B-Side

So...now for the B-side.  These are the adventures that family may not want to hear about...but...in retrospect they are too entertaining to be ignored.  It's a bit of the darker side of our adventure, which could be called "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Sorry it's soooooo long!

Zentralfriedhof, Vienna 

It all started with about 5 hours of sleep (instead of the desired 8+ hours) the night before we got on an all-too-early train to Lappeenranta.  We had to take this train even though our flight didn't leave until 4 hours after our train arrived.  There was a pretty solid snowstorm passing through the area when we left Finland, so we were pretty happy to be heading South to sunnier climes....or so we thought.  Upon arrival in Italy (a small airport North of Milan) we found it to be grey and rainy, but it was a bit warmer than what we left behind! So warm, in fact, that one of our fellow Finnish passengers collapsed on the bus from the airport to the local bus station.  After 2 hours of sitting on a bus that drove in circles around small towns and stopped every few minutes, we finally found ourselves in the town of Como where we planned to have a lakeside picnic in the Italian Alps and drink a bottle of Italian wine.  Except, by this point it was raining so hard that neither of us had any desire to sit outside. And we couldn't find a wine store that was open.  And the lakeside was under construction.  So we had very disappointing pizza and Bellinis in a small restaurant bar that was packed with locals (who weren't eating or drinking anything...we noticed after).  Then, exhausted, we went for a walk along the lake and pretended to see the Alps rising in the distance...and pretended not to see the used condoms floating in the water. After our disappointing dinner we took the train to the next airport where we were flying out of the next morning (check in at 4:30!).

ahh...the beautiful Italian Alps...clear air and clean water! Como

The best (read: cheapest) solution was to just spend the night in the airport.  Now, I had never done this and was very skeptical if there was any sleep to be had.  So I brought earplugs, eye covers, and a pillow with the hope that these items may make sleeping in a public place slightly more comfortable.  Milan Malpensa Airport was specifically designed to deter people from sleeping there.  All of the chairs had armrests.  All of the rooms were big and open with concrete floors (think airplane hangar).  We finally found a relatively cozy (and clean) place between stairs and a wall.  This created a small half-hallway about 1.5m by 5m.  I had a jacket and towel to help pad my bed on the stone floor and April put her professional-airport-sleeper setup together.  As I was changing to "sleeping clothes" (a bit redundant in hindsight) I made a comment about along the lines of "wouldn't it be funny if security showed up now."

"I've never had a problem with security sleeping in airports...everyone does it..." said April.  Well, that was asking for it.

Within 15 minutes of getting settled down, April reached over and shook me to get my attention.  The police were there (not the ordinary police...the military immigration officers).  They didn't really speak any English, but they wanted our passports ("no problem...normal control...security control....no problem"). So, like obedient Canadians who have been living in the Finnish Systeemi, we handed our passports over.  They proceeded to take our passports, walk across the room (to make some good distance between us), radio in all of our information, and check all of the visas we have each been issued.  We were over-tired, under-informed, and tensions were running high.  After 10 minutes of insisting "No Problems," we finally saw evidence of this and our passports were returned to us.  Finally...we breathed a sigh of relief and settled down again....

Only to be disturbed 30 minutes later by another young traveler who had just gone through the same ordeal as us, except the police didn't believe him...so he was hiding from them...and thought it would be a good idea if he could join us and sleep in the little hallway.  Well....uh....ok....we guess....................worst decision of the night.  He was more interesting in talking, and SMOKING, and being generally annoying than sleeping.  I was busy pretending to be asleep (eye covers, earplugs), so unfortunately April took the brunt of his interests.  Finally, he seems like he's settling down, but (like the rest of us) he's not very comfortable on the stone floor.  He starts trying to steal April's bedding out from under her...little by little...until there was more of his legs ("smelly boy feet") on April's clean towel than there was April.  So she took it back. And then he tried to take it back.  April soon gave up on this tug of war and told him to GO AWAY. Which caused him to pout by being noisy, calling us names, and blowing cigarette smoke all over us.  Finally, April was on the verge of tears and she told him that he was not nice, and mean, and that he had to leave.  NOW.  She was not a polite Canadian at this point, now she had adopted her angry Irish side.  Understandably. So...he left. And we slept...for about 1.5 hours.  And then he returned about 15 minutes before we had to wake up for our flight anyways. So, we got up early and left him alone in the hallway.  We went to the bathroom to change and freshen up after such a long night.  I put my clothes for the day on the counter...but as soon as I turned my back, they slipped into the motion-detector controlled sink and the tap turned on soaking them. 

sharing an airmatress on the only available floorspace was much better than the airport floor!! Vienna

Keep in mind that this is all in the first day.  The second day was slightly less eventful.  We flew to Munich, took the train to the city, and were checked into our hostel by 8:30am.  We did manage to shower, but we didn't have time to nap before our friend arrived and our days in Munich began.  Now, it was probably due to a lack of sleep, but within 3 hours of arriving in Munich, April lost her passport.  Unfortunately we didn't notice until we had been in Munich for about 10 hours.  This resulted in a very stress-filled evening for April...running around the city to every place we had been that day...and once again talking with police officers about passports.  She concluded that nighttime policemen in Germany are much nicer than nighttime policemen in Italy.

