Firenze! Part I

Sun 25 Jan 2009

This weekend. Firenze. Wow.

If there were ever an ideal way to spend my first weekend trip in Europe, this was it. As is frequently the case, I think the best place to start here is the beginning.

********Thursday*********
After some last-minute hostel planning and people skipping out because weather.com called for supposed thunderstorms the entire weekend (all lies, it was cloudy and did rain a bit on Friday and Saturday but that was it), the original plan was for Nick, Chelsea, Lauren Smith, Kristin and I to stay in a hostel in Florence. Kayla and Carrie were going too, with different housing arrangements, as were John and Alex from upstairs and possibly Felicia and Hailey.

Walking back from getting some focaccia bread at Ipercoop with Chelsea after class Thursday evening, I saw John and Alex on the way to our building. They asked if I had bought my train ticket yet. Nope, I was gonna get one from a machine disgustingly early the next morning, like the others, I told them. They told me that might not work so well. They were walking back from buying their train tickets, where they found out the trains to Firenze would be going on strike the next morning, so if we wanted to get there it would either have to be that night, on the last train that left in an hour and a half, or not until Saturday.

Let me explain a little something about trains in Italia. It seems that sometimes, they all decide to go on strike and somehow everyone just knows about it. Except, of course, for foreigners. Then they strike for a day or so without any (of us) knowing the exact reason, realize they need money, and go back to work by the next day, the latest. So we were assured this weekend that we'd be able to get back to Viterbo perfectly fine, which we were, but that beginning getting to Firenze part might be a challenge.

I called Nick to let him know, since the hostel was booked under his name and credit card. In about 20 minutes, the decision was made, and I had a little under an hour to stuff my backpack and run to Porta Fiorentina to catch the train. That was the easy part. Actually, most of this weekend was the easy part–the entire time, things just fell into place.

I walked to the train with Alex, John, Jacky and Lauren Hansen (henceforth referred to as FL, but don't ask) to meet the others. None of us had planned for being in Firenze Thursday night, so none of us yet had a place to stay. From some probably divine intervention, Nick had previously procured a 2007 edition of an MTV Europe guidebook, which, by the end of the weekend, became our bible. It listed one hostel, and while waiting at our lay-over between trains, we called, and they had availability for the seven of us. So we would not be spending the first night in Firenze sleeping on history-filled sidewalks.

We numbered seven with all those mentioned in the previous paragraph plus Chelsea. We called Lauren Smith probably about 30 times, but she was in class and her phone was off so she didn't make the train. We felt pretty awful about it, but it was hard to fight the adrenaline rush from what was already turning into quite the adventure. Stefano had told us right: Things are more often than not going to follow your plans while traveling, so be ready to go with the flow.

Karma from following his advice gave us in Nick, a guide with an impeccable ability to read MTV Europe's map of Firenze. He navigated us from the train station to our hostel a few blocks away without taking any wrong turns.

When we got there, the place was completely covered with art. Copies of old masters, kept true to the real pieces and altered slightly. The staircase and hallways by the rooms might have had off-white paint underneath, but it was hard to tell for sure through all the "Mike was here" and "UMD 4/25/2007" scrawled in Sharpie across the walls.

We hadn't been in the hostel for more than 5 minutes and hadn't even checked in yet when a girl came down a hallway and asked, with hope in her eyes and probably overhearing us, "Do you speak English?" in an excited, slightly Canadian-accented voice.

She turned out to be Crystal (or Kristen?), a Canadian girl about my height with dark brown hair that just passed her shoulders and dark brown eyes to match. She was thrilled to find out we did, in fact, parliamo inglese. As far as the English language went, the hostel had been filled with her plus many, many guys and an inevitable testosterone overload. We got our rooms, then came back downstairs to meet the guys she'd been hanging out with.

Thus began our first night in Firenze, and some of the most awesome people I've ever known for only a day. It was my first hostel experience, and after it I totally understood why people love them and stay there. Yes, it's because they're cheap (this one was 18 euro a night, came with free wifi and computers in a public space and in each room, free breakfast, free pasta party dinner, and two walking tours daily) but it's also completely, entirely because of the people.

Our crew for the night was our gal from Canada, Andrew the Aussie, Sam the coolest 18-year-old ever from Vermont, Adam the 30-something from California, a couple other guys from the states including a kid from Huntington (!!), and a couple Brits who didn't come out with us, but instead spent the night playing poker at the hostel. It was 23:30, we'd been traveling since 19:00, and we'd just arrived in Firenze. It was time to go out.

After some walking aimlessly (bars and clubs are harder to find here than you'd think), we ended up in front of the Shot Cafe and decided to go in. We'd spent the time walking just getting to know each other. Crystal had turned down a job offer in Canada to take a couple months traveling in Europe. Adam had taken a long vacation from his job to do the same. Sam, like Adam, had just bought a plane ticket and flew to Europe. Sam was just out of high school and felt like taking some time before college to travel by himself for a while. He wore two hemp beaded necklaces, a black beanie and a worn looking maroon wool ski sweater. And, he wrote his own rhymes, one of which he busted out at the Shot Cafe when I asked him about it. I love being able to study in Viterbo and travel all over, but in a sense, I was jealous of all of them for just being able to take a few months to travel the world solo.

It was an amazing night, just getting to hang out with this group that had all met up completely randomly. We had one thing in common, at least: we were young, we had the time, we wanted to have fun and enjoy everything that came at us, and we were in Firenze.