Two Broads Abroad | Reunion in Italy full of mishaps, saved by Nutella

Part of going JYA, especially in Europe, is traveling, or as the British call it, “going on holiday.” The countries are so close together and the flights are so cheap that hey, you might as well rack up a few more passport stamps. This weekend, I, Molly Finkelstein, and my partner-in-crime Acacia O’Connor, your columnists at large (maybe a little larger now—thank you, spaghetti), reunited in Italy.

British Language Lesson Number Two: Queue—meaning to wait in line. A word I, Molly, learned the hard way. It was a beautiful morning at 3 a.m. in London when I left my flat to go to The Airport That Isn’t Heathrow. After falling asleep on a bench in the airport, I woke up to discover that the entire airport was incapacitated due to a freak snowstorm. The English don’t handle snow very well. A mere two inches caused every single Ryanair flight to be cancelled. I was about to give up on Bologna and book a flight to JFK. In any case, I persevered and after 18 hours of queuing and napping on benches, I arrived in Bologna.

Living in Italy, I, Acacia, have adopted the phrase, “è un casino,” for when things are a great big mess (interestingly, “casino” also means brothel—think about that next time you’re in Atlantic City). “Casino” doesn’t quite begin to cover the complications Molly and I faced this weekend. While already riding the train to Forlì at 8 a.m. to retrieve Molly, I received the bad news. Some choice Italian slang terms I’d recently learned came to mind. While waiting to receive an update, I was able to wander around the town, which had extraordinarily little to offer. Molly’s flight was rescheduled, and I made the hour trip back to Bologna for the day. That was Thursday.

On Friday, we took a day trip to nearby Ferrara, home of pizzas named after philosophers and old ladies in full-length fur coats on bicycles. We returned for a Bolognese dinner with friends, and all seemed to be smoothing out.

The Eastern College Consortium Program (ECCo) had planned a day trip to Ravenna the next day, which Molly and I planned to go on. I set my phone alarm to wake up at 7:30 a.m. My phone, as it turned out, was on vibrate. At 9 a.m., confused by the daylight, I picked up the phone to find that someone was calling to ask where I was. Oh, crap.

Since Ravenna (a town on the east coast) is only an hour’s train ride away, we decided we could catch the next train and meet up with the group there. We high-tailed it to the station. Standing at the self-service ticket machine, we realized the next train would not depart for another hour and a half.

“Do you want to go to Venice?” I asked Molly. It was 9:54 a.m. Next train to Venice? 9:55. We ran. Two hours later, we were standing next to the Grand Canal dodging tourists costumed for Carnevale in Elizabethan garb (including a midget on a tricycle). After a quick tour of Saint Mark’s Square, we’d had enough tourism to last a lifetime.

Venice, the setting of such Shakespearean thrillers as “Othello” and “The Merchant of Venice” (duh), is a beautiful city, but in a depressing way. Today, Venice is more like Disney World than an actual city. There are few permanent residents now and no businesses that do not involve glass or masks or overpriced Bellinis. Few things there are authentic anymore. (Urban Studies majors: I smell thesis material.)

In search of a genuine Venetian experience, we hopped a bus—and by bus we mean a water taxi, a vaporetto—to the islands north of the city. Arriving at 3:59 p.m. on the island of San Michele, the cemetery island that houses the remains of Ezra Pound among others, we found out that the island (the entire island) closes at 4 p.m. We left the deserted island for Murano, the home of Venetian glass, and very little else.

On the boat ride to the mainland and the train station, the sun was setting over the lagoon. A beautiful ending to a lovely day.

All was well. Too well, apparently.

Three-fourths of the way back to Bologna, we were awoken by the harsh voice of the ticket lady. In Italy, transportation operates largely on the honor system—sometimes they take the ticket, sometimes they don’t; sometimes they are indulgent when you make a mistake, sometimes they want to charge you 250 euro for not validating your ticket.

We only got charged 25 euro for accidentally buying reduced price tickets through absolutely no fault of our own. Only in Italy would you be charged an eight-euro service fee to pay for the correct ticket on board. Whoops. We learned our lesson: If you’ve accidentally bought the wrong ticket, hope for a ticket man, so you can flirt your way out of such petty surcharges.

To ease the pain of our cultural confusion, we made a stop at the Bologna Nutelleria on the way back to Acacia’s dorm. That’s right, a restaurant serving various types of food that are filled and covered with the delicious hazelnut-chocolate confection. Nutella solves everything.