Returning the Car and Apartment Tour

Returning the Car...

(I couldn't get the video of our apartment loaded yesterday, so I decided to load it today.)



Back to the car...

So, we left the story yesterday when we had found our apartment finally at about 11 am. We had only slept about 3-4 hours in the last 48 hours, so we were completely exhausted. We slept for a few more hours, and then I needed to get the car returned to Bologna. We knew it was going to be a bit of a drive yet, and my deadline was at 8 pm. I left about 4 or 5 pm (it's all a bit fuzzy now). After such an already frustrating and uncertain trip thus far, it was very difficult to leave Leah in a town we had only been in for a few hours. But, the car had to go back, and we had found the school and people that would help her, and she had a place to stay, so I knew she would be okay. We knew the only problem would be if I was too late to make the bus, I would not make it back to Novafeltria that night, and I didn't know where I would stay.

I made sure I had every map I could, had my computer set up with Google maps, etc., because I knew how ridiculous the roads were.

But maps are no match for the roads in Italy.

Once again, I found myself unsure of which road I'm on. Even though I stopped and asked for directions several times (from people who didn't know English), I was still uncertain. This time, it was not only a war against the roads, it was a race against the clock. If I made it to the rental place one minute past 8pm, they would charge me for another day. Grr.
I noticed one sign in particular that I remembered was a different "state" or "region" of Italy than Novafeltria was in. All of a sudden, the signs became much more clear and regular. Ahh, finally! From this point on, I just followed signs to the main highway, then signs to Bologna, then signs to the airport. I had a little difficulty locating the rental office, but one phone call cleared that up. I made it to the office with plenty of time to spare...8 minutes!

Next step: Get to the train station.
I was getting better at just stopping and asking for information and directions, so it didn't take me more than 10 minutes to figure out where the bus was that takes you to the train station. Pretty rickety bus (and kind of expensive), but it worked. I knew at this point I was going to miss the last bus from Rimini to Novafeltria, but I wanted to get as far as I could yet that evening.

Step #3 (or whatever number we are on, I didn't bother keeping track at this point.): Get a train ticket to Rimini.

This actually was a pretty easy task. They have these cool little automated kiosks that you could select English. Amazing what a little language can do - getting the ticket was a cinch.

Step#4: Get on the train.
I somehow make simple things difficult. When I bought my ticket, the next train to Rimini was leaving in 10 minutes. Nice. I'm in a station I have absolutely no knowledge of where to go, and I have to find where to go and get there in 10 minutes, and I don't understand one blessed thing on my ticket except the time the train leaves. This time, I decided there was no room for being smart and figuring out where to go on my own, so I stopped and asked a janitor (or "technical housekeeping director" for you politically correct-sensitive people) where to go, and he gave me great directions even though he didn't know a lick of English. That got me to the right platform, and then I needed to make sure. I asked another guy on the platform if he spoke English, and lo and behold, he did! And, to top it off, he actually knew where I needed to be, and was very helpful! We chatted for a few minutes, and he explained the train was late, but I was at the right spot. When the train actually came, he made sure I was on the right car, and had found my seat. If you were to ask me about "angels among us," I would probably think of that guy pretty quickly. It was the encouragement and confidence I needed at the moment.

Step #5: Get off the train.
Again, seems simple, but it can be tricky when you aren't sure when you are supposed to get off. Fortunately, the person punching our tickets knew English enough to tell me when the stop was going to be.

Step #6: Get a bus ticket.
The guy at the bus ticket booth was a bit of a snob, but I worked through that, and got a ticket. I had resolved in my mind I was going to have to spend the night somewhere. I didn't want to spend any more money, so I thought I was going to just spend the night in the train station. However, as I started to set up "camp" on seats in an empty hallway, the thought occurred to me they might close the station sometime during the night. I went and checked the schedule, and sure enough, the station closed at around midnight. Great. I need to find someplace to stay.

I walked outside, and started to look around, now dark and about 10 pm. I had no idea if I could even find anything. I was really nervous, because we already had an experience with things closing early in Italy.

Just at this moment, my phone started to ring.

"Hello?"

"David? This is Leah!"

