Today we ended one adventure and started another. It was a day of travel, as we left our home for the past month and began our week of travel.
It was not a day we looked forward to. Part of that was sadness at leaving a place that has been relaxing, rejuvenating, and above all "pleasant." More than that, we weren't looking forward to packing everything up and hauling it to the train station and onto multiple trains during the course of the day.
In some ways the step that concerned us most was the first one, carrying our luggage down the 51 steps from the apartment to the street. One of the only advantages to our luggage not arriving in Italy when we did was that we didn't have to lug it from the bus to the apartment and up the steps. We packed relatively light, but when you pack for five weeks your suitcase is going to be bulkier and heavier than you might like.
We carried the bags downstairs without problem (and without resorting to the temptation to let gravity carry them down the steps at their own pace). We then lugged them to the train station, stopping midway so that Shelley could satisfy one of her "must-do's," having a waffle for breakfast. That nicely broke up the twenty-minute walk to the station into two parts, and we had new-found strength after having a waffle and pastry. We also knew that our train travel might preclude eating until late in the day.
Lucca's brick and cobblestone streets don't seem quite as quaint when you're trying to roll a suitcase over them. Two different times, Shelley's four-wheeler hit a rut between the bricks and nearly went over, but we made it to the train station without difficulty. On our way we circled around Piazza Napoleone, where preparations were underway for the Backstreet Boys concert tonight.
The last thing I saw before going into the station was a bus with an advertisement on the side for a website, www.ciaobimbo.it It had pictures of babies, so it looked innocent enough, and apparently "bimbo" means baby in Italian as does "bambino." It turned my head, and made me consider the importance of internet context in the form of domain names. I'm betting that "Ciaobimbo.com" would have very different content than "Ciaobimbo.it," and I don't even want to think about what "Ciaobimbo.xxx" might look like.
On Sunday, when we walked Cindy and Mark over to catch their train to Bologna, we used the opportunity to purchase our tickets all the way from Lucca to Tirano in northern Italy. There were two advantages to doing that. One was defensive. Tirano sounds very similar to "Torino" (Turin), and I spelled it out for the ticket agent so that he didn't sell us tickets to somewhere different than we wanted to go. The other benefit was that it made things easier this morning, as all we had to do was stamp our tickets.
When I had originally thought about going from Lucca to Milan, I had wondered about connecting through Pisa vs. Florence. When I went on-line it looked like Florence was the best option, but the ticket agent connected us through Pisa, so the first leg of our journey was an easy half-hour ride, although we learned before leaving Lucca that going up stairs with the suitcases was going to be harder than going downstairs.
Half an hour after arriving in Pisa, we boarded an InterCity train for Milan. We had no sooner found empty seats than someone came in with tickets for the same seats we were in, and we realized that this train had reserved seats. Ours were in the next car. The six-person compartment where our assigned seats were already had four people sitting there, so we decided to sit in an empty compartment. At every stop for the entire four-hour trip we expected that we would have to move, but while the rest of the compartment filled up, we kept our places.
We had another half-hour layover in Milan before catching the regional train for Tirano, which was supposed to leave at 4:20 p.m. At 4:10 the train for Tirano was listed on the departure board, but with no track listed. I checked the printed daily schedule which indicated track 5, so we headed over that way. As we got close we noticed three things. The departure board was now showing track 5, the train was just pulling in, and there was a mass of humanity streaming to board the train. We quickly figured out that this was a train that filled at the beginning of the route and then gradually emptied out, with few people boarding at subsequent stops. We also quickly figured out that we weren't going to get a seat. That was a major concern for Shelley, because she thought the trip was only 30 minutes. With some hesitancy I told her that it was actually five times that.
We jumped on the train between two cars. As we tried to load the bags a helpful man lifted them for us, and immediately wanted us to pay him. We were in standing room between two cars (which of course wasn't air conditioned). For the first 45 minutes Shelley stood and I alternated between standing and sitting on my suitcase. Just yesterday morning we were talking that it might be time for me to get a new suitcase. My current bag is an American Tourister bought under emergency conditions back in 2007, when I was visiting colleges in Texas with Arlene Ingram and Janet Adams Wall before the NACAC meeting in Austin. My suitcase had arrived at the Austin airport falling apart, and after trying to Band-Aid it with duct tape, we were driving from Dallas to College Station when we saw an outlet mall with a luggage outlet. It was a good purchase and has done good duty, but after I sat on it yesterday it may be ready for retirement by the time we get home.
At the second stop people in our car got off, and we quickly grabbed seats. At that point the rest of the trip was memorable for the scenery rather than our miserable circumstances. We travelled along the eastern shore of Lake Como with great views, then headed up into the Italian Alps, with villages stacked three high on the mountainside at some places. At one point the train groaned to a stop for several minutes, but just for another train to pass. When we started back up, I swear I heard the engine saying "Penso di poter, Penso di poter" ("I think I cam, I think I can"), but at that point that may have been my inner voice.
Tirano, our destination, is the end of the line for the regional train, so by the last leg of the trip the train was almost empty, a far cry from the way we began in Milan. It was raining when we arrived, but we were overjoyed to see that our hotel is on the main square right across from the train station. Moving day was over.
