Well, we did it. My friend Gabe and I "planned" a whirlwind trip to Italy: Milan, Florence, and finishing up in Rome for Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square. I say "planned" because this trip was literally planned the night before. For a girl who plans things years in advance, the anticipation for this trip literally almost gave me about four heart attacks. All I have to say is God, St. Christopher, and the Pope must have been on our side for this trip, because I'm still having trouble believing that we made it to Florence. In fact, the worst thing that has happened so far is paying €12 for gelato, each =/ so that kind of sucked, but considering I thought I was going to be by myself in Italy for 5 days, I really can't complain! I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though, so let's start with trip preparations and Milan.

I didn't want to jinx myself writing about this in my previous two blogs, but now that we've made it, I think I'm safe ;] Gabe, if you're reading this, I bet you didn't know that last Friday I was pretty close to telling you I was going to have to cut my losses on the flight to Milan because I had no idea how we were going to figure everything out. It seemed like every time I thought I had resolved the last problem, a bigger predicament appeared...

Gabe and I figured that a single country Eurorail pass would be cheaper than buying individual tickets because the pass would allow us to travel 3 different days over a 2-month time span, including the fast ICE trains. Milan to Florence, Florence to Rome, and Rome back to Milan. Seemed like a great deal! But they are only available to non-European citizens, and both Gabe and I were already in Europe. Even after I ordered them, I was pretty worried they were going to mail them home home, like Holt home, which would have been a huge problem because there would have been no way my parents could have mailed them to me in time. Boy was I relieved when I received our ItaliaRail in the mail during the middle of last week. I was pretty busy with schoolwork and personal statements, though, so I didn't get a chance to look over the packet of information that the pass came with until Friday. When I finally read the guide, my stomach dropped. Apparently the pass is not enough to guarantee a train ride; you need to make reservations, too... and if there weren't any seats open, you would have to purchase a regular ticket because Eurorail only has a certain number of seats in each train. The guide also suggested to make reservations early, especially for countries like Italy and France, which can be booked months in advance. AND we were going to Rome for Easter Sunday. This wasn't looking promising at all.

I was reading the guide on the Strassenbahn, and as soon as I got to my Haltestelle I pretty much sprinted to my apartment. It took about 45 minutes, but I finally found a combination of trains that still had 2 seats available in 2nd class for the dates and times we needed. Feeling rather proud of myself, I clicked "confirm" and waited for the electronic reservations in my inbox. Ten minutes later, nothing. An hour later, still nothing. When I had ordered the passes themselves, the confirmation was a little unusual so I was trying not to freak out, but the worrywart in my genes wouldn't let me. I didn't want to book two sets of reservations, but I also didn't want to wait too long and end up not being able to get them later. I emailed the support team, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't get a response until Monday. There was nothing else I could really do but wait...

In the meantime, Gabe and I discovered on Sunday that although Ryanair advertises flying out of Dusseldorf—and I had bought my train ticket to Dusseldorf Airport—we were actually flying out of Weeze, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere about an hour train ride out of Dusseldorf. I was hoping I could just buy a train ticket from the Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof to Weeze...and I could...but it would have meant arriving in the Weeze train station about half an hour before our flight departed and five minutes after they supposedly closed the gate. Crap. The train ticket to Dusseldorf was far from cheap (over €100 ) & it was looking like I would have to buy a completely new ticket to Weeze. This is where I need to thank Friederike and Kathrin for being unbelievably helpful with canceling the ticket to Dusseldorf and booking a ticket to Weeze. I ended up losing €15 cancelling the first reservation, but it was much better than I thought it was going to be. There would have been no way I would have been able to figure it out without them, especially since the woman working at the Deutsche Bahn ticket counter was a royal you know what!

I finally heard back from the Eurorail customer service when I was figuring out my tickets with Kathrin at her place Monday evening. All the email said was "Your credit card information was blank, so the order automatically canceled. Beth." Seriously!? First of all, I know for a fact that I entered in my credit card information... and secondly, crap! After Kathrin printed off my ticket for Weeze, I sprinted home once again to try and figure out the ItaliaRail Reservations. This is when I need to thank Luca, because even though most websites have an English translation, it's normally only part of the website & it is always a really odd translation. He helped me figure out how we would get from the airport in "Milan," which also wasn't the airport in Milan but an hour outside of the city, to the central train station. Thank goodness he told me that, or we would have arrived in Milan too late on Monday to catch our return flight. Gabe and I were hoping to spend part of Monday in Rome, but the only train that still had seats available left late Monday morning. I can't complain too much, though—we were still able to book reservations for the dates and times we needed =] It seemed like everything was going to be okay again...

