bewildered.bologna.blog.

 we were about to embark on our first weekend adventure of the semester. we were breaking free of the confines of our AIFS school group and traveling on our own! a few weeks prior we had purchased tickets to see an iron & wine concert in Bologna. Julianna and Jacqueline really liked the band and their music was pretty great so i decided i would tag along. the concert was late so it made most sense to book a hostel in bologna for the night and catch the train back in the morning. the trip started out a little rough as i got pretty sick the day before we were supposed to go to the concert. the night before our departure i looked up directions to the train station--although this was not helpful because in the morning we realized it was the wrong train station! ah so we scurried our little selves out the door after scrambling to write down some directions where the mapped stopped. we decided our feet may be able to carry us faster than the bus and plus we did not know where the bus stopped nor did we have tickets. after walking for about 30 minutes we realized we were going to miss our 11:42 train departure. we continued our journey in hopes that we could catch a later train. we spotted a train station and thought that maybe it could transfer us to the correct train station where we needed to be...it was a good thing julianna asked right as we were stepping onto the train, who knows where we would have ended up? that would have been an adventure in  its own. after running out of map, directions, and after our gut instinct had failed us we decided to ask for directions. with the little italian i know i asked a gas station attendant the direction of the station where we needed to be. he was shocked we were even attempting to get there by foot. he insisted we take a bus. with the help of some friendly strangers we figured out what stop to get off and the direction we needed to travel to get to the correct train station. just as a little bit of discouragement started to creep its way into our spirits we saw a sign for the statione!!! our spirits were lifted back up. after talking to the ticket attendant we were able to get the next train to bologna. with the help of the very flexible train schedule, we finally felt like we were on the right track!

when 1:40 rolled around we boarded the train and it all seemed to be going as planned. the train ride was only about an hour long and with good company it passed by in no time. when we arrived in bologna we realized we were a little disorganized but we were not about to let that aspect ruin any part of our weekend trip! we did not have the name of the hostel or how to get there from the train station. this did not set us back, in fact it only created yet another adventure along this crazy ride of a weekend. our new mission was to locate an internet cafe and look up the necessary information to find out minor details like where we would be resting our heads that evening. wandering through narrow streets, crowded squares with dancing gypsies, we were kindly given a map and some directions. we eventually found an internet cafe as well as the necessary means to locate our hostel. we thought it would be useful to look up information regarding the concert. when we went to the concert's home page and logged in, to our utter dismay, shock, surprise, and confusion there was no record of our purchase of the concert tickets....um well what do we do now? hmmm think.think.think.don't get upset. move on. although it was not quite that easy we did our best. we played the cards life dealt us that evening and tried to look for an alternative. we first called the ticket company and they did not have record of the purchase either, and unfortunately tickets sold out 2 weeks ago. so, we planned our next move; step one: find the hostel and check in. step two: get to the concert to see if people were selling tickets. step three: do all of this with a positive attitude and a smile.

so we had directions and a bus number to get to the hostel. we took a city bus from the train station but we did not quite end up at the hostel. the instructions read; "the bus will stop directly in front of the hostel" since we weren't quite sure where to get off this was a minor issue. santa strena was in the name of our hostel and there was a stop on the bus schedule with that same name so we figured it would be a pretty safe assumption. we counted ten stops to where we thought the santa strena stop was and got off. well most of us got off anyway. julianna and i were the last ones in line to exit the bus and right as we were about to step off the doors abruptly snapped shut in julianna's face. out of our initial reaction we tried to pry the doors open. fail. so the bus continued on to its next scheduled stop. all julianna and i could do was laugh and wave goodbye to our friends from the inside of the moving bus. we got off at the next stop and began walking back in the direction in which the bus had just brought us. not too far down the road we saw jacqueline, sarah, and denny waiting for us. since we literally had no idea where we were, we went inside a small bar to ask for directions. a lovely italian man who spoke no english at all gave us some partial directions and told us  it would be about 1 kilometer in the direction we had just come from. we were embarking on yet another step in the journey towards finding our hostel. after we walked for what seemed like way more than 1 kilometer we finally found it!! the feeling was almost as exciting as finding buried treasure on a pirate's map...only we lacked the map. once we found our treasure we checked into our hostel, threw our bags down and headed for the concert venue. i almost didn't want to leave in thoughts that we may not make it back to the hostel after we had such a hard time finding it in the first place. but my adventurous side kicked in and since it was only 8:30 and the whole reason for coming to bologna was to see this concert we made our way back onto the streets of bologna.

we arrived at the original bus stop which was in fact very close to the entrance of the hostel and waited about 20 minutes for the next bus to come. just when we were about to give up hope we see the shining lights of the bus as it was approaching our stop. maybe our luck was just about to turn around. we boarded the bus without bus tickets...oops and got off at the train station where we first arrived. we had directions on how to get to the concert venue which was not too far from the station. we successfully made it there where we did not have as much luck as we had hoped for. we checked the list just to see if our names would magically appear along with backstage passes but there was no such luck and no one scalping tickets. denny did have a ticket and we were trying to convince him to go in and listen for a few songs but out of the kindness of his heart he refused. just as he was saying it would be cool to keep the ticket as a souvenir a man came up and asked us if we were selling any tickets and without hesitation denny sold his ticket almost as fast as you could say iron & wine. the woman was so extremely grateful as iron & wine was her favorite band. it was heartwarming to see that he absolutely made her night and that something that we thought went wrong was made into something so right.

after we got over the final realization that we were not going to see iron & wine we decided to bury our sorrows with some good old italian hospitality; food! the place we ended up eating was perfect to lift our spirits up. it was about 10:30 at night the whole restaurant was crowded and music from an accordion as well as cheerful italian vioces filled the air. with pizza, calzones, and pasta in our bellies we decided to call it a night and make our way back to the hostel...or so we thought. considering we took a bus from our hostel to the train station we thought it would be most logical to take the same bus from the station back to our hostel, but then again we were on the losing side of the public transportation battle. so boarding bus 21 when we really needed to take bus 21b was not productive in our efforts to get back to the hostel. we found out we were aboard the wrong bus just after the last stop. the bus driver told us he would take us back to where we needed to catch the right bus. once we got back, we all got off the bus in hopes to find bus 21b.  as soon as we got off of bus 21 the route and same bus in which we just got off conveniently changed to 21b and it was the last bus of the night leaving at 12:44am. joy to the world. we are alone. we made our way over to a taxi station and after about 30 more minutes of waiting we hailed a cab and this time we really were on our way to the hostel. we split the cost of the taxi with no questions asked, we were just grateful to finally get back.

throughout all of this i learned a lot. life is an adventure and sometimes no matter how much control you try to have over situations, they will find a way to outsmart you. there is nothing we could do most of these situations but laugh and find the best way to get through them together.

pictures of this remarkable adventure to follow...