh give me a break.”

Now keep in mind that the whole thing is complicated by the fact that I’m supposed to be leaving for Italy tomorrow morning.

The following morning, before we go to the train station, we are informed that my bag has been located (well hallelujah). They hope it will be on a flight to Munich arriving around 3:00 pm and then will be forwarded on to Italy. Once I get to the train station and realize that my train ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon I call my uncle to inform him that if my bag does arrive, we can work out a way for him to transfer it to me while I’m still in Germany. Later I call him to inform him that I will actually be spending a whole extra night here, but by that evening he still hasn’t heard anything about my bag.

The following morning while Vanya and I are headed back to the train station from the farmhouse, I get a call from my dad, who has still been dealing with the bag information from America. I let him know that they’ve located the bag. He says yeah, they’ve located it, but no one knows where they’ve located it. I point out that this is a paradox and makes no sense. He concurs, it is indeed a paradox and makes no sense, but is in fact the case. Because when you call the airline and ask them what’s going on they say they’ve located the bag. And if you ask them where it has been located, they say the location is unknown. I dunno, if someone can explain that to me then please don’t hesitate to email me with the math.

Anyway, my dad goes on to further explain that the entire Heathrow airport has been shut down because of the wind storms.

My brain: “My god, how much more fantastic can this get?”

Chapter 4: Not Bad as Bad Luck Goes

We were supposed to go to Italy today, but I’m in a farm in the countryside somewhere near Munich, or so they tell me. Shall I tell you the story? It goes a little something like this.

I woke up this morning nice and early so I could meet Vanya at the train station by 8:30. Our train was scheduled to depart for Italy at 9:30. We were well aware that there may be some delays because of the whole storm thing, but it’s pretty much impossible for the train station to cancel all trains for two days in a row and still keep any semblance of order, so trains were running.

The train station was pretty crowded, but I found Vanya eventually and we ran off to go figure out our tickets. We stood in line for a good twenty minutes, unabashedly speaking in our touristy American accents. When we got to the front the guy told us that 1) the train would not be leaving until at least 3:00 that afternoon and 2) he couldn’t print out Vanya’s ticket from there. (We had bought it online and been told we could print it at the train station). Now let me tell you something about this train. We had specifically gone through extra hassle, time, and expense in order to have a view on this train. A train through Germany, Austria and Italy via a pass through the Alps, I mean come on, that’s the kind of ride you want to be able to look out the window on. So we specifically got a train that left in the morning and arrived in the evening, thus giving us all day to gaze at scenery (how Waldorf, I know). Yeah except now the train’s not leaving until at least 3:00 pm, so throw that out the window I guess.

Nevertheless we still had Vanya’s ticket to figure out. We went back to the little automatic kiosk thingies and found what seemed like a knowledgeable station attendant to help us out. He managed to show us how to print out our seat reservations but said that to get Vanya’s ticket we’d have to go down the escalator to the desk down there. This turned out to be the wrong direction (are you sensing a pattern here?).

We went down to the desk and explained the ticket situation to the guy, who puttered around on his computer for a bit until we rephrased the question and it dawned on him that he didn’t know how to do it from there. He pointed us in the wrong direction.

So we went and stood in a different line for another five minutes before another guy puttered around and became baffled as to what to do with our ticket, and so he pointed us back in the direction we had gone when we first arrived at the train station. This had been the wrong direction when we first arrived, and incidentally enough, was still the wrong direction.

We followed it nonetheless. The lines had now doubled from what they were an hour ago. We stood in it, continued unabashedly speaking in American, unabashedly listened to the pair behind us unabashedly speaking in French (but when has a Frenchman ever been abashed about speaking his language?) and finally made it to the desk. The lady puttered about on her computer some and then announced that Vanya’s ticket had been cancelled.

My brain: “Wait, what? WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?!?”

She also decided to further announce that there was no way the train would be leaving by 3:00 in the afternoon. It was much more likely that it would leave around 5:00 or 6:00, but quite possibly later than that. It was now about 11:00 in the morning, the whole thing was a fiasco, and we quickly made an executive decision to get out of the train station as fast as humanly possible before we lost our minds once and for all. We would go back to the house where Vanya was staying, call the station later to find out what time the train would actually be leaving, and then return a little closer to that time.

