When the Pope moved St. Patrick’s day from the 17th to the 15th of March, the world got budged off its axis just enough to disrupt the beer drinking gods and cause everything to go wrong today. Olen and I decided to catch the train to Milan and spend the day bar hoping to and from Irish bars. To start things off we caught the first train that was running out of Como to Milan which would take us to Porta Garibali, located just outside the center of the city. We caught the subway into the city center and this began our never ending ride on the Metro Subway… We started the day off with a Guinness on our way to see Da Vinci’s “Last Supper”. It seemed that everything was going great, until we got to the museum and found out that the “Last Supper” was sold out. That should have been our sign to turn around and go home- call it quits while we were ahead. We didn’t know that in order to see the acclaimed painting you must make a reservation ahead of time, or get to the museum early in the morning. We shrugged it off and wandered over to another art museum in Milan, the Pinacoteca, which houses a large collection of 16th century religious art and a small exhibition of contemporary work. Next another beer, and some people watching…
Our Metro subway adventure continued when we were trying to find the main shopping district in Milan. According to the map it was only a few blocks away from where we were, but after walking and walking, we were no closer than where we had started from. Even though it seemed that we were within the vicinity of the area, we were apparently no where near where we wanted to be. So for the second time we hoped on the Subway…
We found the shopping area but by the time we got there most of the stores had already closed. Our next objective was to find a place to eat dinner… after finding out that the “Last Supper” was sold out it should have given us a clue that we were not going to find a place to eat. Again we walked and walked with no luck--we did happen to find the red light district, although that was not quite what we were looking for at the time. Next plan of action was to hop back on the subway and head towards the Duomo where the tourist attractions were. Once we found a restaurant that looked within our price range, we went inside and found out that we needed reservations. Now this was beginning to get ridiculous because it was ten o’clock and most restaurants would not be serving food much longer and we were ready to go home. We decided to cut our losses, get on the train and forget about dinner. Unfortunately the only train bound for Como from the Milano Centrale station would not be leaving until 12:30am—meaning a two and a half hour wait. Plan B: we got on the subway and went to the Milano Cardonna train station that runs along different tracks into Como, which may have an early train. Nope- no more trains! So we got back on the subway and went to the central station to wait for the 12:30am train. This would mean that we would be getting into our apartments in Como at about 2:00am, much later than we had hoped. Well the bad luck does not end here.
We boarded our train, found our seats and both of us accidentally fell asleep. The next thing we know we are stopped at the Switzerland border after missing our stop in Como. Since we did not plan on going to Switzerland, neither Olen nor I had brought our passports. We got off the train and were stopped by the Swiss border patrol, who conveniently enough did not speak English or Italian. Now that we were over the Swiss border and had no form of Official International identification- they put us in police custody with a crazy Israeli man who was extremely high on something, a big drunken German man and another sketchy fellow. When the border patrol came in with rubber gloves and handcuffs it looked as if this night was going to get even worse… Eventually we were allowed to talk to an Italian Police officer who spoke English and we tried to explain our situation to him. After much convincing he led us out the back door and we were free, but no where near Como. Olen and I had imagined that we might end up in jail on St. Patty’s day, but not quite like this…
Since it was 2:30 in the morning there were no buses running and we had no idea where we were. So we just started walking South back towards Italy in the pouring rain. Two hours later we were standing in front of our apartment building and wondering how we made it back alive. We figured out the next day that it was about an eight mile hike, and now I don’t think I will be able to fall asleep on a train ever again!
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