milano e svizzera

31/10-2/11
It’s Halloween! And we spent the not-so-celebrated (in Italy) holiday on an overnight train to Zurich! But getting to that point was not easy, the week preceding that weekend was probably the busiest one I had had as of yet. I have written here “craziest week yet” but had to go back to my calendar to remember as to why it was so bad. well let’s see, I started another class that week, my French class taught in Italian, so add that to my 15 credit course load, Tuesday was the final day of our first part of culture, meaning we had a final exam, but also an individual essay and a group essay/project/presentation were all due that day. It was a massive amount of work, and due to the nature of group projects, didn’t work out so well, with some people doing more work than others (inevitable, right?) and lots of last minute work and cramming, the whole day was just kind of a mess. Luckily the class was over after that and we were on to start a more boring part of culture with a professor who seemed to not only hate Americans (typical) but also Italy and Italians (ugh). Thursday I had my Composition 1 final, the most challenging of ala my classes. So the week was pretty jammed packed and in addition we sort of semi-planned a trip to Switzerland and Milan provided that our Eurorail passes came. They did come, Thursday afternoon, and we decided to leave Friday night on an overnight train to Zurich, spend half the day in Zurich, take a train to Lucerne (another town in Switzerland) spend the rest of the day there, then take a train to Milan, stay in Milan the night, spend all of Sunday in Milan, and overnight it back to Viterbo Sunday night, arriving Monday morning, approximately 45 minutes before my 9 am class. All this travel and we only used 2 of our Eurorail travel days! It was a pretty crammed weekend, which became only more crammed when our train was (inevitably) late leaving from our first connection of Attigliano. The trains went Viterbo to Attigliano, Attigliano to Florence, Florence to Zurich. Viterbo to Attigliano was fine, meaning that it was probably delayed around 15 minutes, but in Italy that means it was on time. When we got to Attigliano, we were supposed to have a pretty tight connection, but the train to Florence was announced to be 40 minutes in ritardo (late, or retarded as Carla says). We were kind of nervous at this point, since our hour layover in Florence, which had previously seemed like a lot of time, was now cut much shorter. We also chose to wait on the platform (in the unlikely event that it would not actually be that late) in the cold weather and pouring rain (though we were under a little covering). So we’re sitting on the platform when they make the announcement about it being late and just then two guys come up the stairs and start complaining about how its “quaranta minuti in ritardo” just like we are. So we say something like “yeah it’s along time and we have a connection in Florence”. Then we start talking about how we’re going to Zurich, which of course they find weird/random (Italians don’t travel, and our reason for going “because we can and want to” probably wasn’t good enough). And we don’t want to miss it because there aren’t usually other night trains. Luckily I don’t think much of this because we have a full on conversation in Italian with these two guys (meaning I mainly talked and then translated for Carla into English), who also lived in Viterbo, about how we’re Americans studying abroad and what we study here and at home and where we’re traveling or planning to travel. Coincidently one of the guys is planning on studying abroad in New York sometime so he had an English book to study on the train. As we sit there talking, more announcements are made finally after like 50 minutes, saying that the train is delayed again. I think they said some small number, like 20 more minutes, but those 20 minutes came and went with no other announcement and no train. Finally after what felt like forever, the train came. It was packed. There were people sitting in the aisles, on the floor, in the little corridors between trains, and the train was probably 100 degrees inside and smelled. Worst train ride ever! To make it even worse, the super delayed train stopped at every stop for at least 5 minutes, sometimes for as much as 30 minutes. There was no way we were making this train to Switzerland. In the mean time we were still sitting with our new friends from the train station and they were so nice. One called his friend and had him look up other trains that night on the internet and gave us advice as to what we should do (stay the night or leave on the next train at 3 am). He even offered to let us stay with him if we wanted to stay the night but we also had Caitlin in Florence with her dad and grandpa that night to look for a place for us. In the end, we decided that since most trains were delayed that night that maybe we would luck out and our train to Switzerland would also be delayed. If it wasn’t, well then I guess we’d either be staying at the train station or going into Florence to find a place. But we weren’t too worried about it. So we got of the train, leaving with the guy’s phone number telling us to call if we needed any more help, and went to the board to find that 1, our train from Attigliano had arrived 100 minutes late (a little more than 40), but that our train to Zurich was also 80 minutes late, so we hadn’t missed it! The only problem was that it was so late at night at this point that the train ticket office was closed and we didn’t have a reservation or a way to buy a reservation. When the train came though we just hopped on board, explained the situation, and ended up getting and entire 6 person sleeper car to ourselves (just the two of us), it was great! Then we had a nice long trip to sleep. When we woke up in the morning, I looked out the window and we were in the middle of the Alps! It was so amazing; I almost thought it was a dream. The rest of the ride we laid in our beds with the window curtains open, watching the Alps go by. Like TV but better! The nice train man came an hour before we were supposed to arrive in Zurich and gave us breakfast. When we got to Zurich we put our stuff in lockers in the cool train station and set off to start walking around. We went down the Bahnhofstrasse with all its shopping (starting off with affordable and then going into crazy expensive), went into a Coop (yes they are in Switzerland too!), bought lots of chocolate and a huge brezel, and then made our way to the older section of Zurich with the river flowing through it. There, there are two cathedrals, the Grossmunster and the Fraumunster, one with stained glass by Chagall, that we went into. Being a little museum-ed out and also short on time we spent the rest of our half day walking around the cute little streets of Zurich. Then we went back to the train station and got on a train to Lucerne, a town only like an hour away from Zurich, known for being really beautiful. This train ride was probably one of the best we’ve been on. It was a really nice, modern train, and we sat in a section that had a round booth and a table, like in a restaurant. The train pushed off from the platform at the time it was supposed to (on the dot) and that alone made it the best train trip of the weekend. The train ride was beautiful, down the river that cuts through Zurich, to Lucerne. When we arrived in Lucerne and stepped out of the train station, you can immediately see why people think it’s so beautiful - It’s on a lake with the Alps in the background! It was so cool. So we got there around 3:30 in the afternoon and started down the main street across the river from the train station, one that is full of shops and fondue places. All the store signs said that they would be open until 4, but everything was already closed! And it was like a ghost town. So we just walked through the quaint old streets with the ornately painted building facades, saw the medieval wall that used to protect the city, and walked along the water. As it started to get dark it got even colder, and we headed back to the train station to get on our train to Milan. When we got to Milan we walked to our hostel which was actually a (crappy) hotel that didn’t have half the stuff it advertised (internet etc) and had a shower in the middle of the room. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but luckily it was just for a night. In the morning we packed up our stuff and took it to the luggage storage in the train station, bought our seat reservation for our train that night, and then set off to see the Duomo. The Duomo was really impressive and really ornate. And we went up on the roof (lots of stairs!), which let you see the detail of the sculptures on the building. Then we walked through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, down the supposed affordable shopping streets in Milan, and then after walking forever ended up taking a bus the rest of the way to see one of Milan’s oldest churches (which happened to be only one stop away at that point), the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. After that we made our way to the cathedral where they have da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which we didn’t get to see because even though we tried to make reservations in advance, it was sold out through December. Still the church was nice. Then we walked to the Castello Sforzesco, which houses tons of museums, and then walked back to see the Duomo at night, and walked through some really expensive shopping streets. Then it was onto our overnight train to Viterbo, with a switch in Orte in the morning. We paid for a 3 euro seat reservation thinking it would mean like a reclining seat that maybe turned into a bed, but it was only a semi-reclining seat in a packed 6 person compartment, so I didn’t really sleep, and had a long day of classes which I had to leave for 30 minutes after I got home. Yay!