We hopped on one of the local trains, rode it for about an hour, missed our stop, had to call our ride to inform them that we had missed our stop, but of course we didn’t have their cell phone number, had to call the daughter of our ride to inform her that she should inform her parents that we had missed our stop, and then we finally stood in the blustering freezing wind until the van pulled up and we clambered inside. Pretty soon I found myself being driven down a winding rode through some absolutely gorgeous countryside and quaint little German villages until we pulled up at an old remodeled farmhouse. It was absolutely fantastic. The countryside was incredible, the house was amazing, the fish ponds were awesome… well, one of them anyway. As we were driving we had been informed that all the giant fish in one of the ponds had spontaneously died last night. That one wasn’t so great to look at. The rest was nice.

I decided to check my email and look through all the notices from the German train company to see if I had missed something about Vanya’s ticket. What can I say, they kept sending me messages in German, you expect me to grasp all these details?

It didn’t take long actually. I found one in English (where had that come from?) that explained that all we had to do was just go online and log in and we could print the ticket out from home. Which is exactly what we did. Psh, cancelled. Yeah whatever, that was about as easy as blinking.

My dad then sent a text to find out how things were going. I informed him that all that train with a view hassle we’d gone through had turned to be pretty pointless in the end. He didn’t like that. He wasn’t going to take that one lying down. Ten minutes later he called me back to tell me that the lady with the train company had told him that tomorrow would be about a thousand times better of a day to leave, and he had already booked us two seat reservations on tomorrow’s morning train. They would still be honoring the tickets from today, he said, in order to encourage less people to try and leave today I suppose.

So here we are. We got another day. I’m in an awesome farmhouse in the German countryside. I’m eating an incredible bar of rosehip raspberry chocolate that I got for my birthday (Sierra, I love you). Me and Vanya just talked for about three hours. This house has wrought iron lizards for door handles. What can I say? As far as bad luck goes, this ain’t bad.

Chapter 3: Oh No, Not Again

Today we basically dashed out of the house, bought me some essentials (toothbrush, hair brush, underwear, you know, that sort of thing), snatched some tasties from a bakery and then dashed back to the house because the news advised us to be inside and thus avoid potential flying objects after four o’clock in the afternoon. The wind has now hit and my attic room is prime listening location, with its fine wind-catching acoustics. Thank god for being a deep sleeper. In other news, all trains in and out of Munich have been cancelled. Still leaving tomorrow morning? Well… we’ll see. The adventure continues.

Chapter 2: Oh, Did You Need That?

I deplaned (man, that is a hilarious word) in Munich, plotted a course through the airport (a very complex navigational process that mostly involves following every single other person on the plane), made it through passport security without trouble, and promptly arrived at the baggage claim. The thing rumbled to a start, and there, the very first item off was… now I know you’re thinking that maybe I had stroke of wonderful luck and got my bag first, but that’s not the case. The very first item was in fact a six-foot tall plastic Easter Island head. No, I’m not kidding. Luckily seeing something like that put me in a good mood, because I waited until the claim had stopped moving and my green shiny neon pink enhanced bag still did not show, and if I had not had a six-foot tall plastic Easter Island head to cheer me up, I might have felt a little more morose about it right off the start.

The one thing that did poke me in an unfriendly way was the fact that this exact same thing had happened last time I went to Europe as well. A German speaking airport, no bag. So I went to the luggage desk, gave them the information (green and shiny with neon pink that would make your eyes incinerate) and went out to meet my great uncle Claus. I did not think too much about the bag other than that it was a slight nuisance, because last time I went to Europe without a bag, the airline had it at my door by the following afternoon. Ah. Welcome to the lovely world of heinous misjudgment. Please enjoy your stay.

Nevertheless I got to Claus’ house all fine and good and was given a room to stay in that would make Saibi leap into a wall in glee. Well not really, but it did have slanted ceilings. Like the little attic room at the top, except much larger and with its own bathroom.

