:: Italian (mis)Adventures ::

:: three years ago after my first italian adventure / fiasco, i promised myself i would never go back. well, life is ironic and i find myself presenting at a prestigious conference, a few kilometers down the road from where i spent three of the most maturing months of my life. but as they say, things are easier the second time around, right? well, my uncertainty of this claim started when i was in b&n looking over the language books (my previous set was on ebay within 24 hours of being back in the states). figuring since i lived in the country for a summer i could skip the introductory lessons, i picked up the intermediate italian lesson book. mamm mia! non capisco! replacing the book i resign myself to 'italian on the plane' and a long week ahead. alore... andiamo! ::

:: landing in milan, the aeroporto and stazione look different, but there was a strange familiarity. once i found the automatic train ticket machine, it all came rushing back. after about 15 minutes and several curse words, i had a ticket from milan to la spezia. the second success of the morning (finding the bus to the train station was the first - but the direct shuttle took most of the challenge out of this), but the first real set-back was just around the corner (literally and figuratively) when i ordered a cappuccino and promptly received an italian tongue lashing. alore, i had forgotten to obtain a biglietto before ordering. after the cappuccino, on to find the train. i had two options. one was on track 21 going to viareggio, the other on track 2: neither of which clearly stating genoa. of course, my ticket had the train number, but it wasn't listed anywhere else (like on the train itself for instance). thinking i was a smart traveler, i pulled out my bberry and googled both destinations figuring the one to the west of milan would take me through genoa where i was supposed to change trains. no luck, they were both in the west and both sounded familar. but seeing as i couldn't find track 21, i was fairly convinced given my usual luck, that would be my train and i should find it asap. as i fought my way through the crowd dragging my suitcase over countless number of italian toes on their way to work (mi dispiace!), i discovered track 21 completely disconnected from the rest of the terminal. as i walked down the track, i noticed the yellow time table just as i remembered that this was what i should have been looking for all along. sure enough, the train arrived in genoa at 1042. va bene. but... my ticket stated the train left genoa for la spezia at 1052... alore! 10 minutes to change trains. if there is one thing certain is that 'on time' in italian translates to '15-30 minutes late, if at all' in english. ::