Arrivederci Italia

The Diet Starts Tomorrow- Our Favorite Gelato Store


Lake Como at Dusk


Roof Top View of Menaggio


Como Church


Leaving Milano Centrale Train Station


St. Mark's Basilica, Venice


Gondolas on a Canal in Venice

Posted by Guest Blogger Tiarra

My mom and I leave for home tomorrow morning. We have had a great time here in Mezzegra. Being my second time to Lake Como, I am not as shocked at some of the cultural differences that I was surprised by last year. Except for one small incident that we encountered on the train from Milano to Como. We had a great couple of days in Venice and we were on our way from the huge Milano Centrale train station to the small Lake Como station when about three miles from the station the train comes to a sudden stop. I guess I should back up a bit, while we were on the train waiting for it to leave a man boards with his belongings and gets back off of the train to get his son. A couple of minutes later, he taps on my window saying he can't get the door to open. I get up and try to open the door from the inside, it will not open. We are stuck in the train, and he is stuck on the outside with all of his stuff in the train. Then the train takes off. So, when the train suddenly stops, I think it is because of this guy. There are six people on this Eurostar which is headed to Zurich, Switzerland. Three Swiss girls, one German man and my mom and me. We are sitting for quite some time and the German man gets up and says "sumsing is very wrong", and walks away leaving his luggage. He comes back a few minutes later saying he is leaving. He grabs his luggage, jumps off the train and starts walking down the tracks. Keep in mind that we are sitting three miles away from the main Milan train station and there are huge trains blasting by us every minute. At this point I am feeling sorry for the man that left all of his stuff on the train and think that it is my responsibility to get his stuff back to him. His Ipod, Blackberry and passport were all sitting on the seat. My mom is having a fit that I am going through his belongings. I leave his stuff and we decide to go down and talk with the Swiss girls to see what they are doing. There was a train maintenance guy talking with them. I ask him what is wrong, and he says "everything, you need to get off of this train". (it turns out that the train needed to be cleaned) And by get off of the train, he does not mean it is taking us back to the station, he means get off now in the middle of nowhere. So that's what we did. I was the first one to fall off the train. It is about a three foot drop to the ground which some how I managed to do it by landing on my butt, and take the maintenance man down with me. Everyone else learned by my mistake and made it out ok. We were then told that we had to stand for 30 minutes between tracks where trains were flying by us until a train could come and get us. Ok, right. Did I mention that it was 1000 degrees outside too? Can you imaging the FAA making you jump out of a plane on the tarmac because it needed to be cleaned. And just stand here on this runway for 30 minutes until another plane can come and get you. Luckily there was a train that had just been cleaned waiting to pull into the station, and we all jumped on it and made it safely back to the station. We then found another train to Como and got on it. I tried to explain what had just happened to us to the ticket boy for this train, but he did not have a clue what I was talking about. It was like a Twilight Zone episode. Gene and Joan waited for us at the Como train station and then we went to the big Bennett grocery store, ate some pizza and gelato and all was well.
That's the only "bad" experience we had on this trip. Everything was wonderful. I want to thank Gene and Joan for all of their hospitality. I look forward to bringing Chris with me next year!