Jetlag let me sleep pretty late the following morning, but my bag was still not there when I woke up. I was not surprised, but hoped it would show up that afternoon. Fortunately I had a whole wardrobe of clothes to borrow from Claus’ daughter, who is very tall and thin. Unfortunately I am not. Still, I made it work, and it was really nice of them that they were able to clothe me.

Things I saw in Munich:

1. A delicatessen that would have made my father go weak at the knees. The chocolates, the cheeses, the breads, the wines, the sauces, the hors d’ouvres (however you spell them, I know there’s an apostrophe in there somewhere), the pastries, the coffees…. Well it was pretty fantastic.
2. The winter palace (briefly and from the outside). There is a little tower on the roof of the palace that has an interesting story to go with it, which is the main reason I mention the seeing of this palace. Here is the story: Once upon a time, there was a prince. Who was a baby. And the royal chimpanzee kidnapped the prince and took him up onto the roof of the tower. And the entire royal court brought out all the feather beds into the courtyard to catch the prince if the chimpanzee dropped him. The end. Well I guess the real end is that the chimpanzee brought the kid down. Not a very climactic ending, I apologize, but hey, I didn’t make it up. I just like the image of the entire court panicking and dragging out their beds while the chimpanzee is up on the roof waving around the future king of Germany.
3. Some pretty neat churches. This is Europe after all.
4. The monument Hitler put up in front of the beer hall. It’s history, I won’t repeat it, look it up.
5. The Siemens building, which is entirely in white and gray, and the architect said no pictures were allowed because they’re not white or gray, but I saw some. Very sneaky Siemens employees putting up contraband art on their walls.
6. A guy who almost had a heart attack when he noticed me. I was sitting in a parked car. The guy was innocently walking across the street and happened to pick the passageway between my car and the next. He was about to enter the space between them when he saw me sitting there, jumped at least a foot in the air, and then picked a different passageway about four cars down. I found this amusing.
7. A shop that sells exclusively horse meat. I have not seen such a thing before, thus it is worth mentioning.
8. The famous beer hall. We walked to the end and back, just to see what it’s like. Very loud….
9. An arch built exactly like the arch in the piazza outside the Uffizi in Florence. How creative. Copycats.

And some other little things here and there I’m sure. We finally made it back home where there was not a bag waiting for me. There was, however, news of record wind storms due to hit Munich tomorrow afternoon. The people were advised not to leave their homes. Since wind often translates into trees on the train tracks, my departure the day after tomorrow is now a little iffy.

Chapter 1: The Legend of the Layovers

Ah the morning arrives. I’ve been planning this since seventh grade, and now here it is, the day I actually leave for my world adventures. It was a typical morning of making sure the suitcase is packed correctly, the carryon has enough entertainment to last until the apocalypse, the dogs have had their photos taken, the batteries to every electronics item within a fifty mile radius are fully charged, my bed is made (sort of), my room is tidy (sort of), and all the other general this and that that comes with trying to get a traveler and her accompanying paraphernalia out the door. Which we eventually did. I sniffed the air for the last time (by the time I come back it will be summer and that smells quite different), I said bye to the dogs, we did a short departing ardas, and then we were off, speeding down the snowy highway towards the legendary land of Albuquerque. Yep, that’s what a good snowfall will do. It makes even Albuquerque look legendary.

We finally arrived at the airport and pulled my things out of the trunk. My mom drove off to park the car and my dad sauntered away to use the facilities while I dragged my stuff up through the international check-in line at American Airlines. I innocently go up to the desk and give the lady my ticket and passport. She very dully informs me that my flight has been cancelled.

My brain: “Hmmm, what?”

My mouth: “Oh.”

My dad (returning): “What’s happening?”

My mouth: “Flight’s cancelled.”

My brain: “Is this bad?”

The lady explains that due to severe ice storms in Dallas, the flight’s been cancelled. She can try to put me on a flight for tomorrow.

My brain: “Wait, wait, wait… tomorrow? Oh. This is bad.”

