Europe Trip: Day 18, June 7th

In the morning my CS host had already left to go to Venice, he was hosting a couple of Turkish girls and had to meet them back in Venice. So it was just me and Darren, another CouchSurfer. I asked him if he played chess and he said he did, so I whipped out the magnetic chess set and we played a game. I had been starting to feel like an idiot for bringing it with me, since it has only be used 2 times in 18 days...but there is still hope! I beat him quite soundly, although it was quite defensive and not that flashy.

At noon we both set out for the train station, him to buy a ticket and me to leave for Florence. I said good-bye and got on the train, switching in Padova. When I reached Florence one of my hosts, Andrea (a guy), picked me up at the train station. As we walked out of the station he said that he would drive me home on his scooter/Vespa -- I'll admit I was a little apprehensive. He just told me to not worry. I put my helmet on, got on behind him, and hoped I was going to make it.

What a rush. The wind is whipping past your face, the scooter is weaving between cars, braking at what seems like last minute. And you just have to trust the driver. As dangerous as it looks and sounds, I made it safely and I would do it again.

When we got to his apartment, which is very large since there are 4 roommates, there were 2 other CouchSurfers there. Both of them were girls from Lithuania who were Erasmus students in Cologne, Germany. They had found a cheap ticket from Cologne to Bologna (~20 euros) and were finishing up their trip in Florence. After a creepy encounter with some guys in Pisa, they had came back to Andrea's place -- which was a running joke about how you can't escape from the place, even after 2 or 3 tries.

We hung out for a while at the apartment while Andrea went to visit his parents, and agreed to meet him outside the Duomo at 9:30pm. Of course in typical Italian fashion he didn't meet up with us until after 10:10pm. But we had a great time walking around the city at night, picking up a couple pizza's, and we stayed up until after 4am when the girls had to get on their train to Bologna to catch the plane to Germany.