Italia!!

Venice, Italy- April 1, 2012

Right now, I’m sitting on the train from Venice to Florence after a crazy first few days of Spring Break. I’m with four other girls: Bella, Rachel, Madison, and Mindy.   Story time- here we goooo.

We left Graz on a double decker bus at 8am. I’m so thankful I even made the bus.  I am moving dorms, and so I had to get everything out of the temporary room before I left Graz. So I was up til 3:30 am packing all my things.  I had homework due Saturday morning, for the class that I was skipping to leave for Venice, but I didn’t have internet to turn it in.  So I took Stina’s bike around midnight and rode it to campus to use KFU internet. But, all of the buildings were locked.  So I sat outside on a bench under a streetlight, reading articles and writing memos about sociology.  Around 1:30 am, I finally finished the homework and started to ride Stina’s bike back to Haffy.  It was dark, and I was tired, and I got lost.  Surprise, surprise.  I was riding around and getting so frustrated, just wanting to go home and go to bed.  I was praying as I was riding, pleaseee just let me find somewhere I recognize.  Finally, I made it to Jakominiplatz, a main part of the city, where tons of drunk college students were hanging out on a Friday night.  So I’m cruising on the bike, and it’s dark, and I try to go up the curb off of the tram tracks, and I totally crash.  My bike slams to the ground, I skin up my knees, and drop everything I was carrying. My backpack falls off, and topples everywhere. I get back up, so embarrassed, put everything back in, pick up the bike, and limp away.  A group of people were laughing at me who saw the whole crash. I can’t blame them though, definitely a funny scene.  I look down at my knee, and it’s bleeding, and already starting to bruise.  Good times. But I eventually got back on, and made it back to Haffy- where I had to finish packing up everything in my room. 

The next morning, Stina and I meet at 5:45, to carry everything I have to Bella’s aunt’s apartment, where she said I could store it for the month of April while I travel. The apartment is about a 45 minute walk, when you’re not carrying a million pounds of living essentials. We make it about 5 minutes down the street, carrying trash bags and trying to wheel the suitcases behind us, but we keep dropping things and finally realize there’s no way we’re going to make it to her apartment in time to meet her before we leave for the train station. So we call Tugba, my Turkish friend, wake her up, and try to explain that I want to leave all of my stuff in her room for a month. She’s the best, and of course she lets me.  So we leave most of it, and take only enough that we can walk fast and can carry it easily, to try to make it to Bella’s.  We’re running way late, so we decide to try to take the tram.  Problem: which tram?  We have no idea. I knew it was kind of near the university, and saw a tram that said “uni” on the front, and so we got on.  Risky move.  Failed attempt. The tram takes us out to the middle of nowhere, across the river, far away!  My phone isn’t working, so I can’t call Bella to even tell her that we’re not going to be there. I felt so bad!  Thank God for Stina taking the tram with me. Eventually we come to the conclusion that I’m not going to make it to Bella’s and it’s going to be close if I’ll even make the bus to Venice.  So at one of the bus stops, I see a sign that shows the connection bus to the main station.  I frantically make a quick decision, leave my extra bags with poor Stina to figure out what to do with them, give her a huge hug, and get off by myself to find my way to Italy!  Seriously, she’s the best. 

I find the other girls, and we make it to Venice. We were on the bus, and I was praying that God would help me feel intimacy with Him. When I opened my eyes after praying, I looked out the window and saw a giant vineyard. The way that the grapes were strung, the field looked like it was covered in thousands of crosses!  It went on and on and on, a field of “crosses” through Italy.  I couldn’t stop smiling. God is so faithful and creative! He really does sing over His children (Zeph 3:17), and loves to provide! 

Anyway, we get there eventually, and were tired- I was running on less than 2 hours of sleep. We get off the bus, and go in circles trying to find the station to buy bus tickets to get to our hotel.  We meet this Greek dude named Mario who helps us out, and somehow we make it to the airport and pass our hotel while on the bus!  We’re like, “let us out!” but we have to go all the way to the airport and then get off and walk the street back to the hotel.  Finally.