And within the hour we’re speeding back across the snowy highway, back away from legendary Albuquerque, which is really starting to look less legendary and more like an annoyingly long and worthless drive. So I’m booked on a flight for tomorrow. What does that mean? What if the ice storms are still going? The weather channel doesn’t mention any expectation of the storm dying down. My dad has already been attempting to get on the phone with British Airways for the past hour trying to rebook the part of my flight from London to Munich. A good while and many extra euros later, the flight has been rebooked. But what if my flight is cancelled tomorrow too? Is it going to be another two hours and thirty euros every time the planes decide not to fly?

So we kill the rest of the day (no, I’m not kidding, we spent it in Borders and watching TV, we really killed it) and decide to call it a night. I’ve already gone online to American Airlines and set up a flight status notification, so in theory they will leave me a voice message on my cell phone if the status of the flight changes in any way. Currently the status is still set to on time. My previous flight had been cancelled something like twenty four hours in advance (nah, no point in warning the passengers), so the fact that by this time the flight still seemed to be going had us feeling at least hopeful, if not optimistic. When I turned off my light around 11 pm, the flight was still set to on time.

5:00 am and my alarm obnoxiously wakes me up. I reach for my phone to turn it off and notice that I have a new message. I call my voicemail, fearing the worst, and that’s exactly what I get. Go figure. Maybe I should have tried not fearing it. A simulated computer voice, through which every single word is articulated either as a complete sentence or as a question, informs me that my flight has been cancelled.

“Flight number. 1. 4. 7. 2. To. Dallas? Texas. Has been? Cancelled.”

In my groggy early morning fog I hoarsely try to call out to my parents to let them know the news and that they can stop frantically running about the house and getting things in order and begin frantically running about the house and trying to figure out a flight. My dad gets on the phone with the airlines yet again and I go to sleep yet again because hey, my flight’s been cancelled, right? So why not sleep in? Yeah well that didn’t last long.

Suddenly I’m being informed that I’m now on a flight on a completely different airline flying into Washington DC of all places and it leaves in 3 hours. This information translates roughly into “PANIC” because if it leaves in 3 hours we should already have left the house and the car’s not even packed yet. So that’s what we do. We panic, and sort of as an afterthought we get out of the house as well and speed, yet again, down the snowy highway towards Albuquerque. This is all looking fishily similar to me, only this time Albuquerque has definitely lost any semblance of epic that the snow had ever given it. At the airport I tentatively go to check in and incredibly enough, it all seems to go according to plan. Well, aside from the fact that we had to go to about four different desks in order to get a ticket and a boarding pass and get my bag checked.

Let me describe to you how the checking of the bag went. It may sound simple, but it’s very important. Pay attention. There will be a test. The way my flight was set up, I had one ticket as far as London and then another separate ticket and reservation from London on to Munich, though both were with British Airways. Therefore I had sort of assumed that I would have to pick up my bags in London and re-check them on to Munich, something which sounded relatively fine, as I had about 7 hours in London. Yet here I am at the United Airlines ticket counter, and she asks me if I’d like to check my bag all the way through to Munich. Well that sounds lovely, so I go ahead and tell her she can do that.

This was a brand new suitcase. Never been used except for one short flight from Austin to Albuquerque. The last time I saw my luggage before it disappeared under those rubber flappy things that airports seem to be so fascinated with, it was perfectly pristine, green and shinyish, no scratches, no blemishes, and only one spindly luggage tag extending from the handle like a feather from Robin Hood’s hat. Oh yeah, and a luggage tag that was so neon pink it would hurt Barbie’s eyes. I thought it was a rather nice touch.

Well, the plane flew. It flew all the way from Albuquerque to Washington DC, in fact, all without trouble. Not only that, but we had some very strong tail winds, so we got into Washington about 20 minutes early, landing at about 3:45 in the afternoon. I then consulted my ticket to London and noticed that it didn’t leave until 9:45 pm. I also noticed that there was a much earlier flight to London leaving at 6:45 and wondered why they had given me such an unnecessarily long layover when it was in fact… unnecessary. So I decided to investigate and see if I couldn’t get on the earlier flight as a standby.

I went to the British Airways desk. Nobody there.

I went to a different British Airways desk. Nobody there.

I went to an American Airlines desk since the two are partners. A decent line there.

I went to a different American Airlines desk. An even more decent line there.

I went back to the British Airways desk. Still no one there.

