Europe Trip: Day 15, June 4th

I got up at 8am, and managed to be completely ready and packed by 8:30am -- which surprised me a lot. I picked up a couple roll-like things at the nearby bakery and headed on the U-bahn. I made it to the train platform with a good 20 minutes to spare.

The funny thing about my first train ticket, the one entirely in Austria, was that you don't have a reservation or assigned seat. So I got in one of the earlier compartments that looked quite nice. Naturally they were first class, and so 15 minutes into the trip I had to grab my backpack and head to the second class section -- literally feeling like a second class citizen :P

I tried to sleep a bit, read a few more Asimov short stories, and then watched some of the Austrian landscape speed by. I took a few pictures, hopefully at least some of them turn out alright.

Now it is about 3pm and I'm waiting at the Innsbruck station for my next train that will take me to Verona Porto Nuova, which leaves at 3:27pm. I should arrive around 7pm in Verona. I made a reservation at a hostel for 3 nights, it is set up more like a hotel/apartment. You could get your own room for something like 50-60 euros, or you can share with 2-3 other guys and it is 25 euros -- I went for the latter, so 75 euros for 3 nights.

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On the final train between Innsbruck and Verona, everything was going great until the very last hour or so of the journey. The people sitting around me had all gotten off at different stations and this old Italian guy sat down across from me and tried to talk to me. I looked confused and pointed at myself saying "American" and he acted like he understood, but still tried to talk to me using only like a couple English words and 95% Italian words.

When the communication didn't work so well he started trying to read my Asimov book, but I could tell he was just pretending because he kept jumping around and reading random parts of the book -- considering they are a set of short stories, I don't think even an English speaker would get much out of that.

When he saw the ticket guy going around he motioned that he was going to go to the bathroom and then did the 'Shhh' sign like it was our little secret, I'm guessing he hadn't paid for the train ticket.

Not long after he came back he seemed to get irritated and tried to talk in Italian to the older lady sitting next to me, but she completely ignored him. So he got frustrated, got up, and left. I was quite thankful, and the older lady actually talked to me a little bit, which makes me think she thought the old guy was crazy/weird as well.

Getting off at Verona's Porto Nuova station, I found my way to the outside and saw a like 5+ different places to wait for buses. I knew I wanted to get on either the 11, 12, 13, or 91, 92, 93. But I was having a terrible time, and I also didn't know where to get bus tickets! So I wandered around aimlessly for about half an hour before deciding to go inside the bus/train station area. When I saw a tobacco shop I remembered reading something about how you can get tickets there, so I went and asked for a bus ticket and that ended up being about 1 euro.

Then when I got off at the bus stop, I only had a street name. When I asked a couple of black women where to go, they pointed off to the left, so I went that way but it was getting into neighborhoods and I remembered that it was in a more open area on a large street. So after circling the block I asked a woman on a bike and she pointed me in the right direction. I should have gone right instead of left way back at the beginning.

The hard part behind me, it was easy to get to the hostel, get to my room, go on the internet, and then I found a pizza place to ease my hunger. One word of advice to the weary, pizza-hungry traveler...do not order pepperoni in Europe (I did it in Germany and Italy), unless you want to get red and yellow peppers on a cheese pizza. What an actual American pepperoni pizza is called over here, I have no idea.

In the internet room I met some Texans who had a class in Verona, so had been here for 2 weeks or so. Their test was the next morning, so they were procrastinating. I talked for an hour or two with a couple of them before heading to bed...