My travels to Italy was nothing short of complete chaos, and about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. One of my flights got cancelled 24 hours ahead of time due to storms that were expected later that evening. At the time, this seemed like a blessing in disguise because it allowed for me to drive straight to Newark airport, and I was able to spend more time with my family before leaving for this trip. Once I arrived at Newark airport, my traveling nightmare began. I spent 1.5 hours standing in a massive line waiting to talk to customer service. I then proceeded to run around the airport trying to get my bag tagged. After a handful of stress induced tears and some encouraging words from my mom, I was finally able to make it through TSA barely 10 minutes before my flight boarded. The flight in itself was uneventful, but my nightmare would start up again once we reached Milan. The obvious next step in my traveling adventures was waiting around baggage claim for 45 minutes, and never getting my luggage. I had to find the customer service area, wait for around another 45 minutes to talk to someone, only to find out that my bag was never put on the plane because there is no record of me boarding the flight from Newark to Milan. At this point the tears has started again as I was dealing with my lost luggage, worried about whether the bus transporting us to the apartments had already left, running on barely any sleep, and now I was also worried that I had some how entered illegally this country because there is no record of how I got here. I managed to pull myself together, get on the bus, and once I made it to the apartments everything began to calm down. I took a much needed nap and got to go on a little shopping spree that was funded by United. I did spend my first 3 days in Milan without my suitcase, but since its shown up its all been smooth sailing.
Other then my initial flight issues, everything I’ve done in Milan has been spectacular. The first night we had a welcome dinner with the other IES students, and it was nice to be able to connect with them and learn more about the type of things that they were going to be doing while in Italy. A group of us also went to the Duomo and got to see the celebrations that were going on for AC Milan. We didn’t last too long at the Duomo, and a group of us went on a mission to find a very needed Aperol Spritz. We were a bit directionally challenged and found ourselves wandering the city for a long time with no idea as to where we were going. We found ourselves on a street and we were like fish swimming upstream. Hoards of people were walking at us, police vehicles were driving past, and we could see flares in the distance. Instead of being smart and leaving, we decided to stop in our tracks and try to figure out what was going on. Luckily for us, it ended up being the bus parade for the team. We got a front row view of the players and the celebration which was completely unexpected. On our venture home we were finally able to find our Aperol spritz, and we were able to get it for takeaway and wandered the streets sipping on them.
All of the locals that I have met so far have been beyond kind and very helpful when dealing with the language barrier. They mix between speaking English to us and also teaching us some Italian words and phrases for us to use in the future. Its easy to feel comfortable walking around the city and going into stores and restaurants, and I’m learning more about their language and culture everyday.
AC Milan Celebration, Duomo