I went back to the American Airlines desk and stood in line. When I finally got to the front and asked the lady if she could either work on British Airways flights from there or if she could point me in the right direction, she pointed me in the direction of the British Airways Elite “We Love You Because You Give Us Plenty of Money” Lounge, which in fact had a much shorter and more ambiguous name and also, incidentally enough, turned out to be the wrong direction.

I went into the British Airways “We Love Your Money” Lounge and spent a good ten minutes sorting the whole thing out with the lady there before it suddenly occurred to her that what I wanted to do wasn’t actually possible from her desk. She pointed me in a new wrong direction.

Following her instructions I found one of those nifty little people mover things that took me all the way to the main terminal where I climbed stairs, followed tunnels, searched for signs, and generally had an adventure of a time finding the British Airways main ticket desk, a task which also involved leaving security, something which I did grudgingly.

I went to the British Airways main desk and tried to explain to a thickly accented man what exactly it was that I wanted to do. He pointed me yet again in the wrong direction, telling me that I’d have to go argue with United Airlines about giving British Airways my bag so that it could get on the flight with me.

I followed many more stairs and halls and mysteriously nonexistent signs until I found the United Airlines luggage office, which looked more like a refugee site than a baggage claim. All around the claim were rows and rows of unclaimed baggage. People wandered listlessly around the area, picking absent-mindedly at abandoned bags as though in a state of deep despair. The office itself had a line of 20 people out the door, all trying to find what on earth had happened to their luggage, all looking worried, all looking like they had been standing there for quite some time. If I had been born a little less of an optimist I might have worried at that point, but as it was I remained blissfully oblivious for the next several hours.

In any case I was NOT willing to stand in line for ten thousand years just so I could be pointed in a new wrong direction, so I went back up to British Airways where a very American lady told me flat out that I would absolutely not be getting on the earlier flight. With a sigh I checked in for my later one and made my way back through security and back to my gate to see if there was the slightest chance that another representative might have a bit more idea of what they were talking about.

I did not find a British Airways representative, but I did find a lovely little placard informing me that my flight would in fact not be departing until 10:45 pm. I glanced at the time. 5:00 pm.

Sigh. This was just not my week.

I became very good friends with those people movers over the next many hours. I entertained myself by exploring as many different terminals as I could, or sometimes just by going back and forth along the people movers. Terminal B was particularly exciting, for two main reasons. 1. Ben and Jerry’s. Nothing like ice cream to get you through a layover, though I don’t recommend Bananas on the Rum or whatever the heck that ice cream is called. It tastes not very much like bananas and very much like fake. I should’ve gone with Dublin Mudslide. Awesome every time. Oh well.

Ahem. Moving on.

2. Inmotion Entertainment, which was also particularly exciting for two main reasons. 1. Electronics. For some reason it’s really hard not to kill time when you’re looking at electronics. 2. The guy who worked there. He performed magic tricks with little red foam balls. If you didn’t want any magic tricks you had to be careful not to walk too close to the counter or he’d get you. I personally found the tricks rather amusing. However, there’s only so many times you can have a red ball appear in your own hand before you really need to move on to something else. Which in my case was the people movers. Again.

Eventually I wandered back to Inmotion Entertainment to investigate the possibility of renting a DVD player and DVD from Red Foam Ball Man who once again whipped out the red foam balls and made them appear in my hand. He also turned out to be incredibly talkative, so I managed to use up a good twenty minutes chatting about this and that while I perused the list of movies and finally settled on Thank You For Smoking. Which I proceeded to rent and then watch, when suddenly there was a turn of events. (Good movie by the way).

By the time I had finished renting and watching the movie it was just about almost 10:00 pm. I had brought the movie back to my gate to watch it so that I would be aware if anything changed about my flight. I now had just enough time to get back over to Terminal B, return the equipment, and get back to my gate in time for boarding. Yeah, that’s right, I had seven hours in the airport and still managed to run out of time, can you believe it?

