Where I worked and Stayed for Three Months
So with the fall semester quickly approaching Student Bloggers is encouraging bloggers to give their ‘best back to school story’ to be in the running for their HP Giveaway. With that in mind I’ve decided to share with you the best back to school story ever!
My story starts back in my teaching assistant office, busily working away at the final marks for a second year ethnicity and immigration class that I was teaching. It’s the end of the year and I’m ready to start working on my thesis over the summer for submission in October. I get an email from my supervisor asking me to come down to his office for a quick chat. Being a good research assistant and wanting to keep my supervisor happy I pop down for what I think will be a quick recap of what I should be working on while he goes to Italy for a few months on a work trip. What transpired in the next 5 minutes would result in one of the most exciting and wild things that had happened to me in grad school.
The conversation went a little like this:
“Liam, you know I’m going to Florence right?”
“Ya…”
“Well I’ve got too many students to deal with this summer so I’m going to have to get you to come with me; I’ve set you up with an apartment for next week”
“…Sweet!” (I’m sure I said something better than that, but that’s all that was going through my head at the time)
So, with my thesis and girlfriend on hold I flew down to Rome the following week. Before leaving I unfortunately had to take care of quite a few loose ends and therefore had pretty much been up for two days straight finishing off papers, finishing my responsibilities as a union representative and taking care of personal issues. I leave in the evening and arrive in Rome for mid morning. I was so excited with the trip that I again didn’t sleep on the plane (that makes it three days without sleep). Not being familiar with Italian mass transit, I go to the main station and buy a ticket for Florence where my apartment has been reserved for me. The woman at the ticket counter in broken Italian encourages me to hurry as the train would be leaving in the next five minutes. I run to the station and find the Firenze train, climb aboard and take my seat, just before final call.
I look at my ticket to confirm that I am indeed on the right train and to check the arrival time; 5.00 pm. This would be perfect timing as I could go straight to bed and get a full 12 hours rest as I had to be back on a train to Venice in the morning with my supervisor. I don’t dare go to sleep on the train as I’m half excited and half scared that somebody would steal my bags on a government train which I was warned is filled with Gypsies and pick pockets (not true by the way). I eventually notice that the time ends up going past 5. I think that the train must simply be late but at 5.45 I decide to try to communicate with the locals to find out if such a delay is common place. I eventually connect with the ticket master and he explains that there are two trains, the express taking three hours and the train I’m currently on which will take eight! So I show up in Florence at approximately 9pm. With no phone and being utterly exhausted, I jump on to the nearest bus which takes me to my apartment. Unfortunately by this time it’s past 10 o’clock and the landlady who was supposed to give me my keys has left for the day. I try buzzing her apartment repeatedly without a response. After trying everything less of a bullhorn I decide to try for a hostel for the night. However, another interesting fact about Florence is that hostels shut their doors at 11pm without exceptions and no amount of pleading, groveling, bribery or outright crying at 11:15 will get you in.
So it’s becoming incredibly evident to me that I’ve quickly run out of bed options for the evening. I’m also literally passing out every few minutes as I’m now going on four days without more than an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep and dragging 3 months worth of luggage behind me. To top it all off, in my haste to prepare for my trip I forget to release my credit card for international travel and when I sit down for something to eat in a café, I discovered that my card had been flagged and with only 40 euro’s worth of backup cash in my pocket. I try to walk around the city to keep awake but realize that I can’t keep this up all night. At around three in the morning I head back to the train station in order to wait for my supervisor and his students to arrive at eight. I start wandering around the train station and find a homeless couple getting ready for bed on what looks to be a couple of yoga mats and some cardboard. I go over and explain the entire story to them and to my surprise, not only are they understanding but speaking perfect English. They explained that they were backpacking throughout Europe and due to the easy immigration laws, had decided to simply stay in Italy for a few months. They said I could stay with them until morning. I even got them to take a picture of me at around 4 in the morning which officially made it 4 days since I had slept:
Me at 4 in the morning, still looking pretty positive!
At around 8 in the morning I got up, thanked my new friends for their help and made my way to the main station. I hadn’t had a shower in about three days, I was sweaty, dirty, tired, without money and utterly exhausted. My supervisor came up and asked me what had taken me so long to get here. I started explaining the entire story, the train, the credit card issues, the apartment problems, the hostel problems, me being up for 4 days and dealing with homeless people. In his usual style he had a very short response “Well at least you’re here now, which train goes to Venice?”
Liam McIvor Martin
