Londra

It took a trip to England for me to realize how much my study abroad experience has plunged me into a totally different culture.  It's not that I didn't know that already, I knew I was in a new place, but leaving the country for the first time in over a month and going to London was like a mini reverse culture shock.  

Erin, Ariel, Jerrod and I took a train to Pisa early Friday morning and flew from there to London.  At the airport we met up with Erin's friend Katelyn who has been studying abroad in Ireland.  Earlier we had bought tickets for a bus from the airport into London, I was expecting a grey hound type thing, but we got a mini bus, more like a 10 person van that drove us for an hour right into the city and dropped us off right at a Tube station.  Very convenient.  

We stayed in Piccadilly Backpackers hostel which was a short subway ride from where we were dropped off. (1st subway ride! Also 1st hostel experience…)  It was a little rough.  Nothing like staying in a nice hotel, but I hadn't expected that.  We were in a 4 person dorm with 2 bunk beds.  They just give you a clean sheet and a pillow case when you check in and there was a blanket folded at the end of each bed when we got to our room.  

There were all kinds of worldly vibrant murals painted all over the walls.  It reminded me of being back in the dorms when I started college. Maybe a little less clean. Especially the bathroom. But it really wasn't that bad.  I didn't really mind, it was inexpensive and is practically right in Piccadilly Circus.  

We got ourselves checked in around 2 or 3 and went out into London!  We hadn't been walking for ten minutes when all of the sudden someone down the sidewalk is screeching and running towards us.  It was Erin and Katelyn's friends from back in Denver.  How weird.  We're in a huge city and already we see people we know.  

We went to see Buckingham Palace, slightly unimpressive actually.  I thought it would be bigger and fancier, but it just looks like an old stone building.  The guards don't even wear the traditional tall hats anymore! Thats what I wanted to see!  

We walked back towards Piccadilly and went on a mission to find a pub and fish and chips, which there are both on practically every corner.  We found a nice little pub that was really busy downstairs, but they sent us upstairs to eat.  It was cute, we were the only ones up there, we sat in front of a little fireplace, and our waitress was so adorable with her accent and she was just so nice!   This was kind of our first encounter with the reverse culture shock.  I had realized when we got to Italy how their culture is just very blunt and what we would consider rude back home.  It's completely normal in Italy. Its just a behavioral thing, they don't find it rude.  I think I have just come to accept it and also fit myself into in some ways.  When everyone from little kids to little old ladies will just shove by you without even the slightest hint of an excuse me, you just learn to do the same thing.  I find that when I say excuse me, the Italians give looks, almost like that is a weird thing to say in that situation.  Waitresses, baristas, etc. are often very cold when they wait on you.  Some of it may be that they may not like Americans, but I always try very hard to use as much Italian as I can when I order to show them that I am trying.  

So when our waitress was all cheery and sat there and told us which beer she liked, answered any questions about the menu, told us just to "shout if you need anything" etc. she seemed like the nicest person I'd ever met.  We all couldn't get over it.  Katelyn was kinda blown away when we told her about some of the cultural differences. I guess people in Ireland are also normal, friendly, human beings.  

Same thing at the pub later that night.  The bartender was so friendly when we walked in, he joked and chatted with us while we ordered, asked us where we were from and offered up suggestions about the beer.  This all seems like such a normal thing back in Montana, but I've been away from it for close to a month and a half now and hadn't realized that it would feel so strange to go back into. 

In the hostel that night we found out that our beds had a bit of a squeak issue.  Any time anyone even moved a finger they might as well have been jumping on their bed.  I don't think any of us really got very solid sleep.  And because we had Katelyn with us and we were trying to be cheap, we had snuck her in and she had to share a bed with Erin.  Good thing they weren't Italian size beds, two people in one of those would really just end up just being one person in the bed. The other would most likely find themselves on the floor.

Got up at 9, started our day by getting Cinnabon and Starbucks. Not very local of us, but A) Cinnabon was right around the corner, and B) I have not been able to order a latte in Italy because they just don't do soy milk at cafes, and C) its pumpkin spice latte season.  You can't just miss that. 

We spent the rest of the day wandering around London.  We saw Big Ben, the London Eye (which we didn't end up riding on because it is pretty expensive), Westminster Abbey, and Tower Bridge/London Bridge whichever its referred to.  Jerrod and I stuck a 406 sticker he had onto a discreet area of the bridge.  We had to leave a little Montana behind.  I took my Holga camera with me on this walkabout and ended up taking a triple exposure of Tower Bridge from far away, the sign saying Tower Bridge, and the Montana 406 sticker.  I guess I will wait for 3 months to find out if it worked. 

I didn't realize that Tower Bridge was a draw bridge.  Those things always amaze me.  A little bit after we crossed, they pulled it up and let a ship out.  It was kinda neat to see. 

We went out for Thai food that night.  Also not a very local Londony thing, but there are tons of Thai restaurants there.  Also, Italians don't really switch it up for dinner and such.  They are rather proud of their food, we eat Italian meals for every meal.  Its probably some type of sin to cook any other ethnic food. Don't get me wrong, I love Italian food and could probably eat it for the rest of my life, but it was fun to switch it up for a couple days. 

