The Winter Olympics

My weekend was utterly disorganized. As my host mother likes to say, I went to Italy for some pillows, a bathtub and a walk down some italian streets. I give her credit, she is basically right.

Despite the ill-preparedness of our trip, it will always be an adventure I shall remember. Saturday we went to the Winter Olympics in Turino, Italy. It's a two hour train ride from Milano. We bought a one way ticket as we weren't sure when we would be coming back. Because the Olympic events are so spread out in Turino, the city decided to employ buses to shuttle eventgoers from place to place. Nicole and I hopped on one and hoped for the best. On the bus we bumped into a group of fat, loud American students complete with baseball caps, hooded sweatshirt and white tennis shoes. Somehow we all started chatting. They were studying in England for the semester and were amazed that we would want to study in rude Paris. Mysteriously, we lost track of them once we disembarked from the bus....

Only went to one Olympic event: speed skating finals. When Nicole and I found the ticket booth for the ice arena events, there were huge signs saying that speed skating was sold out. Nicole, who really wanted to see speed skating, was downtrodden. While I will not go into details which may stir up some discontentment within myself, I finally suggested that we try to get tickets to any event. Afterall, we did forsake sleep and boatloads of money to come to the Olympics. Once in line, we met up with two skydivers from Arizona. They were incredible. I would imagine that they were both in their early 50s with as much spunk and vigor as any teenager. I can only hope that I will be as young hearted and vigorous when I am their age. At the ticket counter, we somehow got speed skating tickets. To celebrate, our new friends invited us to dinner. We had some wine, ate some soup and pizza, and talked about life experiences. They were both single women who had met participating in some massive skydiving formation in Indonesia. Utterly amazing.

The four of us sat together during the event. The speed skating itself was interesting to watch. I don't think I would intentionally pay 70 euros to watch such an event again, but at least I had fun. Our compatriots knew people in the ABC booth and invited us to a bar tour with the TV crew. It would have been fun but I was not about to forsake my tres cher hotel room. We caught the last train back to Milano. I thought we were going to miss it. It was raining and was hard to judge where we were from the bus windows. Upon disembarking, we both ran for the train. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to buy return tickets.

The train was standing room only. For local trains in Italy, your ticket does not guarantee a seat. It's first come first serve. I prayed that the ticket taker wouldn't show up. But of course, he came rambling through to punch tickets. He spent a good 30 minutes with us. I'm sure we made his list of things to complain about to coworker/significant other/domesticated animal. We gave him our ticket - the ticket to come to Milano. The ticket clearly did not suffice. He wanted to see our return ticket. I told him that we gave him all we had. He said it wasn't good enough. I offered to pay the fine for not having a ticket (we accepted that fact that we would probably have to pay a fine). He refused. Instead he preferred to stand there and lecture us on buying tickets. After his lecture he wanted to see our return ticket. We again informed him that we gave him all we had. This cycle continued for numerous minutes - we acquired the help of a Scot to translate for us while the ticket taker commenced turning various shades of red. Eventually, our good ticket taker walked away. We didn't have to pay. Rock on.

Sunday night we missed our flight back to Paris. I won't go into horrific details about how this happened. Being a small airport, there were no other flights to Paris that night. The next flight on Monday morning was booked. We were waitlisted and told that flying to Brussels the next morning followed by a train to Paris would be our best option. Just what I wanted to hear. So this is how we spent the night in an italian airport. About 2:00 in the morning, the military shows up and kicks everyone out. My host mother is convinced they were merely airport security. I'm convinced I don't want to go to Italy again if airport security wears combat boots and carries sub-machine guns. Regardless, everyone was forced into a building across the street for 3 hours. In the morning, our waitlisting paid off as we got seats on the first flight to Paris. I was so happy to be "home!" I just wanted to grab the first french person I saw and kiss him/her - luckily for him/her, I refrained.

Italy has definitely not got anything on France! I will always be a francophile. Amen.