Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Aerei, Treni, e Automobili!

          Those three words pretty much describe the last 24 hours of my life.  Since this time yesterday I have taken a nine-hour flight from Atlanta to Zurich, Switzerland; lugged my luggage around (I guess that's how luggage got its name?) for a short time before taking the ten-minute train ride from the Zurich airport to the Zurich central train station; stored my luggage in some lockers at the train station and walked around downtown Zurich for a couple hours; grabbed my luggage and got on the three-hour train ride from Zurich to Milan, with a stop in Chiasso (the border town and passport control city between Switzerland and Italy); and then finally, after waiting at the Milano Centrale train station for about an hour, my friends Maria, Alvaro and I and our professor Tony took the car he rented to Genoa, Italy, which is where I am now.

          The plane ride was good, it was the longest plane ride I had even taken in my life but it really didn't seem that long, even though I barely even slept a wink.  Our adventure started out with the plane being delayed about two hours, but that was the only real pitfall of the day.  We were served dinner and breakfast (which were actually pretty good for airplane food), and they played several movies and TV shows during the flight.  I studied my Italian textbook, read a magazine, and tried to get some shut-eye, but even though my eyes were shut I just couldn't get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep.  However, I did manage to get some sleep on the trains and car rides later on in the day.

          And I enjoyed the food built into the price of the ticket while it lasted, because all of the restaurants we encountered later on that day displayed the most extravagant prices I had ever seen.  We even stopped at McDonald’s once thinking it would be cheap eats, and the cost for a meal was 14.50 Swiss francs.  Hint: One Swiss franc is worth more than a euro.  One euro is worth more than one US dollar.  So that would have been around $25 for a Big Mac and fries.  No, thank you.  Europeans love McDonald’s, though; in both Zurich and Milan I saw three McDonald’s within walking distance of each other.

            Anyway, we got to Switzerland at about 9:30 in the morning their time, which was 3:30 in the morning Eastern Standard Time.  It was unseasonably chilly in Zurich because of it being in a mountainous region of the Alps, and I couldn’t find a pair of jeans that I thought I had packed in my suitcase, so Maria let me borrow a pair of hers.  Luckily, everywhere we are planning to go in Italy isn’t going to be as chilly as Switzerland was, so even if I can’t find my jeans I should still be good for the summer wearing what I have.

            So we took the train from the airport to Zurich’s main train station and locked our luggage in some lockers while Tony took us on a little tour of the city.  There was a lot of construction going on, mainly because some areas of the city are still being built up, and June 2 was apparently a national holiday in Switzerland so all the stores and shops were closed.  It was kind of nice, though, because since nobody was working we didn’t have to deal with all the swarms of people on their lunch break wandering around the city with us; it wasn’t very crowded and at some points it was almost like we had the city to ourselves.

            Let me just say that if somebody had told me that the first place outside of the United States I would ever set foot in was Zurich, Switzerland, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.  I always thought that after studying French and Italian I would have gone directly to France, Italy, or Canada, but getting the opportunity to visit Switzerland was really nice!  It was especially cool because there wasn’t just one language you were hearing everybody speak, there were at least five.  German was the most prevalent, of course, and I heard a good number of Italian speakers as well, but only overheard a couple of conversations in French.

What also kind of surprised me, though, was the amount of people in the country that spoke English, even though it is not one of the country’s four official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansch).  And I could tell that most of the people speaking English weren’t from the United States or United Kingdom, either.  While Maria and Alvaro and I were wandering around and going into different restaurants at the train station to try and see if any of them would let us use their restrooms without paying to use it (answer: no), one of the ladies at the counter started speaking to us in German.  It wasn’t anything any of us recognized with our limited knowledge of the German language (“Guten Tag,” and “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” are about all I know how to say), so we just kind of stood there and might have managed to squeak out a “Hi.”  I did get a big smile and a “Guten Tag,” from a cute German-speaking guy who was standing near me at one point, though J  Fifteen seconds after that I felt someone’s finger on my back so I turned around thinking it was Alvaro or Tony, and it was some older guy (maybe early 40s) who gave me a somewhat creepy smile as I turned around.  Yeah.  Not so cute.

What I was probably most surprised about, however, was the amount of people who could tell I was American and started speaking English to me, even if I tried speaking to them in Italian or French first!  I did this with one cashier, who spoke German with every other customer before me, and when it was my turn to pay I said, “Una Coca-Cola, per favore,” with the perfect Italian accent and everything, and she responded to me by saying, “Three-fifty, please.”  How do they know?!?!  Then when we were on the train to Milan, one of the conductors that was walking by was saying, “Ciao,” “Auf Wiedersehen,” and “Adios” to everybody as they were leaving, and when he got to our seats he said “Good-bye!”  He may or may not have heard us speaking English beforehand, but I knew I had to take action or else people would just keep speaking English to me and not Italian or even French, so I said to Maria on the train, “Non voglio parlare inglese più!”  And she said, “Why?” and I said, “Perchè siamo in Italia!” J

Speaking of being on the train with Maria, there was this simply adorable little Italian boy about three years old, who was speaking Italian in his adorable little voice and saying things like, “…adesso!” (now), “è molto blu il lago!” (how blue the lake is!), and to whoever he was playing a game with, “hai vinto ancora!” (you won again!).  It was just the cutest thing in the world!  Literally every time he said something, Maria and I would hold our hands over our hearts in fascination of his cuteness.  We decided when we each have kids of our own we are going to teach them Italian J

            Throughout the train ride from Zurich to Milan, many of the German speakers got off and many more Italian speakers got on, and before long Italian was the only language that was spoken on the train.  I loved that I was finally getting to be immersed in it!  And then, finally, we arrived in Milano, where we picked up our rental car.  My first impression of Milano was that the Milanese people are absolutely crazy drivers.  You know how in America on many roads, there are two lanes on both the northbound and southbound directions?  Well, there were two lanes here too, but no dotted line or anything separating them, so people were swerving all over the place and getting really close to us on the other side, plus one crazy Vespa rider swerving in between the two lanes of traffic.  I heard a couple screeching of tires and a few horns honking in the fifteen or so minutes we spent driving through the city.  But it seems to be a very interesting and pretty city, and I can’t wait to spend more time there in about six weeks!

            Speaking returning to Milano, all I could think about when I was there from the time I got off the train from the time we drove out of the city, was one of my native Sicilian cousins, Luca, who now lives and works in the city and who I am looking forward to meeting and spending much time with once I return to Milano for classes!  I had told him a couple of days ago that I would be passing through Milano on my way from Zurich down to Siena, but I wasn’t sure where or when we would be in Milano or how much time we would be spending there, so of course I wasn’t able to see him during the one hour we ended up spending there.  I did, however, keep my eyes peeled in the best-case scenario that I would somehow get to pass him walking down the street!  How crazy awesome would that have been?!  But I’m still excited because I will get to see him in five and a half weeks, and my family in Sicily in about four weeks!

            So that is just Day 1 of my awesome summer 2011 European adventure!  Thanks for reading if you’re all the way down here, there was just so many cool, interesting, and new things that happened to me today that I couldn’t write about just a few!

Chloe

P.S. Pictures are coming soon to Facebook!