Buona liberazione, Italia

Sorry (again) for the long absence.  Italy didn’t really change all that much after my last post, and to be honest, I was quite frustrated by a lot of what we experienced that I didn’t feel it was all that necessary to tell you about it.  Let me just sum things up by saying that all we were really told to do was prune the olive grove.  It seemed like everyone else had at least some say in what they were doing, or given the opportunity to relay their strong points, skills and experience.  Not us.  Compound this with the fact that our host made several attempts at avoiding to talk to us directly (IE: sending someone else to tell us something just minutes after she was in the same room with us), we frequently overheard her refer to us as “the Americans” in an unpleasant tone (despite the fact that she very well knew our names), and a few other things; we didn’t feel very welcome, and we were very much looking forward to leaving.

Too bad leaving required the Italian train system, which failed to work smoothly, again.

Getting from Rapolano to Siena and then to Florence was cake.  It went smoothly, we got on our first train for free, and they were roughly on time.  We felt we were off to a good start.  That is, until we got to Florence and the 8:30 train we were hoping to catch from Florence to Venice was sold out.  All classes.  Thankfully the automated ticket thing was wrong when it said that all trains were sold out, and we were able to buy tickets for the 11:30 high-speed to Venice.  Now, all of you are going to cringe when you find out what we did during our time in Florence, but we spent it in the most comfortable chairs we could find, trading off naps.  It just happened to be in a McDonalds.  The Florence train station didn’t have any lockers, so even if we happened to have had the energy to walk around and explore, we would have had to do so with all our bags with us.  Thankfully the McCafe had some delicious fresh squeezed blood orange juice, and the time passed relatively quickly.

The train from Florence to Venice was relatively comfortable, but packed.  Since I was the one who napped the least, I had a very hard time staying awake on the train, but Jon managed to pass out.  Fortunately for us, I managed to only doze; otherwise we would have missed our stop.  We got off the train, were assaulted by the Venetian heat, and set off for the ticket booth to buy our ticket to Vienna, Austria.

Well, let me preface this by saying that we weren’t in the lovely, ancient, sightseeing-worthy area of Venice.  We were at Venice Mestre, which is on the mainland, probably 15-20 kilometers away from any sort of canal.  Well, after asking for the next train to Vienna, we received two tickets for the 9:18 train that evening… over 8 hours away.

8 hours, in not-so-lovely “new” Venice.  Seriously?  After finding this out, we set out to see exactly what we had to work with, and found that the most Italian thing there was several Chinese restaurants and (as always) a halal place serving really lousy pizza.  Thankfully for us though, there was a lovely restaurant in the hotel across the street from the train station that offered free WIFI use with the purchase of a beverage.  We sat there for the majority of our 8 hour layover, and then moved to the hotel lobby when the place was closing to get ready for dinner.  I was grateful they didn’t kick us out.  While sitting there I managed to overhear the front desk clerk tell someone that the trains will be going on strike that evening at 9PM.  They seriously couldn’t wait until after our train left?  So, when we returned to the train station to wait out the last hour before our train, we were a little worried, but hopeful, that maybe we overheard him incorrectly, and were wondering exactly what an “Italian train strike” might be.

Well, after a ten minute wait at our platform, we saw another train for another destination pull in.  We saw this as a good sign, since a strike would surely mean all trains, not just the ones going to Vienna.  After about half an hour, our train finally arrived, we found our cabin, got comfortable, watched a movie, and passed out.  We couldn’t afford to pay for a sleeper cabin, but we were fortunate to not have anyone else in our cabin the entire duration of the journey… all 11 hours of it.  So far, Austrian trains are my favorite.  They’re comfortable, have places to plug in things that need charging, and their bathrooms are pretty clean.  All and all, not a bad train experience.  I woke up at about 7:30AM to the beautiful sights of the Austrian countryside.  I never had a mental picture of what Austria might look like before, so I was pleased to see how beautiful it was.

