In the morning we woke up early to say bye to my cousins who were heading to school around 6am. Of course we fell back asleep and managed to finally get up again around 8:30am. We quickly packed up the last of our belongings and ate a big breakfast. We called to get our bus tickets from Zurich to Milano resent to us because we had not printed out the eticket and they had not emailed me a copy. After two phone calls, several explanations and my poor Aunt explaining my email address for the hundreth time, we printed off a new copy.
We said good bye to my uncle and my Aunt drove us to catch an intercity train from Bern to Zurich. This train is similar to the West Coast Express from Pitt Meadows to Vancouver. Many people take this train daily for their commute to work. We were expecting the tickets to similarly cost around $6. Well we were in for a shock when two one way tickets for the 50 minute trip equalled nearly $135.00 CAD. While we had prepared mentally for the expenses of Europe and I had spent the entire night the night before buying overpriced tickets around the continent, this was still a blow to the guts. We really had no choice but to bite the bullet but it hit us just as hard as when our wallet was stolen in Malaysia. European extravagance may have been accepted in the form of $20 each for an intercity 50 minute commute but the equivalent to a full shift's wage or the cost of two weeks expenses in another country was nauseating. In fact it was so ridiculous that we figured we had bought return tickets for several people by mistake. We even stood in line to ask the staff to correct our fare but we were told by the two people we spoke with, that this is the cost for a one way ticket on this route.
So we rode the train and disliked every moment of it, it was not even as nice as the West Coast Express or the Skytrain lines that cost less than one twentieth of the price. The train was quiet and people did not even look at one another. When we got off the train in Zurich we had to run to the Cruise Center to pay for our trip and collect our tickets. We did not take the tram as suggested but rather walked the fifteen minutes to the office. We were short Swiss currency to pay for the trip but we offered to make up the difference in Euros. The instinctive, kind, distracted man who was helping us, refused, telling us to forget the 30 Francs that we were short. We were shocked because as I understood the price, this would mean that he did make any money off of us. I am not sure but either way, he was very kind and it helped settle the steam a bit from the rip off at the train station.
After collecting our tickets and listening to his advice about what to do and not to do on the ship, we ran back to where we thought the bus station was. We thought we were running late but the bus was actually delayed by about an hour and we were stuck waiting for some time. We shopped for some snacks because we would be stuck on the bus for about three hours with no food. We got oranges and apples, a big cake, chocolate, a muffin, a bagel with butter, and ten packages of Mr. Noodles for some upcoming dinners in Italy. We paid with everything we could scrounge up and got on the bus.
On the bus a big black man boarded and tried to open the window on the bus, the older white attendant shouted something at him in German. The man did not like this one bit and they started to go at it. It was just elevated voices at first but then it became aggressive shouting. The subject went from the window to rascism to black people and finally to the blood of Hitler. It was toxic conversation and I naively felt like I was on a movie set. I had never heard people shout about these topics before. I had never seen a very simple misunderstanding turn into an argument about race and historical dictators. It was unbelievably immature and embarrassing.
We stopped for a fifteen minute break on the way to Milan but Tyson and I were watching a movie so we decided to stay on the bus. The same attendant who was involved in the argument earlier insisted in German that we get off the bus but he would not tell us why. At least this is what we understood even though he was speaking German. The language barrier here is actually far more interrupting than I had anticipated. Anyway I found him rude but I decided to let it go considering the earlier events. We got off the bus for a short time and before long we were back on our way.
The drive through Switzerland was seriously breathtakingly beautiful. The mountains, waterfalls, greenery, architecture, flowers and trees work magic together that cannot be duplicated. There is no where in the world like this. We were watching a move but most of the time we were really just staring out the window with our mouths hanging open. We could not catch any photos of the beauty because of problems with both the cameras we brought but you should take my word for it. The blue bodies of water that appeared every once in a while added a dreamy, softer feel to the steep green mountains topped with bits of white snow. I can even admit that it is worth the expenses to live here.
We got to Milano much later than the anticipated time and we rushed to get to the central station where we had to pay for several long distance train tickets that we had booked online. We could not figure out the metro tickets that we needed so a nice homeless man advised us. He spoke English very well and knew all the routes, I suppose that he lives at the train station and assists people for tips to make his living. There were several people who had beds set up along the outside of the station, which is a drastic change to the cleanliness of Switzerland. Italy, of course, does not have the obvious beautiful scenery of Switzerland but I cannot judge too much on day one. We took a metro to the central station where we hurried off to pay for our reservations. Our metro tickets were valid for 90 minutes so we had to rush a bit. After we had the tickets confirmed, we hopped back onto the metro and went to another station where we could catch a train to where our couchsurfing host was supposed to meet us. We were supposed to meet him at 8:30pm but the train was delayed and we did not arrive until 9pm. The train trip was one hour long and by that time we reached the meeting spot, he had left. We used the pay phone to call him but it cut out in mid conversation so a guy offered to let us use the internet on his movile to contact our host. This did not work either so Tyson spoke with some of the train staff to see if he could find a phone.
The train staff kindly helped us contact our host and he arrived thrity minutes later to pick us up from the station. During this time, we met a young Romanian guy who we chatted with about life in different parts of the world. In fact he was quite an interesting guy and we wished that we had exchanged contact information with him. Our host is already one of our favorites after only one night. We arrived to his large house that he shares with two cats and two children part time. They were not there the first night but the cats kept us quite entertained. Our host cooked us Itlalian food for dinner, we had cheesy rice with fried hamburgers. After dinner we chatted for a while but we were both very tired so it did not last too long. We made plans to call him for a ride to the train station in the morning. He offered to come home from work to drive us because he goes to work quite early. He also told us to help ourselves to breakifast and invited us to dinner with his children for the next night. We passed out in bed not too long afterwards.
"If we are not happy and joyous in this season for what season shall we wait"
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