Unfortunately getting to Weeze was going to take longer than getting to Dusseldorf, which meant that I would have to head to the train station straight from class. Normally that wouldn't be a huge problem, but just my luck... we were going on a tour of the city Wednesday morning, stopping at historical points and giving presentations on the surveys and research we had done on them, so I was going to have to drag my stuff for Italy all over Jena. I had yoga 7:30-8:30 in town, a presentation to give in class from 10-12 at the uni, and a train to catch at 12:30. This was going to be interesting... I knew I would have to have everything packed and ready to go before I left for yoga in the morning because after taking into account time for the Strassenbahn, getting to class in time was going to be tight. It certainly didn't help that the yoga class didn't get let out until closer to 9...so once again I had to sprint with my yoga mat. I'm becoming such a pro at that ;]

I made it to class about 6 minutes late and the presentation of Ernst Abbe Platz had already started =/ I felt pretty bad about that, but everyone saw my bags and realized I was leaving right from class. I don't think my professor minded too much, especially after I explained about what a chaotic mess our trip was becoming, so I was pretty relieved about that, too. It was kind of funny... everyone kept asking me if I was going home for the weekend. I guess they forgot that I'm from the States lol

Class went a little longer than normal, so I ended up missing the bus that I wanted to take to the train station. But another one was coming at 12:13, and the train station is only a few minutes away by bus so it really wasn't a problem. I was absolutely exhausted... I had only gotten 3 or so hours of sleep the night before with packing, trying to actually plan what I wanted to see in Florence and Rome last minute with Luca, finishing up my presentation preparations on the Holzmarkt, skyping with my parents, trying to figure out Nathan's Germany trip plans (He'll be here in less than 2 weeks!!), etc., etc. But I also had to take about 4 different trains to get to Weeze, and I sure didn't want to sleep through the transfer! So I did my best to stay awake...which was made even more difficult by the fact that I hadn't had a chance to grab coffee before I left, and I only had about 5 or 10 minutes at each station. Ughhh... I was dragggging!

The train system in Germany is so easy, and I got to Weeze without a problem and in more than plenty of time. Weeze really was in the middle of nowhere and the train station is tiny, so it was very easy to find the shuttle bus to the airport. The airport was tiny as well... & I ended up being really thankful for that. I called Gabe when I got to the airport to figure out where he was, and ran into the final (and biggest) problem. He was in Dusseldorf, and wasn't going to get to the Weeze train station until 9ish. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 10:05, you're supposed to check in 2 hours before take off, and the gates would (supposedly) close at 9:35. The train station isn't far away from the airport, but it is certainly not in walking distance either, and he had no idea when a shuttle would leave next. This is when I started to get worried. There was no way I was going to miss out on Florence and Rome, but the idea of traveling by myself in a country where the only two words I know are ciao and gratze wasn't exactly comforting. My parents were aware of the problems I had run into with the last minute planning, train ticket mix up and reservations, and spending the night in the Dusseldorf train station on the way home, so my mom was of course already worried sick, and the last thing I wanted to do was tell them I was going solo to Italy... but as it got closer to 8:45 I decided to email my Dad and see what his thoughts were. He emailed me back, "Mom is freaking out a bit. Your dad isn't. I will keep mom calm, but keep texting like you are with updates." So it looked like it was a go, with or without (but preferably with) Gabe.

To make matters more complicated, Gabe and I were planning on splitting the price of a checked bag, so if he was coming, I was going to have to wait to check in until he got there. After I got the go from my Dad, I went to talk to the ticket guys at RyanAir to figure out how long I could wait for Gabe before I would have to check my bag on my own. They told me 9:10 would probably be the latest I could push it, so I was hopeful once again that Gabe would make it... & he did! He ended up having to take a cab to the airport, but we did it. We checked in, got through security, and found our gate all within ten or fifteen minutes. Then we proceeded to wait around for another forty minutes; they didn't even start boarding until well after we were supposed to take off. So we lucked out there =]

We got to our hostel in Milan at around 2am, so it was a really good thing that the hostel didn't have a curfew. I'm pretty sure our room was under construction, though... We had it to ourselves— and a bathroom, too—but it was seriously so sketch. There was no toilet seat on the toilet and to top it off, they had plugged in extension cord into the wall on one side of the toilet, wrapped it around to the other side, and then they had plugged another extension cord into that one, which went out the bathroom door and into our room. And that was where they had plugged in the TV! So we couldn't close the bathroom door, and I'm pretty sure it was a fire hazard and would have broken about 300 regulations and codes in America, but the place was cheap, came with breakfast, and we made it out of there just fine. But let's just say I was very happy that I didn't have to stay there alone!

We made it to the Milan Central Train Station, and had planned on stashing our bags in a locker and exploring the city a bit because our train to Florence didn't leave until 1ish. We were going to get our passes validated first though, and thank goodness we did because the line was ridiculous! We were probably waiting for at least forty minutes, if not more, so that by the time we were done it really didn't make sense to try and find the cathedral that I really wanted to see, so we sat outside a café connected to the train station and enjoyed our first Italian espressos! =] The weather was gorgeous, I finally had my coffee (and it was amazing), and most importantly we had made it to Italy. It was absolutely amazing =]

After that, we found our train to Florence, which was also quite easy. I was still worried that we hadn't done everything right with our passes and reservations since it didn't go through the first time, but we're on the train now and everything seems to be working like a charm =]

On a side note, flying RyanAir was definitely an experience...but one that I'm hoping to only need to have once. The flights may be cheap, but taking into account the monetary and time cost of getting to Dusseldorf, I think next time I'll fly Lufthansa out of Leipzig!