Ughh. 3:50 am. Piazza Indipendenza, Florence. One of the few places where residents of this God-forsaken, stone city can find trees. The bus leaves at 4. Passport? Yes. Sleep? No. Karaoke the night before? Yes. Pillow? No. Woops. We crowd onto the bus and half of us pass out. The other half--minus myself--pass out a few minutes later. I am AWAKE. I spend the next three hours rotating between holding my eyes shut and listening to music, and watching the bus barrel down a "superstrada," thinking about how it looks like we are in the US barreling down the 5 through Southern California.
At some point, holding my eyes shut works, because at some other point I wake up. The sun is rising on my right, and everyone else is still getting their beauty rest. I begin perusing my iPod for one of the new albums my roommate Kim gave me that hasn't received much attention: I have a lot of attention to give right now. I settle on U2's Joshua Tree. (NO. I hadn't listened to it before now, other than on the radio, because Bono used to really freak me out. But don't worry, I've converted)
"Where The Streets Have No Name" begins to play. All of a sudden I feel lucky to be awake. I take a look back at 50-something sleeping American beauties, glance at the peacock sun rising over vast silhouettes of Italian hills and wonder, Where the hell are we? Indeed, Bono, indeed: the streets have no name. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" comes on next. No, Bono--you're 92% wrong about that.
"ALLOOOOORA! Wake UP! ...We are in Milan." The sun is up and Franco, our crazy-eyed Italian tour leader is belting over the microphone from the front seat. Everyone makes breathy I'm-waking-up noises. Me--I am ready to go thanks to Joshua Tree. Third off the bus. We're at a roadside gas station/food mart and it's so cold that we actually find ourselves skipping towards the quick stop. A half-hour later, our bladders are empty, our stomachs somewhat less grumbly, and we're sick of the bus. We all get back on and once again, everyone passes out and I am left to fiddle with my iPod.
We reach Tirano, a tiny town at the base of the alps (still in Italy), at 10-something AM and wait for "The Little Red Train." Also called the Bernina Express, the train takes the highest pass through the alps...very slowly. We spend two, three, maybe four hours climbing the alps and running from one side of the train to the other, yelling OOH! AHH! OHHHH! NOO!! as everyone stumbles over each other trying to get shots of the landscapes around us that look like they are torn out of an issue of National Geographic. This is just too good. We are too lucky. Many of us don't know it. At this moment I can't help but feel like an underachiever compared to Mother Nature.
At the highest point, I lean out the window to get a shot of the train and the icy death-lake next to the track. Four seconds later my face is an ice-cube tray. This is true wilderness. Like the oceans, the Alps are unforgiving. We're just a bunch of kids crowded into a little red train, and we expect that we'll live through this, when truly, the cold and rock could claim us at any second. I try not to think about that. We're crowded into a little red train climbing the Alps. Awesome. Happy thoughts. I start thinking Mother Nature should have thought about getting a prescription to Zanex. We're crowded into a little red train climbing the Alps. Awesome. Happy thoughts...
The train drops us in St. Moritz and we hop on our buses and head to "Bad." Yes, we stayed in "Bad." In St. Moritz, a fancy-shmancy resort town, there are two sections: Bad and Dorf. Bad means spa and Dorf means village. I hear several people mention the Shining as we drive into the deserted section of "Bad." Sadly, we only have a couple of hours until dinner and the next morning we ship out at 8, so we try our best to experience St. Moritz by doing what ignorant, inexperienced college-aged travelers do: wander around. We find a lake, ducks, horses, runners in shorts and t-shirts (it was probably 25 degrees fahrenheit), tons of people walking with ski poles, and signs telling us that we are going the wrong direction.
That evening, after thawing ourselves out a bit, we had an amazing three-course dinner in the restaurant of our hotel, Hotel Sonne (Hotel Sun). I've never been so excited to see a plate of meat and vegetables in my entire life. I'll leave it at that. After each of us had induced a severe food-coma, we watched "Double Jeopardy" on TV...in German, we think...and then we passed out.
The next morning at 8 AM, our bus is skooching down a wiry, ratty road towards the Swiss border. Everyone is awake this time--waiting for our giant Alterini Bus to tuck and roll down one of the lovely, green hillsides. Maoro, our bus driver, pulls out his cell phone at one point. Despite Maoro's crazy fast conversation, we lived.
We arrive at the ferry terminal on Lake Como a couple hours later, and we ferry over to Bellagio, a small resort-y town with tons of expensive crap to buy. We wander, take pictures, hop back on the ferry and head to the town of Como. We are all starving, so the second we hit the ground we go in search of food. As we are eating, a multi-cultural parade marches by one street over. Unfortunately, this does not make our food better.
We are all dragging our feet. Tiredness sets in and we lay down in a park. This town is just too touristy and we are just too tired and there's not enough time and so we rest. I think about the day when I won't have to travel on someone else's schedule or skip from place to place without learning squat. I'll be back Como, believe you me.
The bus ride home is even harder than the others. I can't sleep. I can't get comfortable, so I turn to my iPod for some imaginary rose-colored shades. It works, as usual. While at another rest stop in Milan, we all mill around the bus, waiting for Maoro, the driver, to return so we can just get on and get it over with. I ask my friend Billy, "What do you think that is?" I point to the giant, web-blob of colors splattered down the side of the bus. A moment of silence. Billy, a random girl to our right, and I, all say in unison: "Amoeba." Our brains are mush. We have seen too much and too little. The world is too big. But then again, maybe not.
I spend the ride home thinking about worldly things and developing scenes for a feature-length script I've been working on for nearly a year. Of course I loved going to Switzerland and Lake Como--that's exactly why I wish the trip had been longer; better. But alas, I am young and the world is our Happy Meal...soon it will be our oyster.
I found one of my favorite quotes in a book called Blue Highways. The main narrator, the traveler, meets a monk who says to him, "First I learned to travel, now I travel to learn." I am in the first phase and it is difficult, yes, but it is so fulfilling and exciting to know that I still have the rest of my life to work on the second phase. I'm getting mushy again...I'll end here.
Considering that I quoted Bono, I have to provide some profound, intellecutal, Emersonian-food-for-thought to protect my ego:
"The world belongs to the energetic."
"None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone."
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." (even Florence, Italy)
"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." (Doesn't it seem like Americans tend to either deny this or just plum forget? They say, 'I know what I'm doing' or ask, 'But what if something goes wrong?')
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." Ooh, that's confusing, Emerson.
Stay tuned for tales of France...I leave in 8 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment