City number four: Pisa, Italy.
Honestly, we went to Pisa for the afternoon for only one purpose: to see the famous leaning tower. Thus, I feel like a bit of a tourist in talking about it, and I hate feeling like a tourist... but the tower was pretty sweet...
City number five: Milan, Italy.
We spent Tuesday afternoon in Pisa (we walked around for a long time looking for the tower, finally spotted it, talked to some Kenyans who were convinced we were from Norway, and enjoyed the palm trees [!!] and sunshine and hoards of tourists...). From there, we had a long drive up the western coast of Italy to get to Milan, where we were spending the night before our flight to Hungary left on Wednesday morning. The drive along the sea was beautiful. Every time we caught a glimpse of the swath of blue, we'd squeal "The sea! The sea!" and frantically try to take pictures before our view was obscured by the inevitable truck or fence or tree or tunnel... it never really worked. But I loved seeing the water, stretching out into the horizon. It was a great place to end the Great Italian Roadtrip (as I began calling this adventure in my head).
Some of Italy's countryside is magnificent.
When we got to Milan, however, our blissful seaside afternoon faded a bit. We had no map and no directions to the hostel, and though wandering had worked in Timişoara, I wasn't optimistic about it working as well in a car... so we stopped at the airport and Julie and I ran in to grab one while Tad and Marit and Zach drove around trying to avoid paying for parking. When we got back in, we still had no idea where the hostel was, so eventually we just called them. I explained our situation--where I thought we were, basically--and he agreed to help give us directions. But my conversation with the guy went something like this:
Hostel dude: Do you see street 'something-muttered-quickly-in-Italian'?
Me: Uhh... (frantically looking) ... no.
Hostel dude: (Audible sigh.) OK, do you see the street 'something-else-muttered-incomprehensibly'?
Me: Uhh... (frantically looking) ... could you spell that?
This game lasted quite a while, until finally I found one of the streets he was naming--in the uppermost right corner of the map. Everything else he'd said was off the map, which apparently only covered the city center and the closest neighborhoods--not far enough out for where we needed to be. Oh well; we had him give us street-by-street directions and promised we'd be there pretty soon.
But then we realized that we didn't actually know where we were on the map. We knew we were at one of the three regional airports, but suddenly I noticed that it wasn't actually on the map--the spot I'd been looking at was a bus station by the same name. We'd started driving by this point, but Tad had pulled into a park. As we drove slowly around the park, confusedly trying to orientate ourselves, an old man on a bicycle came up alongside us. "Pull over!" I told Tad. The poor guy did, confused, and I rolled down my window. "Scuzi," I began, causing the old man on the bike to practically crash. He recovered quickly, though, and turned to help us... but when I asked if he spoke Spanish or English or Romanian, his answers were all no. Just Italian. Cool. Pretty soon, though, he was directing us back down towards the road, acting out an airplane with his arms outstretched, then as a train by making a "choo-choo" noise, then rapidly explaining directions, his hand jabbing right and left and right again... we were a bit confused, but so was he; he kept sticking his nose in the window, craning to see the map, asking if any of us had glasses he could borrow to read the small print. Needless to say, it wasn't the most helpful advice we'd ever gotten, but it was certainly the friendliest, and definitely entertaining. We did what he said, though, as best we could figure out. And eventually we made it to the hostel!
Wednesday morning we left pretty early to make it to the airport on time (a different airport this time, a good 45 minutes away) and to return the rental car. We had to fill it with gas first, though, and there were no gas stations close to the airport, so we spent a long time wandering around Bergamo. Finally we found one, which was conveniently located next to a gelato shop... needless to say, we though that would be a fitting breakfast. Then we drove off to the airport to hurry up and wait.
Soon I found myself sitting on the hard plastic chair of the Milano-Bergamo airport, waiting to check in for our flight to Budapest. Next to me was a young couple with a cute blond-haired daughter who looked about two; they were speaking Hungarian and making faces at their little girl, who was squealing in delight at the game of peek-a-boo. Soon she turned to me, curious, so I joined in. (Duh, what else would I do?) Soon she was shrieking in delight--I told her she'd be a soprano someday--turning her face from her mother to me, watching us smile and wink and generally look ridiculous for her amusement. It was great fun. Eventually, however, my two-year-old friend got bored and toddled off with her mother, so her dad turned to me to talk. In perfect English, he asked me why I was flying to Budapest, and we started what ended up being a long conversation about all sorts of things. (I really like talking to strangers. Sorry, Mom and Dad...) One thing he said was really interesting, though. I mentioned that I was living in Romania; he asked where. I answered that I was in southern Transylvania, in the Jiu Valley, and immediately his eyebrows furrowed. "So you're in Hungarian territory," he replied. "No, no, it's Romania," I explained. "No, Transylvania used to be Hungarian land," he continued. He went on to explain that Romania had stolen the territory from Hungary, that it was rightfully his country's, and then asked if there were any ethnic Hungarians living in the Jiu Valley. "Only a few," I replied. He scowled and shook his head and changed the subject.
The topic's a touchy one, especially on this side of the border. To Romanians, Transylvania has always been one of the three kingdom-regions of Romania, albeit a more independent one than Moldavia and Wallachia. It switched from Hungarian to Romanian rule more than once in its history, including one time in which Hitler signed it away to Hungary (as if he had the right). I suppose the topic's a bit more sensitive in Hungary because they came out on the losing side of the territory question. In northwestern Romania it's a can of worms as well, but perhaps they can afford a bit more grace since the national boundary lines are now pretty firmly drawn. Regardless, it's an interesting question. Talking with the Calvin students in Budapest about it has been interesting, since they've only been fed the Hungarian perspective. I have to admit my pro-Romanian bias, but still... interesting.
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