An Elaboration

Since I was pressed for time in my last entry (and missing an apostrophe key), I figured I’d fill in some of the details I glazed over before.

Part I: The flight

O’Hare was ridiculously easy to navigate. The check-in line for Luhftahnsa was about 3 people long, so I got my big suitcase out of the way really quickly. After I said goodbye to my parents I went to security. The line there was only about 5 people long, so I was done with that in about 15 minutes. I set off to find my gate, and it was just down at the end of the main corridor. So I waited for about two hours to board the plane (which was HUGE. I thankfully had an aisle seat and was able to steal some leg room that way), then had a fairly peaceful ride. They served us two meals, plus snacks. The food was actually really good—pasta with tomato sauce, cold potato salad with yams and grapes (don’t knock it till you try it), a roll, cheese and cheese cake; then for breakfast a roll with jam, cheese and a pastry—and it held me over until I got to Florence.

We landed in Munich (Monaco in Italian, as I learned today), and I had to go through the ENTIRE airport to get to the gate on my ticket. I had to go through customs AND security again, but I had a two hour layover, so I didn’t mind so much. I fell asleep a couple of times on my suitcase but didn’t get much rest because I didn’t want to miss my flight. About the time I was supposed to be boarding I happened to look at the sign above the gate and saw Marseilles written where Florence was supposed to be. I freaked out and ran to find an attendant and wound up speaking to a very attractive German man who redirected me to the correct gate, so I got to my flight on time.

The puddle-jumper that flew from Munich to Bologna (yes, Bologna) was considerably less classy than the big transatlantic plane. Still, they served us sandwiches (which I didn’t eat, since there was some pretty awful turbulence), and we made it to Florence in pretty good time. It was cloudy so I couldn’t see any of the countries we flew over, but just as we were about to touch down in Florence, the clouds parted and I saw the little red clustered roofs dotting the otherwise surprising green farmland. They started getting closer together, and I finally caught my first glimpse of Florence. The wheels of the plane came down with a clunk and we were just over the runway when the engines suddenly kicked in and we sped off back into the sky. I’ve never heard such a commotion on a plane before. Everybody started asking what was going on, but the flight attendants were nowhere in sight. The pilot finally came over the intercom and explained the entire situation very calmly and plainly—or at least I imagine so, since it was all in German. So I was left utterly confused for the next few minutes until he finally decided a translation might be appropriate. Apparently the same wind that caused the severe turbulence created an impossible situation for landing. The runway was too short for our plane to have time to slow down with the intense tail wind we had. After another attempt at Florence, the pilot sped on to Bologna. At this point I’d been up for about 15 hours and I just wanted to land, so that was fine by me.

We deplaned on the tarmac (which I’ve never done before) and took this enormous bus to the terminal. Seriously. Two buses could fit in this one bus. It was ridiculously gigantic. So we got into the airport there, which kind of reminded me of the airport in Cozumel. I got my bag and set off to look for customs. Since Bologna isn’t an international airport, or at least doesn’t receive planes from outside Europe, there WASN’T any customs, so I set off to find the bus that was supposed to take us to Florence.

Part II: The Bus

A girl from the flight came up to me and asked if I was with the ACM program, since she heard me talking to someone else on it on the plane. We tried to find the bus together and ended up in a big cluster of people from our flight. About an hour later the bus showed up and we hiked over to it (since even though its main function is transport, the driver didn’t find it necessary to come to the passengers). The driver and a few other airport personnel kept shuffling us to either side of the bus to try and fit all our luggage onto the thing. I somehow ended up being the last person to load my luggage. The driver made this huge deal about it not being able to fit and called in the other man to help him figure it out. Meanwhile he had me stand outside the bus (it was raining, by the way), while everybody on the bus found my situation REALLY entertaining, as everybody was staring. The driver eventually opened up this secret magic compartment that fit by bag perfectly, and I could get on the bus.

The two people behind me talked the whole way. It was an American woman and a man from Germany. At first they just made small talk in English, but the American woman somehow found it necessary to go into all the tiny details of her life. She chewed this poor German guy’s ear off, then had the gall to ask him about his wife and children. This was especially awkward since he was trying to tell her he was divorced but didn’t know the English word for it. She totally didn’t get it, and kept prying into why his 18-year-old daughter didn’t want to speak to him and what his sons did for a living… Very inappropriate, especially since she just assumed he’d want to carry on this conversation in English anyway.

I forced myself not to listen anymore and focused on the really awesome Tuscan scenery going by. The foul weather made this really cool effect on the mountains. It looked like they were smoking. The roads cut really close to the edges of cliffs, and this bus was going ridiculously fast. It would come up really close to cars and honk at them when they didn’t move out of the way. At first I tried to just close my eyes when we went under a tunnel, but I eventually succumbed to sleep and got a forty-minute nap (of which I was extremely embarrassed, since I woke up with my mouth totally wide open).

The little compartment the driver put my luggage in made it really simple to get to when we arrived at the Florence airport. The girl I met on the plane, Jen, and I caught a cab together to the Pensione Ottaviani. That was another crazy driving experience, especially at the end when the driver popped the whole cab up onto the curb and nearly hit an unfortunate pedestrian.

Part III: The Pensione Ottaviani

Jen and I dragged our suitcases up the couple of stairs into the empty lobby of an old building. There was absolutely nothing except another staircase to our left and a pair of wrought iron doors that were locked. We managed our bags up the next flight and saw a daunting climb ahead of us. Jen ran ahead to see how high it went, but she couldn’t see the top. As she was coming down, however, she saw a sign for a lift which at first had appeared to be a closet. It was really old-timey, with two sets of doors and just big enough to fit me and my suitcases. Since all my traveling made me brave (or stupid—one of the two) I went first. When the elevator stopped I struggled to open the two doors and stumbled out into the real lobby where I was greeted by a friendly Italian woman. She explained the pensione, gave me my key, and I found my room across the hall from the bathrooms.

My room is about fifteen cubic feet with three beds crammed together (I got the one in the middle, since I was the last one to arrive), a tiny shower in the corner, a sink, and a wardrobe with no drawers. My roommates came back from a walk as I was settling in. I called my parents once I figured out my phone, then fell asleep until dinner time. (It was one in the afternoon, seven in America—I’d been up for about 22 hours at that point.)

Everyone in the program gathered in the small dining room in the pensione. We had an amazing dinner of pasta and potato soup, roast beef, salad, a custard pastry and a clementine. It was really really good. After dinner a few of us took a walk around the town—I saw the good ol’ Duomo, Santa Maria Novella and a bunch of other really old and famous buildings. When we came back, I had a shower and a serious sleep.

Part IV: LinguaViva

Classes started at 9:00 the next morning, so we woke up early for breakfast at 7:30 (croissant and roll with peach jam and a latte). The enormous group of 20 of us trekked off to the school of Italian, LinguaViva, to take lessons with Elizabeta. The only word I can think of that really faithfully describes her is spunky. She’s really great and makes class entertaining. I don’t know what the course is going to be like once we really get going, but it was fun today. We learned two verbs and about fifty nouns, none of which I remember now. No, I remember computer. It’s “il computer.” So there’s one under my belt.

After class a group of us went to the library to try and get access to their wireless internet., but to no avail. Neil and I went off to an Internet café. We got half an hour for one euro. We think that once we get our addresses at our families’ apartments, they’ll trust that we’re actually students here. This trip would be about 85% better if I had good friends here, but that’ll have to happen on its own, I guess.

My roommate for the houses has already been decided. Hopefully it’ll work out. As for now, I’m having a good time despite the wonderfully dependable Kokontis luck.