Sojin Josephson

Last Thursday, the international student group at school, ESN, told my friends and I that we didn’t make the list for the Venice trip. We were on the waiting list and didn’t even consider an alternative. Venice (Venezia as it’s called here) and Milan aren’t far apart so we could have gone another weekend, but we were determined to get to Carnevale.

Short side note: Carnevale in Venice is one of the top 10 Pre-Lenten festivals in the world and is held annually. Similar celebrations stretch from Mardi Gras in New Orleans to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. The festivals are notorious for the extravagant masks and costumes that people wear. The festivities end this week.

With thousands of visitors flooding onto the island, the campsites, hostels and everything else in the 20-year-old budget range were full. I started to look on VRBO for an inexpensive, local place. I know people from home that frequent this site, but I had never really explored it. I emailed eight people and hoped for quick replies. After a majority of “I regret to inform you that my property is not available” emails, we decided we should go to Paris or Prague instead. But soon I got a final email from a Roberto. I persistently responded four times to his one email with questions. He replied and we were lucky enough to book the apartment on the morning of the 13^th—the day we were planning to leave.

But our luck was about to run out. After Italian class was out for the week, we decided to all meet at 3:20 p.m. at Centrale Station to purchase train tickets and head to Venice. We had to meet the apartment owner at 7:30. Easy. Or so we thought.

First off, I decided to come to Italy with a beautiful carry on-size suitcase for travel. I thought I would try to be a blending fashionista instead of a backpacking tourist, but turns out I should have gone with the latter. I’m destroying my suitcase by dragging it on and off the metros, trains and buses, up and down stairs and over bridges. My friends went up the four flights of stairs on one side of the station and I went up the escalator on the other side. Logically we figured we would come out at the same spot, but didn’t. We don’t all have working phones yet, so it took awhile to find each other amid the large sum of people leaving Milan for the weekend. We eventually reunited and went to the kiosk to buy our tickets. But only one of us got a ticket for the 5:00 train to Venice. Then it sold out.

After waiting in line for help so we could all be together on the 7:30 train, we magically found a woman who was booked on a separate train than her mom. She bought the single ticket and we rushed to buy five more for the next train. We got the very last five. We then had three hours to kill so we went across the street to a bar/café and ate really good pasta and drank really good wine. We were there long enough to make friends with everyone on staff, so we’ll be going back.

After we finished dinner, we headed back to the station. Our “carriage” in the train was 95 degrees and I’m not exaggerating. For some reason, it was only our part of the train. We rode like that for two hours before we had to switch trains 20 minutes outside of Venice. We knew we only had a short time to make the connection so we ran to our next platform, but watched our train leave without us on it. We waited another 45 minutes for the next connection to Venice.

We finally made it and the moment we stepped out of the train station, we knew the trouble was worth it. Even though it was dark, the view was breathtaking. We had to take a waterbus to get closer to our apartment, but just like the missed train connection, we watched the boat speed away without us on it. Fortunately those come every 15 minutes, but unfortunately it was so late at night (about 12:00 a.m. at this point) that the boats weren’t going to every stop anymore. We got off at the very last one and asked for directions.

“You’re going to go left off the boat and walk straight for five minutes,” the boatman said.

Yeah right. We were tired, freezing and very lost. The streets all looked the same. We weren’t even sure if we still had the apartment because we were so late. Thankfully the owner’s son, Marco, was back in Venice for the weekend. He’s about 28 and lives and works in China. We called and he came and found us. He led us through a hundred streets and over even more bridges. So it was not a left off the boat and straight five-minute walk.

The rest of the weekend was incredible. We walked miles throughout the beautiful city, had a three-course Valentine’s Day dinner on a canal (that included wine, endless bread, dessert and Limoncello) and soaked up the uniqueness of Carnevale. It felt like we were in a vibrant, chaotic painting. The trip home was almost the same as the trip there. We got late tickets, made our connection with seconds to spare (at least we made it this time) and sat on a 10-degree train instead of a 95-degree train for two hours. But it was still worth it.

I’m happy we didn’t make the ESN trip because the giant misadventure created the most vivid memories. We did learn a couple of lessons: 1. Take advantage of this thing called the Internet and pre-purchase train tickets. 2. Don’t wear heels when there’s a 110 percent chance you’ll be lost and cold.

And things are looking up. We had blankets waiting for us when we arrived at our apartment last night, I’m now spatially aware of the light and only hit my head once a day, I have a new chair and we started the food chapter in Italian class today.