Italy: The Beginning

I have a LOT to talk about with Italy, so I will probably split it up into multiple posts. each one will focus on one of the cities I was in. But first, I want to reemphasize what I touched in on my post about Prague. I am not ignorant, but I can be naive. I knew that Italy would not be exactly like it has been portrayed through Instagram posts and other media representations, but that doesn't mean I was prepared for the reality. I simply didn't have enough information to create a concept of what the reality was truly like. Again, that's why I want to be completely transparent in this blog, because although I made some great memories in Italy, I also cried every other day, nearly had a panic attack, and was counting down the days until I could come home.

The timing of the trip was the first issue. I'd been traveling for at least four consecutive weekends preceding this trip so I was already exhausted. Trying to cram homework and exams into the three to four days between trips was mentally taxing. The week before my trip to Italy I had begun to feel a keen ache for home. I don't necessarily mean American, but my family, specifically my life before my siblings and I left home. I missed being together, taking trips, watching family films, or playing board games. Traveling, specifically has always been a family affair; in many ways, our trips were (at least in my mind) our family's identity. We were always traveling.

So traveling without my family felt strange. I've been conditioned to view traveling as an experience that is meant to be shared with four specific individuals, mama, papa, Abby, and Gideon... so when none of them were there with me, it felt like something was missing from the very essence of what traveling is supposed to be. So there I was homesick, and engaging in the activity that felt closest to home; traveling.

That, coupled with trying to navigate a foreign country alone was a huge blow. But what made it even worse was that my parents were moving while I was traveling. So not only was I homesick, but I was faced with the reality that the only physical home I knew would not be there when I finally returned. I hold no grudges against my parents for the career path they chose. I find I have had many experiences and opportunities because of it that others my age did not. However, I will always long to have the experience of traveling back to my childhood house with my own kids one day.

Along with these things, I was having some minor issues with the friend I was traveling with which, amid the pressure and stress I was under, were blown out of proportion. All of this, mixed with the many miniature "catastrophes" that happened along the way, was a huge mental overload on someone who'd never traveled alone (except to and from family members' homes) and was already way out of her comfort zone. So now that you have the bigger picture, I can tell you more about these mini "catastrophes" and my experiences in detail.

We will start with the first day. My friend and I had an (admittedly) ambitious itinerary. We wanted to hit four cities in ten days. We were blessed because my friend's friend is a travel agent and booked our hotels and flight home for free, but she left the train tickets up to us since these are a little more tricky to coordinate. Originally, we had planned to take an overnight train to Milan and get there the next morning to visit a scenic lake but we hadn't had a chance amidst the hustle and bustle to sit down and book it. Our window closed and instead, we had to take a late-night train that would reach the station at 12 am. But this was no problem. We were young. We'd survive. We'd wait it out in the train station and take the 5 am train out to the lake.

Wrong. Apparently, trains don't operate the way planes do. They rarely run overnight, so train stations close. The cops warned us that we would have an hour before we were kicked out. I called my mom in a panic whilst my friend was useful and found us a hotel for 80 bucks that was only nine minutes away. The bed felt like a cardboard box, but I was glad we were safe. At the end of the day, it was better than staying in the train station anyway. However, it wasn't a great way to start the trip, and it had us in a bit of a sour mood the next day.

The lake we wanted to visit is called Lake Como. My friend is a huge Star Wars fan and she wanted to visit the villa where they filmed some of the Iconic scenes in "Attack of the Clones". I like Star Wars, and I thought it sounded fun, so I was just along for the ride. She seemed confident about where to get fairy tickets, how often the fairy ran, and how far the villa was from the town we were arriving in. It seemed like it would be a pretty smooth day.

Wrong. Apparently, her research had come from TikTok, which is by no means a reliable source. The fairy, which was supposed to run every hour, was only running every three hours because it was the off-season, and the ride to the villa, which was supposed to be fourteen minutes, was an hour and a half. I didn't really mind that the fairy ride didn't go as planned because I had no expectations, to begin with, but the fact of the matter is that when we arrived at the lake, my friend had no idea where to even go to find a ticket. Neither did I, because she'd told me she'd planned everything out. So we had to try and figure everything out while we sat on a bench in the fog and cold stomachs growling, and then wait in line for tickets. By the time we got back from the Villa, we'd missed our train. On top of this, neither of us had a chance to eat a real meal since we'd been at Bogenhofen.

This was partially because of circumstances, but for me, my anxiety had completely stolen my appetite, and the next ten days were a battle of trying to force myself to eat.

Regardless of all these misfortunes, the Villa was a lot of fun to visit. The lake was beautiful. It is set amidst very steep hills which are dotted with colorful villas. It felt like something between Lake Coeur D'Alene, and Alaska, with a bit of tropical flare thrown in. We didn't have the best weather, but I thought the fog rolling down the slopes was just as beautiful as the sun would have been. At the villa, we recreated some iconic Star Wars scenes.