Buses, Trains, and Prostitutes...Oh my!

My experiences in Italy so far have been fairly easy; most of them have been paid for, and all of them have been planned by other people. My weekend trip to Verona was quite different, not only did we have to plan our own activities, but we also had to book the hotel and find out how to get there. The group of girls that I went with (Jess, Kim, and Shannon) designated each person to plan one thing before we departed. Shannon and Jess searched for a nice bed and breakfast, and also checked bus and train times. My job was to search for fun things to do, to find out when those things were open, and how much they would cost. Kim did not have to do any pre-planning because she is the only one in our group who is not directionally challenged, so she was our guide through Verona.
Each passing day went by fairly quickly, bringing the day of our anticipated adventure nearer and nearer. Wednesday night I packed my clothing and other necessities, and woke up Thursday morning with only two things to do: go to class and eat lunch. However, this was not the same for the other the girls staying here, for they decided to pack much more than I had. After our Justice and Liberty class, they all ran upstairs to finish packing their duffle bags and suitcases while I stood there with my small backpack ready to go. Reflecting back on this, I may seem confident about brining this small bag, but I was actually rather nervous at the time because I was convinced I was missing something. After they finished packing their things, we all had to run to the bus station because they only allotted themselves three minutes before the bus left.
The bus and first train ride went smoothly. We got to the bus stop on time, and the train from Arezzo to Bologna arrived with time to spare. The only thing that was semi-stressful was removing people from our reserved seating on the first train ride, and separating from the other group of girls who were staying in Bologna. When we arrived at Bologna’s train station, we were happy to see that our train to Verona was on time, and departing in forty minutes. Our train was located on binario (track) number seven, so we ate some snacks and waited patiently for our train to come. After talking a bit, we realized that our train was departing in five minutes, but it was nowhere to be found. We then stood up to look for the status of our train, and saw the word ovest next to it. Assuming that ovest meant late, we sat back down and waited for our train to come. Ten minutes passed and we started to feel nervous, so we looked back on the departure board to ease our stomachs. To our demise our train to Verona was not there anymore, which means it had already left.
We were completely blown away that a train could pass us by and not even realize it, and with this problem, as we have with others, we called Bekah. We spelled out the word ovest to her, and she told us that it meant west, not late. Apparently the train station in Bologna is so big that it has two platforms, est (east) and ovest (west), and we were waiting on the wrong platform for our train. After hearing this terrible news, we scurried to the departure board to see when the next train to Verona was. The good news was that there was another train to Verona, but the bad news was that it left in two hours. With this bad news came more stress, because we had to call the owners of the bed and breakfast to tell them we would not be arriving at the time we originally said. This may seem strange that we would have to call to say we will be late, but in Italy the owner of a bed and breakfast asks for a time so he can be there to let us in. If we did not show up on time, and did not call to say we would be running late, the owner would leave and we decided not to come, leaving us with nowhere to sleep. Calling the owner would be rather easy if we were smart enough to think to bring the number, but of course, we forgot it. We called the omnicient Bekah to solve our problem, and she told us the number and also lectured us on how important this number is. Now, with all of these problems solved, and most of them done so by Bekah, we waited for our next train to come on binnario three --- ovest. There are two lessons I have learned from this first part of my trip that I hope I will remember in the future: ALWAYS have the number of the place you are going to be sleeping in, and NEVER assume the definition of a foreign word.
The train to Verona was fun; we were all very excited to have made it on the right train, or any train. On it, we listened to music, made a few jokes, and even braided each other’s hair. After sitting on a train for a couple hours, and getting yelled at quite a few times by the attendant for having our feet on the chairs, we FINALLY arrived in Verona. I wish I could say, ‘and then we lived happily ever after,’ but unfortunately I cannot. After walking off the platform into the actual station, we realized that the map I printed out did not have our street name on it, and Shannon forgot the MapQuest directions she had printed out. Since we arrived at 11:00 p.m. the tourist office was closed, leaving us with next to no hope. Since we now had the number of our bed and breakfast, we called it to ask how to get there from the train station. This was another reminder that we were in Italy, because the owner spoke no English, and he did not understand my broken Italian. After a three minute ‘conversation’, he told me that I was not supposed to be at the train station, that I was supposed to be on Via Marconi, and hung up.
We searched the train station for some kind of map, and finally I found one behind an ad of some kind. The map was behind plexiglass, and because of this we had to try to memorize the route of our hotel which did not seem to be too far from where we were, and Jess even took a picture of it on her camera so we could look back at it, if needed. Within first few meters of walking, we encountered a very sad problem of Italy face-to-face; prostitution. In Italy, the act of selling yourself is not a crime, but for someone to purchase a prostitute is a crime. The government is sensitive to the fact that the prostitute is not selling herself for fun; she has a larger, more personal problem behind it, such as having a family to feed, but they are not sensitive to desperate, despicable men. As we were walking on (what was believed to be) the street we were supposed to be on, we passed two prostitutes, one of which was getting picked up as we walked by. Being a person who never thinks before she speaks, I shouted ‘OH NO!’ at the sight of it. I immediately felt horrible, but we kept walking in search of the street we had to turn on.
We walked for about twenty minutes before we looked at Jess’ camera to see if we were in the right direction. Sadly, we did not look at this picture before we left the train station, and when we saw that the picture was blurry, our hearts sank. I called my parents to look up MapQuest directions while the rest of the group went into a bar to ask how to get to our street, Via Marconi. My parents are a little slow when it comes to technology, so much so that we got directions from non-English speaking Italians faster than my parents could find out how to MapQuest. Thankfully we were only about ten minutes away from where we were supposed to be, and got to our bed and breakfast without any problems. The owner was even nice enough to meet us on the corner of the street and walk us back to place that we would sleep.
The place we stayed in is called B&B Divina, and when I walked into the apartment I was stunned by how nice it was. It cost me 70 euro to stay there for three days, so I was expecting the quality to be average since the price was so reasonable, but my assumption was very wrong. The place was very well decorated, and our room was huge! Not to mention that they had air fresheners that smelled amazing, and my bed was indescribably comfortable. There is a saying “you hit rock bottom before you reach the top,” and I feel like this expression describes my trip to Verona. Although getting there made me want to out my hair, staying there was amazing, and too much to write about in one blog entry.