"What?!? How are you calling me?"

"One of the director's let me borrow her phone. Where are you at?"

"Train station in Rimini, looking for a hotel."

"Stay right were you are, we are coming to get you!"

And they did. About 40 minutes later, Leah and the director picked me up and took me back to Novafeltria. As I got in the car, the director said, "No more renting cars for you!" :)

I agreed.

Well, I still need to get some pictures from around town and get those posted. Maybe I'll do that in the next day or two.

God bless,
Dave and Leah

Rome-ing Around

Ancient Romans must have had a lot of time on their hands - because one spends a lot of time getting lost in Rome. For being the ancient capital of the world, it is very unorganized. The street signs are either obscure, or non-existent.

We tried to save money by renting a car. I don't know how much money we saved, but I do know we probably would have saved a lot of frustration if we hadn't rented a car.

Traveling in Italy is tricky - here's the tricks we learned:

Trick #1: Rent a car
Ok, that sounds easy. Evidently, renting a car is really popular - for Italians. We stopped in car rental place after rental place before we finally found one car available, and that would allow us to drop it off in a different city. Novafeltria, our destination, is too small to have a car rental place, so we figured I could return it to a larger, nearby (we thought) city, called Bologna. We thought it would be really simple: Drive to Novafeltria, spend the night, I get up the next morning at a comfortable hour, drive to Bologna (couple hours), return the car, take a train to Rimini, take a bus from Rimini to Novafeltria - simple! But before all that, we had to locate where the car rental places were even at. The airport must not think much of car rental places, because they were all located in the hot parking garages, and I didn't detect any air conditioning in any of the offices. We went from office to office, before we finally found a car available. It was a company I have never heard of, but it was our last shot, so we took it. It was a cute little car (a manual - I think they all are) made by Fiat. I can drive a manual, so that wasn't a big deal, but I don't drive them that often, so it took a few minutes to get comfortable again.

One of the things we noticed right away was everything is really tiny - the roads, the cars, everything! We made it out of the parking garage ok, and then hit the road towards Rome, which was nearby.

Trick #2: Avoid Rome-ing.
I think I figured out where the term "roaming" came from. It originated from the root word "rome" which means "to desperately wish to leave Rome, but you can't because nothing is labeled, so you wander about for hours" (I believe I pulled that directly off Dictionary.com).

Trick #3: Don't obey the traffic laws.
Believe me, if you obeyed the speed limit, the lines on the road, and the right of way, you would be stuck in one spot all week, or get run over. We learned very quickly, Italians drive like they are hallucinating. If there is a crack between two cars that is within 6 inches (sorry, 0.15 meters) of being big enough, they will try and squeeze through as fast as they can. And I mean fast! We were traveling at the speed "limit" (posted at 80 km/hr, but we were told at the car rental place the "limit is 130 km/hr"), and cars would fly past us like we were standing still! Motor cycles and scooters evidently have even fewer laws on the books for them, because they would pass us whenever they jolly well felt like it, on the right or left, or right between the lanes of traffic, no matter the speed! Check out the video we made about 2 hours into our Rome-ing...


Trick #4: Forget your cardinal directions.
North, South, East and West are evidently going out of style, because there is no such thing in Italy that we have come across yet. This became a problem when we needed to make a simple switch from one highway (autostrada) to another in the city of Perugia. We got going the wrong direction, and then needed to turn around. In the US, this is generally a very straight-forward procedure. Exit, take two left turns, and voila!, you are going the opposite direction! Not in Italy. We burned another hour just trying to find the autostrada we needed to get near Novafeltria.

Trick #5: Learn to drive in rural Italy.
Now, in Iowa, rural areas are actually pretty easy. Every mile has a road. Like a chess board.

Italy is like a jigsaw puzzle. Still in the box.
And of course, none of the pieces have labels on them. You have to use intuition to drive. And our intuition is pretty lousy. Actually, Leah started figuring out the code after several hours; otherwise, I would still be driving around mountains if it wasn't for her.

Check out the video at how exciting this kind of driving is late at night!