The Pound is so strong compared to the dollar. Right now it is 1.6 dollar for 1pound. If you think in pounds when you're buying things it's not that many, but if you do the dollar conversion you realize it costs you an arm and a leg to pay for anything…. I didn't buy anything other than food and drink, but I still felt like it was a pricey couple of days.  When I go back for the few days of my 10 day break I will be finding a grocery store and eating bread and cheese for lunch and dinner.  Which is just fine by me.

When we were walking around that evening there were lots of guys out trying to promote the clubs.  They just come right up to you and start to talk to you about the club.  We automatically went into our Italian Defensive mode and as soon as they walked up we were like "No thank you, Not interested, Go away"  Then we realized that they are not quite like the Italian vendors. They actually were all pretty nice, they weren't trying to force us to buy anything, just handing out flyers for the clubs and telling people about them… We probably looked like rude Americans, but you can't be that nice in Italy, you give them two seconds of attention and they won't go away.  

We had to get up and going the next morning around 9 because we had to catch our little bus/van back to the airport.  I have decided I should not be allowed to fly anymore… When I printed off my boarding passes earlier, it was the day I found out my bank account had been wiped out. My head wasn't really there and I wasn't thinking.  I knew I had checked the "check in for both departure and return flights" box, then I hit the print two copies button.  I had some problems getting the printer to run, but then I got the two copies finally and just kinda had this thought in my head like both my departure and return boarding passes were both on the paper. Who knows.  

Anyway It didn't even hit me  until we were on our way to the airport that I did NOT have a return boarding pass…. We were flying with Ryanair and there are all kinds of rules for flying with them.  We were at the airport 3 hours before our flight and I found a place that I could print a pass from a computer.  Well with Ryanair's stupid rules, you can't reprint your boarding pass with less than 4 hours to your flight. gahhhhh….   So I paid a pricey fee to have their flight desk print it. That is how they make money apparently.  Luckily the original flight hardly cost anything, but it still sucks. A lot.  I cannot make flight mistakes anymore, its killing me!

The flights were a little interesting as well.  The plane wasn't small like I was imagining, but It is crazy loud during take off and the entire flight my ears were popping just about every 5 minutes.  I've never had that happen on a plane before.  Landing was also kinda scary… Both times it seemed like the pilot was like 'oh shit, I should have started decent like 5 minutes ago, I better get down there!'  The plane was so up and down while we were descending, I thought we were falling out of the sky like ten times. 

Right when we landed back in Pisa, Erin gets a call from her room mate here in Italy who was also traveling saying that the trains are on strike until 9 that night.  Are you kidding me?! W`e can't win with the damn Italian train system! They are strikes with the busses and trains like ever other week it seems like.    

The train runs right to the Pisa airport, and thats where we were supposed to get on.  We had bought our tickets beforehand.  But sure enough when we looked at the board, it says strike next to our train.  We decide to try and walk to the Centrale station, it didn't look too far away on Erin's phone map.  We figured we'd just find that one, and then hang out in Pisa for like 5 hours until the strikes were over.

It only took us maybe 20-30 minutes to get there, and right when we walked in to the station, we realized there was a train headed for Empoli, the station where we needed to make a train switch, in like 5 minutes.  It didn't say strike next to it.  So we rush out to our platform to see if its really true.  There is a ton of people out there waiting.  I think everyone figured We might as well get on a train thats moving in our general direction since it may be the last for a few hours.   We listened as the announcement came on over the platform speakers listing the departures that had been cancelled. And then it came on again saying that the train for Empoli would be arriving in like 3 minutes.  Everyone on the platform started clapping and cheering, it was kinda funny.  

Right as we were getting off the train in Empoli, we overheard this lady was asking someone about the train to Siena and he said something about it being delayed 10 minutes. Wait What?!  We sprint into the station, see that there is a Train to Siena without the stike listed and its technically supposed to leave in 3 minutes.  More sprinting out and down under the tracks and back up to our platform.  We've learned you can never quite trust the times with the train.  It doesn't always stay until its correct departure time if it comes early, and if it says its a ten minute delay, they also may show up early and leave early.  So its always a mad dash up and down the stairs to the platforms if you're anywhere within the 5-10 minute range of the train time.  

It came!  We were actually going to get home! This is never our luck, I thought for sure we were going to be getting home by midnight if not later.  If we had hesitated any longer about walking from the airport to the Centrale station, we would have missed that first train to Empoli.  We win. For once.  With all the strike crap happening, we actually ended up back in Siena earlier than we were supposed to with the original train times.  Too lucky. 

When I got to the house, the grandpa was so surprised to see me.  He was like, "I didn't think you would make it home because of the strikes! I thought we wouldn't see you tonight!"  I guess he figures that if I can't even make it back home when the trains really ARE running, then there was no hope for me at all when they were striking.

      I really liked London a lot, but it is strange how homesick its made me feel.  I felt that way a little bit before going, but being there was so much like being in the States, just with better architecture.  Maybe its also that we're about at the half way point of being in Italy so the newness has worn off and its become a reality that I'm living here...