It was not a day we looked forward to. Part of that was sadness at leaving a place that has been relaxing, rejuvenating, and above all "pleasant." More than that, we weren't looking forward to packing everything up and hauling it to the train station and onto multiple trains during the course of the day.
In some ways the step that concerned us most was the first one, carrying our luggage down the 51 steps from the apartment to the street. One of the only advantages to our luggage not arriving in Italy when we did was that we didn't have to lug it from the bus to the apartment and up the steps. We packed relatively light, but when you pack for five weeks your suitcase is going to be bulkier and heavier than you might like.
We carried the bags downstairs without problem (and without resorting to the temptation to let gravity carry them down the steps at their own pace). We then lugged them to the train station, stopping midway so that Shelley could satisfy one of her "must-do's," having a waffle for breakfast. That nicely broke up the twenty-minute walk to the station into two parts, and we had new-found strength after having a waffle and pastry. We also knew that our train travel might preclude eating until late in the day.
Lucca's brick and cobblestone streets don't seem quite as quaint when you're trying to roll a suitcase over them. Two different times, Shelley's four-wheeler hit a rut between the bricks and nearly went over, but we made it to the train station without difficulty. On our way we circled around Piazza Napoleone, where preparations were underway for the Backstreet Boys concert tonight.
The last thing I saw before going into the station was a bus with an advertisement on the side for a website, www.ciaobimbo.it It had pictures of babies, so it looked innocent enough, and apparently "bimbo" means baby in Italian as does "bambino." It turned my head, and made me consider the importance of internet context in the form of domain names. I'm betting that "Ciaobimbo.com" would have very different content than "Ciaobimbo.it," and I don't even want to think about what "Ciaobimbo.xxx" might look like.
On Sunday, when we walked Cindy and Mark over to catch their train to Bologna, we used the opportunity to purchase our tickets all the way from Lucca to Tirano in northern Italy. There were two advantages to doing that. One was defensive. Tirano sounds very similar to "Torino" (Turin), and I spelled it out for the ticket agent so that he didn't sell us tickets to somewhere different than we wanted to go. The other benefit was that it made things easier this morning, as all we had to do was stamp our tickets.
When I had originally thought about going from Lucca to Milan, I had wondered about connecting through Pisa vs. Florence. When I went on-line it looked like Florence was the best option, but the ticket agent connected us through Pisa, so the first leg of our journey was an easy half-hour ride, although we learned before leaving Lucca that going up stairs with the suitcases was going to be harder than going downstairs.
Half an hour after arriving in Pisa, we boarded an InterCity train for Milan. We had no sooner found empty seats than someone came in with tickets for the same seats we were in, and we realized that this train had reserved seats. Ours were in the next car. The six-person compartment where our assigned seats were already had four people sitting there, so we decided to sit in an empty compartment. At every stop for the entire four-hour trip we expected that we would have to move, but while the rest of the compartment filled up, we kept our places.
We had another half-hour layover in Milan before catching the regional train for Tirano, which was supposed to leave at 4:20 p.m. At 4:10 the train for Tirano was listed on the departure board, but with no track listed. I checked the printed daily schedule which indicated track 5, so we headed over that way. As we got close we noticed three things. The departure board was now showing track 5, the train was just pulling in, and there was a mass of humanity streaming to board the train. We quickly figured out that this was a train that filled at the beginning of the route and then gradually emptied out, with few people boarding at subsequent stops. We also quickly figured out that we weren't going to get a seat. That was a major concern for Shelley, because she thought the trip was only 30 minutes. With some hesitancy I told her that it was actually five times that.
We jumped on the train between two cars. As we tried to load the bags a helpful man lifted them for us, and immediately wanted us to pay him. We were in standing room between two cars (which of course wasn't air conditioned). For the first 45 minutes Shelley stood and I alternated between standing and sitting on my suitcase. Just yesterday morning we were talking that it might be time for me to get a new suitcase. My current bag is an American Tourister bought under emergency conditions back in 2007, when I was visiting colleges in Texas with Arlene Ingram and Janet Adams Wall before the NACAC meeting in Austin. My suitcase had arrived at the Austin airport falling apart, and after trying to Band-Aid it with duct tape, we were driving from Dallas to College Station when we saw an outlet mall with a luggage outlet. It was a good purchase and has done good duty, but after I sat on it yesterday it may be ready for retirement by the time we get home.
At the second stop people in our car got off, and we quickly grabbed seats. At that point the rest of the trip was memorable for the scenery rather than our miserable circumstances. We travelled along the eastern shore of Lake Como with great views, then headed up into the Italian Alps, with villages stacked three high on the mountainside at some places. At one point the train groaned to a stop for several minutes, but just for another train to pass. When we started back up, I swear I heard the engine saying "Penso di poter, Penso di poter" ("I think I cam, I think I can"), but at that point that may have been my inner voice.
Tirano, our destination, is the end of the line for the regional train, so by the last leg of the trip the train was almost empty, a far cry from the way we began in Milan. It was raining when we arrived, but we were overjoyed to see that our hotel is on the main square right across from the train station. Moving day was over.
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