Day 1

OK. Here goes ... Since it's 5:30a on Saturday morning and I have nothing to do till 730, I figure I'll start this little story. I have been reprimanded for not giving any details in my last post, so I'm thinking it's better to get some new stuff up sooner rather than later ... It also gives me an excuse not to clean my room.

Let's begin with the fact that my bags are still in Stuttgart, Germany. Well, at least I hope that's where they are. Because, if they are there, they will arrive eventually. However, if they actually did leave Germany but never showed up in Atlanta, well, Houston, we may have a problem. For now, there isn't anything in my bags that I NEED, so let's just stay positive :-) I also don't have any locks on my luggage because, for some reason, I think you can't have locks on luggage anymore for security reasons, which means everything in my bag is fair game ... including my super cool transparent umbrella that I paid a whole 2.50 for!! Eh, I think there are other important things in there that I want ... like this one pair of jeans ... and uhhh ... I think that's it. Nothing else is actually irreplaceable lol. Anywho, I digress.

So my first day of this buddy pass journey was June 29. I originally booked my flight for June 30, but after checking out the flights, the 30th nor the 1st were looking too great, so my mom suggested I change it to the 29th. So I did. Besides, the new girl was taking over my apartment on the 29th and I didn't have any more reason to be in Milan. Better to get back to America and relax and work a bit before my course started (TESOL Certification at Oglethorpe Univ). So I packed up all my stuff, left for the airport about 615 or 630 (can't remember exactly). Luckily, I had a ride (because I had a lot of stuff!). So I wait in line for about 45 minutes with all my stuff and I get to the counter and the man tells me, "You can't fly today. No buddy passes ... There's an embargo ... the person that issued this should have told you that ..." ... So I don't know if my face looked like this:

                       -_______- Are you kidding me?

or like this:

O_O ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!!! O_O

 Either way, I was NOT a happy camper. Oh well, no sense in being angry. Wasn't gonna make me be on the plane. But you meet the nicest people ... this guy saw that I was a pass rider and let me look in his system to try to figure out which day would be better. I left 2 bags at the baggage deposit (4 euros per day per bag. Not bad. I'll leave 2. I won't have my stuff here longer than 24 hours). So my friend Amanda came to the rescue and told me to go to her flat and get the extra key from the doorman and crash there for the night. Nothing special happened. Paid for a RT ticket on the airport bus, went to Amanda's, got some less than desirable, overpriced pizza, watched Pretty Little Liars in Italian, talked to Chris the Amazing, and slept. Un día normal.

Day 2: Arrive to the airport for the baggage man to tell me I owe him 16euros instead of 8 because my bags were there the 29th and the 30th...although they were only there for 22 hours and they didn't actually stay the 30th because it was 8 in the morning and they hadn't even finished. Again, can't remember if I was -______- or O_O ... again, doesn't matter. Wasn't gonna make my bags NOT cost 16 euros. I had already decided that I would go to the airport and be happy because I didn't know who I might meet. If I was stuck in Milan it was for a reason. God wanted me to meet somebody. So I was determined not to let the 16 euros ruin my day. I had also decided that if I didn't get on the plane I would catch an afternoon train from Milan and go to Munich to try this buddy pass thing from Germany. Chris the Amazing lives there and he lives much closer to the airport in Munich than anyone I knew in Milan. Plus, I knew it would be impossible to overstay my welcome there :-P 

After they did all the passes for the flight to ATL the girl I was sitting next to looked very distraught. Just super let down. I, on the other hand, was not because I was going to see my booooyyyyfrrreeeennnn again!!! 2 months earlier than we had originally planned!! I told Chris (not the Amazing. Already over typing that. It's too long lol) about the girl (whose name is Jodi and I still talk to today! Actually she says she lives really close to my mom) and he told me I should give her a hug. Because that's the kind of person he is. He's the person that gives free hugs to random people. So I asked if she had a place to stay. We ended up hanging out the whole day, her friend took us back to the city (So I didn't have to pay the 10 euros for a bus ticket although I paid an extra 8 for my bags. I was still winning), we ate lunch with my friend Marco (who became like a dad to me while I lived in Milan). I decided I'd stay in Milan an extra night to make sure she had a place to stay and then I'd head to Munich in the afternoon. 

That night I started to talk myself out of going to Munich. It was stupid. We just started dating. I am literally taking my entire life to his apartment. Bad idea. But Jodi, who has made herself my official enabler told me that was NOT an option. I was going to Munich. End of story. It wasn't a discussion ... Anywho, Chris was in Hamburg and wouldn't be home till Monday night, so there was no rush... until I received a 5a call on July 1 telling me he was going back to Munich by car and would be there in the afternoon. So I packed up all my stuff and went to Central Station with Jodi, where we parted ways. She took the bus to the airport, where she made the flight home ... and I caught a train to Verona ... where the REAL adventure began ...