Italian Transportation Goes on Strike; Student Travelers Fall Victim

This morning, six of us: Meredith, Courtney, Mayo, Nikki, Me (all members of the Corso di Tintori apartment) and Bryan left for our brief sojourn to Pisa. Meredith, of course, had to wake up around 7, and thus wake the rest of us bums up at 730. We left around 10 of for an 8:30 train.

At first, everything went smoothly. We powerwalked to the train station, which woke us all up, got our tickets sucessfully, and piled onto the, suprise, very cold train. We all took naps, chatted etc., until an hour had transpired and we stopped in Pisa. We unloaded, and found the closest bar, which is a coffee shop, and ordered ridiculously expensive cappucinos.

Now, here in Florence, we are now accustomed to 1 euro cappucinos, and 1 euro croissants -- typical breakfast fare for when you're feeling fancy, tired, and hungry. Well -- here in Pisa, a cappucino will you set you back 4.50 euros, and a croissant another 4. We did it anyway, because our stomachs were eating themselves. The bathroom was also experience. Bryan had used it and left, he recommended that i 'hover.' Rest assured, I hovered a good foot above the seat.

The place where the tower was came out of nowhere. You walk about 20 minutes from the train station, among deserted streets and graffited walls, and pow! Tower Power. The tower was very cool. And get this -- it was leaning. It's next to a church, with it's own duomo, and a babtistry -- all white stone set in this enormous green lawn. It's really beautiful, the white stone on the huge green plane.

We goofed around, taking those pictures where you 'hold up' or 'push down' the tower. Meredith took this humilating video of me trying to crawl ontop of the small stone pillars that you stand on to take these famed photos. It was really very humbling. After our photoshoot, we were going to climb up the tower, but it was 15 euros, and besides, it looked like it was going to fall down.

We headed back to the train station, hurried and everything, thinking we were going to miss the 1230 train. But it didn't come on time, and some lady came over the loud speaker saying something about the train to Firenze and Santa Maria Novella, and low and behold, it turns out the train would not be comming. The transportation folks decided to go on strike from 9 to 6 so we were out of luck on a train ride home.

P.S. We got McDonald's for lunch. I can't remember the last time I'd had McDonalds, but I had it this time. It tasted great, but left my stomach quite leaden.

Some nice Italian man told us we should take a bus. We decided this would be a good alternative idea, and booked it to the bus station. The tickets we bought were for a bus that left at 1 to Luca. From Luca, we'd have to transfer to a bus to Florence. When we bought them it was 1254, so we had to book it. We grabbed the tickets, and hurried around the corner to where the lady said the bus would arrive.

Because we are mornons, we sprinted past the correct spot, across a vicious rotary where Nikki nearly got hit, and ran down the street that lead towards the tower. We skirted around a hoard of people that were waiting for a bus -- we thought it might be ours, but it was a city tram. We continued on until it was obvious we were way to far from the bus station. We all yelled at each other as to which was the right way. You can immagine the chaos. A bunch of 'strong personality' type girls shouting and screaming in high pitched voices in the desolate streets of Pisa. We ended up turning around and sprinting back towards the bus station, where we saw a suspicious blue bus that just might be our ride. Meredith ran like lightening, I've never seen someone ran so fast. She got into this low, dangerous crouching-run. The rest of us just ran back through the crowd of awaiting passengers at that 'other' bus stop. We must have looked like a bunch of idiots.

So we saw the bus arrive at the stop, then leave. We were bumed, and just slumped all over the steps. Then suddenly, another blue bus appeared at that bus stop with all the people that was across the rotary. We ran, shoved our way into the crowd, and got on the correct bus to Lucca.

I holed up with Nikki in the back of the bus. Before we even left the city, the bus driver puled over and started yelling at this guy who was slumped in a seat in the middle of the bus. He kept ingnoring him, but finally jumped up and yelled back in Italian. This raucous exchange went on for five full minutes. Apparently the young guy that was being yelled at tried to get on with a shiesty ticket. I heard this young dark character even say things like 'Fungul' (spelling?) and yes, even "Mama Mia!" Eventually the situation calmed down, and we ventured on, through gorgeous mountains and farmland to Lucca. At Lucca we had a smooth transfer, and made it all the way to Florence. It was a bus packed with preteen Italian kids who gawked at me when I spoke English, and French guy who only spoke Italian to me, which of course, did not work.

All in all, we got home in a little over 3 hours. It worked out well, and the posed pics of us supporting the tower were definitely worth it.

Architecture in Context in a few minutes. Three hours of architecture mumbo jumbo that seems to transcend all languages. Liminality, temporariness, permanency, yadda yadda yadda. Our professor is cool though, Franco. He's short with shoulder length brown hair and looks like he'd be a short henchman for some kind of maffia, but he's super nice and very knoweldgeable about this stuff. So off I go, hopefully he'll give us a capuccino break.