I quickly walked over to one of them lovely people movers and headed towards Terminal B. I moved through Terminal B as fast as I could, noticing that all the stores were now closed and also bitterly remembering that I had forgotten to get myself dinner. The Inmotion Entertainment gate was still half open as Red Foam Ball Guy was still tidying up in there, so I quickly gave him back the DVD Player, was wished a good time in Europe, and dashed back toward the people movers, beginning to feel the time pressure. I ran up to the people movers where a guard type guy told me that they stopped running at 10:00 pm. They only ran between the lettered terminals and the main terminal, which was significantly farther away from D than B was. I had not calculated this in my plan.

I dashed onto the mover, which rumbled off towards the main terminal. It took FOREVER. Finally it arrived, and I quickly leapt onto the next mover that was departing for Terminal D. The little sign said that it would be departing in 5 minutes and 46 seconds.

My brain: “Not in five minutes! Leave now! Leave now!”

And it did, miraculously enough. It left now. There was another family on the mover that had a plane leaving in ten minutes. They had already submitted to their uncertain fate as to whether they’d make it home tonight or not. They actually had it worse than me, which made me not feel so bad. I said a little prayer that they’d make it onto their flight and then ran off towards my own the instant the mover touched home. Quite naturally I never saw the family again, so I have no idea whether or not they made it. I’d like to think they did.

I, on the other hand, most certainly did. I got there just in time to stroll leisurely up to the back of the line but didn’t let myself breathe a full sigh of relief until I was sitting firmly in my seat with my seatbelt fastened, just like the little light told me to do.

My seat: 50K. And to that I toast the small miracles of the world. Those of you who spend November as a sleep-deprived follower of Chris Baty will know what I mean.

The flight was fine, but I didn’t sleep. The reason my having forgotten to get myself dinner was a problem was because in the course of the whole flight change fiasco, the airline somehow found it impossible to also change my vegetarian food reservation. Judging by their response to the whole thing, I must conclude that most people are vegetarians for only one flight at a time. When they change their flights they must also change their eating habits. Remaining a vegetarian for two days in a row must be very unusual on a plane. Why else should they be so amazed that I might in fact still want a vegetarian meal? So I got beef. And ate a spongy dinner roll. With butter that was probably fake. And the lady still looked curious as to why I had not eaten my dinner. Funny.

The truncated nighttime lasted the full span of one movie (the Science of Sleep, also a good movie) and then the sun rose, just as we came over the coast of Ireland. I took a bathroom break and by the time I came back Ireland was gone again. And then in not too much longer we touched down to a foggy day in London, which I’m told is an average day in London.

I spent six hours there. For your information, the Heathrow airport is abominable, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Those six hours consisted of me eating a not-so-fantastic burger, perfecting the art of falling fully asleep while still sitting up, wondering how many perfume shops a single airport could reasonably contain, and wondering whether Heathrow had not exceeded that number. At least I think that’s how I spent the time. I was so tired I can hardly remember. But pass the time I did, and before I knew it I was boarding the plane to my next adventure: Munich.

Introduction

Well here I finally am, sitting on the computer at Passano, Italy. Well actually, I’m sitting in a chair and the computer is in front of me. So much has happened I don’t even know where to start, though I think the beginning has historically been proven as a good spot. A note about this blog. Because generally the times that I have to sit down and write are few and far between, I have been keeping track of everything in a little black book, and then when the time comes I sit down and write two weeks worth of adventures in one enormously long sitting. Now, I realize that nobody else with any modicum of sanity in this world wants to sit down and read two weeks worth of adventures in one enormously long sitting, at least not during a lunch break at work or any other span of time any less busy than, say, a Sunday afternoon in an isolated mountain retreat with an excellent internet connection. So, in order to make that phenomenon a little more avoidable for you, I’m going to write up each little section in my book as a new blog post, the way it would be if I were actually blogging in real time. Thus this entire paragraph is really just a longwinded way of me informing you that the dates and times at the top of the posts are nothing more than a load of rubbish. They are irrelevant and they are liars. I would also like to take a moment to point out that I just used the phrase “load of rubbish.” Can you tell that the only English I’ve been hearing for the past week or two has been out of the mouths of Brits and New Zealanders? Not only that, but my reading material is Douglas Adams, an Englishman if I ever read one. And now on to the good stuff. The adventure begins.