The Small Triumphs
Written at 7:38, 9-29-06 in Florence, Italy.
There’s not much to be said for the 24 hours following my previous post, at least not very much that’s positive. The most positive thing I could say is that I am no longer on the ferry and no longer in a train station in Venice or Bologna, which is where I spent the majority of the day.
I suppose the best place to start is on the ferry with the events following the writing of my previous post. To say I had an “okay” time on the ferry would be to make light of the misery that was Jacob’s existence while aboard the Minoan Line ferry. He endured the day’s internment on the ferry with only mild indignation. In fact, I’d even presume to say we had a good time while watching the movie I’d downloaded back in Sun Rock Hostel. However, the movie was to be a beacon of light on a storm sea (quite literally). When we returned from watching the movie, we found a group of young Slovenians—most appeared to be around 17 or 18—hovering nearby to our sleeping dominion. You might note in my previous post that I described the voracity with which we carved out our space on the ship’s deck.
Now these Slovenians, while appearing harmless initially, soon proved themselves to be anything but that. They did nothing so drastic as to attack us in our sleep or anything of malicious intent—they were, however, drinking. Bottles of hard liquor—vodka, ouzo, gin, and rum—rose up from the small plastic table, like beautiful glass skyscrapers perched over a sea of sleeping people down below. Jacob and I didn’t really have any intention of going to sleep, so it didn’t matter so much that the Slovenians were drinking and being loud. All that changed, though, when one of them haplessly knocked an almost-full bottle of vodka down onto our neatly laid nest of sleeping paraphernalia.
The bottle toppled over and landed squarely on Jacob’s sleeping bag. Looks of shock mingled with the bottle’s descent and inevitable explosion of vodka and glass, making the scene all-the-more dramatic. Jacob’s sleeping bag was soaked in—not just vodka, which is relatively smell-less—but raspberry vodka. A puddle then began encroaching upon the rest of our stuff, forcing a quick evacuation. (I was using my clothes as a mattress, meaning that had it fallen on my “sleeping bag,” my clothes would have been sticky and smelled of vodka in the days to come.
The Slovenians were apologetic, but frankly Jacob didn’t want to hear it and neither did I. There were plenty of other free tables, but they’d chosen one close to where people were sleeping. We accepted their apologies and wordlessly relocated to a place where other people were sleeping. Jacob hung his sleeping bag up to dry on a low-hanging pipe, which is exactly where it would remain even as we departed the ferry the next morning. He’d planned on getting rid of it eventually anyway, this incident just meant he had no sleeping bag for that night.
That pretty much put an end to the night. We watched a few more things on my computer and at about midnight went to bed, dreading the early-morning wake-up call to pack up and get off the ferry. (Although I suppose the “getting off the ferry” part was not something we dreaded).
There’s really not much to be said for the present day. I’ll spare you all the grim details. Basically: The ferry was late, I went ahead of Jacob to try and catch my train, I couldn’t find my way from the Venice port to the train station, I missed the first train, the next two were fully booked, I figured out a quicker route to Florence that went through Bologna first, I got stuck in Bologna because the trains were booked and they switched platforms at the last minute, making me miss a train, I finally caught the train and arrived in Florence (I decided to go to Florence instead of Cinque Terra because I wouldn’t have made it in time to get a hostel), the hostel I wanted in Florence was booked, I found another one (more expensive), and I arrived at the hostel.
And that’s using a sparing amount of details! I suppose my situation wasn’t as bad as one girl I saw—she had put her bags on the train (I presume) and then gotten off for a second and the train closed up and wouldn’t let her back on because it was about to depart. Talk about rough—getting separated from all your stuff; at least it wasn’t stolen, I suppose.
The hostel I’m at is nice, but in place of a common room or social atmosphere there’s a big gaping void. Oh, there are common rooms—with two chairs. On the other hand, the hostel is clean. I’m in a four bed dormitory with its own shower. And oh did I ever take advantage of that! After two days without a shower, one of which was spent mostly on the floor of the ferry’s deck, I was damn well going to enjoy my shower.
Florence is a pretty cool town. I didn’t get to see much of it, but I have some ambitious sight-seeing plans tomorrow. Oh course, I don’t actually have a place to stay tomorrow night. The hostel only had a vacancy for tonight (I’m grateful it at least had that). I suppose I’ll use some internet time tonight to try and find a place. I did get to catch the beginning of the sun setting here in Florence and it was very beautiful. There are a lot of quaint shops and cool narrow streets that meander through the city. It’s a nice change from the past week, when I either had to take a water taxi everywhere or else was stuck in one place because it was raining so hard.
My spirits were pretty low while in the train stations; sometimes I wonder if I’ve seen more of European train stations than I’ve actually seen of “European sights.” But I feel better now. I’m doing laundry. Yeah, you’re like laundry makes you feel better, Greg? What are you on? Have you been sniffing laundry detergent? No, I haven’t. But a good shower and clean clothes have a certain way of restoring one to full spirits and high energy when you’re traveling. Now if only my dinner didn’t consist of two bananas and a tortilla :). I guess you take what triumphs you can.
Tags: ferry, Florence, Italy, Trains, Travel, Venice
gregbilsland
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