The passport-finding mission! Munich

Day three brought the return of the passport from the police station in downtown Munich.  We also got poor service and dirty looks from a waiter for an hour or so because we sat in the wrong section of the restaurant.  When we tried to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial we got lost 3 times on a marked trail that was "really easy to follow."  It took so long for us to get lost that we didn't get there until it had closed, but we managed to get in for an hour or so before they kicked us out.  The weather was cold, grey, and depressing, but we were happy to know that as soon as we had left, Finland got its first bout of real spring weather: cloudless blue skies on spring snow and warm sunshine.

hard to see...but there is a pretty steady stream of water emanating from the bathroom fan above my head...Munich

Day four brought a creepy roommate to the hostel...or maybe he just didn't understand English? That would explain the strange looks he gave to everyone else. He got back to the room at 2am and proceeded to talk on his phone the rest of the night and sort through papers on his bed using a flashlight...that he would occasionally use to watch other people in the room sleeping.  Finally, he sprayed on copious quantities of cologne (in the small room) and left.  That morning we had showers...but Anna's shower didn't stop when she turned the water off.  Instead, there was water pouring out of the light fixtures and ceiling fan in the bathroom.  I guess a pipe burst in the ceiling above us...the front desk man was not impressed.  For breakfast, April got a slice of liver paste sausage, which left a bad taste in her mouth.  We took the train from Munich to Salzburg...but we didn't quite make it to Salzburg because the train was so delayed it decided to save time by turning around and going back to Munich.  But if we got off at the next stop, we could take a commuter train into Salzburg.  This was all announced in German, making life slightly challenging. Upon arriving in Salzburg we got slightly lost, but ultimately found our hostel.  I have never encountered so many rules at a place of accommodation in my life...personal belongings on the floor = verboten. moving furniture = verboten. leaving a chair untucked = verboten.  taking 1/2 a roll at breakfast = verboten...really?!  Anyways, we deposited our bags (not on the floor!) and went out to get groceries so we could cook ourselves a late dinner.  After much debate, we returned to the hostel with eggs, bacon, and veggies to make an omelette.  It was at this point that we discovered that there were no cooking facilities in the entire hostel.  We would've boiled the eggs in a kettle at this point, but there was no kettle to be found.  Bringing your own food was probably verboten.  So, April made a valiant attempt at cooking an egg in the hot water from the tap.  Unfortunately this was not successful, and, after an entire night of "cooking" under the hot water we had nothing but lukewarm liquid egg whites the next morning.

The creepy hostel roommate...? Nope...just another friend we found in Munich

It is also noteworthy that the next morning we woke up to an absolute whiteout of a snowstorm.  Not a week earlier, it had been 18C and sunny in Salzburg.  Now that we had arrived, it was 1C and snowing. hard. I was thoroughly unimpressed. Other than the freezing horizontal sleet, the rest of our stay in Salzburg went well...until we tried to leave.  We wanted to leave our bags at the front desk while we went for a hike on the last day, but it turned out the front desk of our oh-so-convenient hostel was closed from 10am to 5pm, so the baggage service was useless to us. After hauling our bags around, we caught the next train to Vienna at twice the anticipated price.  They also oversold the train so there were no seats left.  This left April and I sitting on the floor between coaches, which is better than the others who had to stand in the aisles for over an hour. We were actually told to get off the train at the first stop (Linz) where we had to wait 30 minutes for the next commuter train to Vienna, which was not so crowded. Not impossible, but annoying.

Spring in Salzburg

Finally, once in Vienna, things started to go right.  Yes, there was some major confusion finding the friend who we thought we were going to stay with, but We stayed with a different friend instead!  And we got lost a few times, but we had a map and always made it in the end.  The bus ride to Budapest went smoothly, and we didn't really encounter anymore major roadblocks until we tried to catch a plane from Budapest to Milan.  It was yet another 6am flight, so we were catching the taxi at 4am.  However, we did't wake up until 4:05...which made the taxi driver mad...so he charged us extra...and we went to the wrong terminal.  So, we were already cutting our timing close when we arrived at terminal 1, only to find that our flight actually departed from terminal 2, which was 7km away.  So, yet another expensive cab ride later, we found ourselves in the correct place, waiting in line...but we made it just on time. It was a quick flight to Milan, where we spent the day in a small town, then finally flew home to Finland.

Overall, it was definitely and adventure, but I would've been happy with a little less excitement on my vacation!