Trick #6: Derive intelligent information from drunks.
Ok, so this didn't actually happen. They were way too drunk.
We finally got into Novafeltria at about 2 am, and the ONLY people still awake in the town were about five drunks still in the "centro piazza," or town square. And they knew nothing about where we were supposed to stay. We had been told we were to meet someone at the town square that would show us where we were to stay, but we couldn't find them, and the drunks didn't know the person either.

So we were pretty stranded. NOTHING was open, not even the police station. Or a restaurant. Or a hotel. Or ANYTHING!! Being accustomed to a 24 hour culture is a bit shocking when everything closes around 6 or 7 pm. So, we decided that we needed some sleep, and the only way we were going to do that is if we stayed in the car. We actually found a really nice place to park, out of the way, shaded by trees. When we awoke, it was about 6 am. We still had to wait for a couple hours to make sure everything was open, and people were moving around. Around 8 am, we started driving around, asking for directions to the school. After about a half hour, we found a person who knew what we were talking about, and pointed us to it. We showed up, and the staff were pretty horrified we had to sleep in the car.

We found out that we had been sent several emails with directions, contact information, and everything that would have been helpful, but all those emails bounced back, and never got to us.
Very frustrating.

We were taken out for breakfast, and then shown our apartment. It is very nice, and quite homey and cozy. Most of the walls are solid concrete, and very thick, and retain heat fairly well during the night, but keep it cool during the day; because of this, there is no need to have any air conditioning. There don't seem to be too many bugs, but I did get a couple bites today.

Well, that's all for today, I'll tell you about returning the car and show you more around the town tomorrow!

God bless,
Dave and Leah

In Italy - FINALLY!

Sorry it has taken so long to update this blog...we've had a lot happen, and no chance to get on the computer until now. So here's what's happened thus far...

Tuesday evening:
We climbed on the plane in Des Moines at 7:10 and took off a few minutes later. Very excited and anxious to get to Italy! Weather for the whole trip was very good, and beautiful clouds to watch on the way. We got to Chicago on time, and were really hungry since we hadn't eaten yet, so Leah watched our bags while I went to find food. The only place I could find that was open was a McDonalds, so we had a sandwich and some chicken nuggets for supper. Yum.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning:
We were on the plane for a little more than seven hours on the flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. We slept a little, but not much. The plane was very comfortable for sitting, but not for sleeping. Unfortunately, I didn't learn that the head rest was adjustable until we were sitting the tarmac after we landed and were getting ready to exit the plane. Nice. That would have helped my sleep. I'll remember that for the return flight.
The time change really messes with your head. We hadn't been on the plane long when the flight attendant came by and put down the shade, and made a comment about the sun coming up soon. Which it did. When we landed in Frankfurt, it was around 1 pm local time.
The plane was very nice. We flew with Lufthansa, which is a German airline. I didn't know what to expect, but all the reviews on the Internet were very favorable, so I gave it a shot. Fortunately, we were very pleased. The plane was very clean and comfortable. It was nice and fresh feeling, and the attendants were exceptionally helpful. There was a 20 minute glitch with the in-seat entertainment system for everyone, but after they rebooted the system, it seemed to work fine.
Overall, two thumbs up on the flight.

Wednesday afternoon/evening:
We were starting to get a little travel weary at this point, but were still doing well. While in the Frankfurt airport we made some observations: 1. Germans, at least, like to smoke. There were little glass smoking booths (they looked like fully enclosed bus stops) that were about every 100 feet (approx. 30 meters for you European folk) and at least one person in each of them. 2. Even though there are smoking booths, the smoke still escapes. 3. Our internet worked in Frankfurt. That's a good sign. We didn't realize how helpful that would be in the next few hours.
We took our last flight from Frankfurt to Rome which took about 2 hours. It was about 5:30 local time when we landed. We hadn't heard from the director of the program about transportation, so we decided that we should keep moving and rent a car, because we didn't know how to use the bus system. Had we known what we know now, we might have chosen a different option, but of course, hindsight is 20/20.

It is getting late, and we are still getting used to the time change, so we need to get to sleep. Good night for now, and I will update you on the rest of our trip to Novafeltria tomorrow. Trust me, it's worth checking back.
Dave