Milan, Italy

The Epic Journey

I don’t even know why we went to Milan in the first place. I’m pretty sure we intended on having more time there when we booked the flight. The plan was that Ryan Air offers a cheap flight from Milan to Brussels, so why not head from Interlaken to Milan and from Milan back to Belgium.

The actuality was that we wouldn’t arrive in Milan until 9:30p.m., and the 8:00a.m. flight the next morning wasn’t actually from Milan, but from Bergamo, which is an hour outside Milan (thank you, Ryan Air). This meant that we had to be at the airport at about 6:00a.m., leaving Milan at about 5:00a.m. That gave us from 9:30p.m. to 5:00a.m. in city. If you do the math, that’s 7.5 [of probably the worst] hours to enjoy my first time in Italy.

Once everyone realized this, everyone immediately started dreading it. Would we stay up all night in Milan? Go directly to the airport and sleep until the flight? We arrived in Milan as scheduled and looked at the bus schedule to get to Bergamo, the airport outside Milan. Buses ran until 11:30p.m. and restarted at 4:00a.m. No one could decide what to do.

Will and I ended up buying a bus ticket and heading out into Milan. If I was going to be in Italy, I was at least going to get to see some of the city, even if it was just the area around the train station. We also didn’t feel like waiting for 19 people to coordinate themselves and try and make a group decision.

Will got a miracle/call from his friend, Meg, who just happened to be studying abroad in Milan. We immediately decided we were going to go meet up with her, and we were going to stay up all night in the city. A metro & a tram ride later, we were hanging out with Meg in her dorm. I was super grateful they were willing to spend their Saturday night in their dorm with us and not go out clubbing since we hadn’t showered since France, and I think Will and I both probably looked and smelled like it. We took tequila shots on their patio and shared stories about our times in Europe.

At about 3:00a.m., we called a cab and headed back to the train station. At 4:00a.m., we got on a bus to Bergamo.

After an hour long bus ride, and two more hours of waiting (and trying to stay awake... sleep isn't allowed in Italian airports, apparently), we checked in and ran for the plane (literally). I snagged an emergency exit row, window seat. Golden. Apparently there was an annoying intercom the entire flight, but I didn’t hear a thing. I was out cold for the two hours to Charleroi. I woke up only when they played the victory music over the loud speaker, which at first I thought was to celebrate landing alive, but was actually to celebrate landing earlier than scheduled. It was 10:30a.m. and we weren’t done yet.

We had to take a 2.50euro bus ride from Charleroi (not actually Brussels, thanks again, Ryan Air) Airport to Charleroi Train Station. From there we took a train to Antwerpen Centraal, and from Antwerpen Centraal, we walked back to the Monty arriving at about 2:30p.m.

I got in, showered, made pasta, ate it, checked my email, fell asleep….

And I woke up roughly 18 hours later, just in time for class.

[[There were no photos AT ALL taken in Milan, Italy.]]