Carving Ruts (and Getting Stuck)

On Wednesday, my very first full day in Milan, I got lost. For two hours. 

As I've established in the previous post, I have extremely poor navigational skills and have shed my extrovert skin (either that, or I've grown an introverted shell), so despite the fact I was armed with a detailed map of Milan, it was little help. 

It was my first time powering through the metro stations alone (that morning my roommate so graciously let me follow her down the streets, through the stations, and to the university), and I've had very limited experience in dealing with these trains and tiled subways that at times smell faintly of urine. I had successfully made it from the university to the final stop near my apartment, but I managed to surface out of the station on the wrong street. Though I was still relatively close by, it was the biggest mistake I could have made. 

Since it was my first full day ever being in Italy, the only streets I knew were the one where my apartment is located (which just so happens to be a tiny little diagonal side street that's about half an inch long on the map) and where my school is. Otherwise, the names are all jumbled to me. 

So I simply started walking. At the very least, it was a worrisome but great way to begin creating my internal map of Milan in my area of residence. I kept walking, sometimes turning corners when I thought I saw a street name I recognized. And I kept walking. And walking. 

It was starting to get dark (at almost six on the dot it's pretty much night time) and I'm not yet comfortable being out in the streets alone after dusk settles. That was when I actually started to worry. My feet were cold and wet due to the rain earlier that day leaving numerous unavoidable puddles splashed all over the sidewalks, and the map tucked in my bag was as much help as all the street signs I was passing by. 

A few possibilities for help zipped through my head. The first one was to simply stop a kind face on the sidewalk and ask them if they knew where my street was (I figured I could get that far, but understanding their response would have been the hard part). After only a moment, I banished that idea. Earlier that day, I had been researching Milan and it's quirks, things to expect, what the people were like, etc., and I had read that the Milanese were very cold on the streets. That last thing I wanted was to make someone feel threatened in some way and cause trouble I couldn't even understand. 

Option two was getting more and more inviting, though less doable. I could get a taxi and simply tell them my address and pay for the trip regardless of how far it was. If I was totally out of my district, I would just have to eat it and deal with it; at least I would get home safely. The only problem posed was that there were no free taxis, even as I continued walking down several streets, looking out for any cars with taxi hats. Isn't that the way, though? When you don't need one, they're all over, and they hound you, but when you do, not a one is in sight. 

Darkness crept over the tall buildings, bathing everything in shadows. Lamps began to pop on. 

It was down to option three. 

Without hesitation, and with all the gratitude my tired body could muster, I pulled out my phone and called my mom. We had set up an international access plan so that if I ever needed to call her and I wasn't in a wifi zone, I could (for an extra fee, of course). I figured this was an emergency (I had absolutely no idea where I was in a country where I barely knew the language, and I'm just an idiot when it comes to reading maps) so I stayed put under a street sign as the phone rang. 

She answered and it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I said “hello, how are you, I'm lost!” in a joking, cheery voice, though I really felt far from it. We got down to business immediately. Dad joined in, too, once I told them where I was and they mapped out my route home, telling me where to take turns and when to stay straight. 

Forty minutes and a run-up phone bill later, I was back at my apartment. Apartamento dolce apartamento.

I hung up, wandered to my room in the apartment, sank onto my bed and cried. I was so relieved and thankful for the connectivity, especially after having none from Dulles to Milan, that the pressure built up over the time I had been walking, and I finally had room for the release. I thanked God for my safety out on the unknown streets for so long, and also my family and the fact that I could reach out to them. Without that connection, I am honestly not sure when I would have gotten home. 

It was a more or less terrifying learning experience, but I can now proudly say that I went to the university and back without any issues this morning! And I went and got some groceries! It's also sunny outside today, which doesn't happen very often in this season, so I was being set up for it to be a good day from the start. I managed to slow down a little bit during my travels and take lots of pictures. They'll be up soon, if the wifi chooses to cooperate!

On an unrelated but semi-related note, I continuously have to stop myself from speaking Spanish in order to communicate. It's true that Spanish is much closer to Italian than English is, but it's still not Italian. On my first day here, I was trying to confirm with a taxi driver whether he accepted credit cards in my broken/brain fried Italian, but I ended up saying “tarjeta de credito” which in Spanish means credit card. Thankfully the Italian equivalent is “carta di credito” so it translated more or less and he understood me after a moment of processing.

I think the fact that “yes” is “si” like in Spanish doesn't help me differentiate at all. I'm slowly picking up on my words and phrases in l'Italiano, mainly because I have to, but otherwise because I want to. That's one thing in retrospect I wish I had been more proactive about - learning/teaching myself the language. I brought all the resources with me that I was using, so I can still continue teaching myself, but all in all it's a little late in the game. Oh well. I'm just incredibly thankful that everyone I've had to work with so far has been nice, understanding, and known a good amount of English. It makes me feel like a rotten little North American sometimes, but I hope they can see the gratitude in my eyes and hear it when I say “grazie mille” because I mean it - thank you, very much (I'm sorry I'm so inept, that's my fault, not yours, but I really truly appreciate the fact that you didn't get angry with me for not understanding your beautiful native tongue).

Strangely, I've heard a handful of other international students participating in the same program as me talk about how hardly anyone here knows English. I find myself in the opposite situation. Everywhere I have gone and every time I've needed assistance, there has always been someone who speaks enough English to help. Maybe it's just that I've been pointed in the right directions by a certain Master Creator. Obviously it's not been by my power alone. 

Well, that sums up day two of my stay in Milan (although it was the first full day). It feels like I’ve already been here a week, and not exactly in a good way. It has been stressful, and I’m not used to that because I do not normally allow myself to get stressed. Here and now, however, I don’t have much choice. It will ease off soon once I can carve these darn ruts down a little deeper so as to fall into them easier.

As always, thanks for the support and words of encouragement!

Ciao,

V