We arrived at the train station perfectly fine, got off the train and set off for the ticket counter.  The man at the desk spoke pretty broken English, but we managed to get two tickets from Vienna to Prague no problem.  We then stopped at a place in the station (just as comfortable, clean and convenient as their trains) to have some Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel and sat down to eat it and relax.  About half way through our schnitzel, as Jon was reading the train schedule, he realized that the train to Prague isn’t leaving from this station, and there isn’t a train to get from the station we were in to the station we needed to be in.  All this realization with only 30 minutes until our train leaves.  Well, some more reading led us to find that they have a metro system, and once we figured out where we needed to go, we got there with about 10 minutes to spare.  Same sort of train that we took to get to Vienna, only this time we didn’t have a cabin seat assignment.  We didn’t see any other sort of seats, so we just picked one and sat down.  Lucky for us, the 5 hour trip into Prague was made much shorter and more enjoyable by two brothers from New Zealand sitting in the cabin with us.  They told us that unless the train people kick us out of our seats to find new ones, we were welcome to stay with them.  We talked the whole way about a number of things, and only at the very end, as we were loading up our bags to get off the train, did we finally actually exchange names.  Funny how those sorts of things happen.

Getting from Prague to our host was fairly easy.  Czech is nothing like anything we’ve read before, so there was no guessing as to what the signs said.  Also, when the last train we took would make its stops, it would do so well before we could read the sign of our destination.  This was a little nerve wracking, since we didn’t really feel like getting off at the wrong stop or missing ours, but we managed okay.  After finding a payphone and calling our host, one of them was there within about 15 minutes or so to pick us up.  Finally.  Only about… 12 hours later than we had originally planned, but I guess it all worked out okay in the end.

Currently, I am sitting in a very comfortable bed in a hotel in Prague.  We’ve stopped here for the evening just after our two week farm stay, and head off to Germany tomorrow.  After all our sightseeing today/tonight, I’ll post again with an update on the time we spent in the Czech Republic.  Let me give you a little preface: great food, great company and real forests.  

Je suis toujours la toux

So thankfully, my fever finally broke, the body aches have slowly gone away, and so has the headache.  The cough has not though.  I think I’ve given up on cough syrup though.  We’ll see.

Jon and I were able to return to class the next day like I’d hoped.  The professor was sympathetic, and concerned that I was sick.  A change from what you get from your teachers at home.  Jon and I only walked far enough to get something to eat, and then again with Jerome to see if we could resolve our no Internet problem.  Turned out to be a bad router.  He replaced it, Jon installed it today, and voila!  Interwebs.  Thank goodness.

So, since I don’t have much to share from the past couple days, I’d just like to share some things I forgot to share in previous posts.

1. They are very blind-friendly in France.

When was the last time you picked up your box of cough drops, or tea, and braille was on the package?  I could probably say that I have only seen braille on a box of bandaids before, and only once.  I see it on a lot here.  Its really kind of neat.

2. Doctors make house calls.

So, unfortunately, I think Nicolas caught what I had.  Hopefully its just a coincidence, he’s definitely still running around with as much energy as ever, but regardless.  After dinner last night, the doctor came over, usually only a luxury for those willing to pay the large fine in the US.  Though I don’t believe the doctor came over for free, I do believe it was for a very small fine.  One of the benefits of free health care?  He came over, looked over Nicolas, gave his parents a list of things to get from the pharmacy, all well past 8PM.  House calls are whats expected from doctors in France, and probably most of Europe, maybe similar to the western medical ethics we’re familiar with?  Who knows.

3. Watch where you step.

No, I haven’t stepped in dog doo yet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had the chance.  Yuck.  The Swedish girl (Zandra) in our class has a dog, and our professor was at first teasing her, upset that there are too many dogs in France!  Sandra assured the professor that unlike everyone in Nice, she picks up after her dog.  Basically, they think they’re too good to pick up dog doo.  I guess a few stereotypes remain true.

4. The bums are not at all different here than they are in the US.

Yes. They beg, plead, hold out cups for you to throw your spare change in, they’re loud, often drunk, and whenever they have a dog or another pet with them, they sure as ever make them look sad and hungry to get more pity out of you.  Now, I don’t remember all of the bums in Sevilla, Spain, but I remember some, and they’re similar to the ones Jon encountered in Prague last Spring.  In Prague, they do not beg, or anything.  They don’t even look you in the eye.  I remember this specifically from Spain.  They kneel down on the ground, put there head on the knees, and hold their hands out, cupped in front of them.  They do this because they’re ashamed.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I would be considerably more likely to help this sort of bum than the one who yells at me.

Jon looked over and told me I was writing a book.  We’re hoping to make it to the harbour today, so I could probably be on my way.