Next problem: we have two hotel rooms that allow two people in each room.  That makes four people- we have five.  So two of us stay outside for a while, and three girls check in. Then, I stay outside, Mindy carries in my backpack, and meets the other girls, they put our stuff in the room, and then meet me outside.  More on that issue soon.  We went into Venice for the day, and it was so beautiful! When I first saw the gondulas and the water I freaked out a little bit, so cool!  There were tons of tiny little alleyways, and small canals to get everywhere. There are water taxis to take people places, cute restaurants, tons of shopping. They sell masks of all kinds, and lots of glass and beads. It’s such a touristy city, I think there were more tourists than locals. We ate gelato, fed the pigeons, sat on benches, and just enjoyed being in Italy.  Soaked it in.

 This morning was Palm Sunday. We went to the Venice basilica, and went to a Catholic mass. It was so beautiful inside the basilica.  They gave us palm branches, so neat. I was sitting inside, not understanding anything because it was all in Italian, and I was just thinking about Palm Sunday.  How crazy it is that Palm Sunday and Easter are only week apart. Within one week, the people changed from welcoming Jesus and hailing Him with palm branches, to shouting “Crucify Him!” and murdering Him on a cross. Crazy change of momentum in one week. This week, I hope to really dwell on the death and resurrection of Christ.  On Easter Sunday, I will be flying to Thessaloniki, Greece.  I’ve never spent Easter morning on a plane before, and I’m definitely a little bit sad about that. But on the way to Greece, I plan to read 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians, letters that the apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Thessaloniki in order to encourage them in their faith and spur them on toward Christ. The past few weeks, I’ve been going through Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, all letters written by Paul to churches in order to encourage them. Paul was so missionally-minded, and devoted his life to following Christ, loving Him, living for Him, and making Him known.  He was absolutely convinced that there was nothing else worth living for. I want to have that confidence that Paul had in Christ, that he didn’t care whether he would live or die, because living meant having the ability to tell others about Jesus, and dying meant going to spend eternity with God. Forever and ever and ever.  I can’t wrap my mind around that!

I’ve been thinking about traveling and selfishness. In Philippians, Paul tells us to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourself.”  Spending money on train tickets and hostels and food for myself, and the whole mindset of I want to go everywhere and travel the world and see everything and me, me, me… has taken my eyes off of God.  I have been distracted by the things of this world. I am trying to remember just how blessed I am to be here.  Whether I go to every country in Europe, or stay the whole semester in Graz, I am so lucky! “Do not fix your eyes on the seen, but on the unseen, for what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.” Can’t remember the reference for that verse, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Whenever I start to get caught up with wanting to do everything in the whole world, I need to fix my eyes on the cross of Christ, rather than on the things of this world. This world has absolutely NOTHING to offer that can even remotely compare with heaven.  The beaches of Croatia, the Eiffel Tower, the leaning tower of Pisa, they are all rubbish in comparison to the magnificence of Christ!

Anyway, back to Venice. It was freezing cold out, and super windy. I packed for it to be warm, and only have one pair of pants and one little thin sweater, the rest shorts and t-shirts. Not so smart. So I’m freezing, and buy an Italia sweatshirt just so I can be warm. We pass this guy at a restaurant who wants us to go there, and he gives me a card for a free glass of wine. We keep walking, and then pass this other restaurant. Another guy sees me carrying the card, and tries to snatch it out of my hand! He is a worker at a competitor restaurant, and wants us to come to eat at his place. We try to keep walking, but he grabs my arm, and keeps talking. He says, “It’s not good- Arabic wine…” and then he snipes the card from my grip and rips it in half and walks away!  Crazy dude.

Then, last night, bad news bears. We snuck into the hotel (or so we thought) in groups of three and two, and go up to our room. The phone rings, and it’s the guy at the front desk. They tell us that they know we have five people, and we can only have four. Rachel tries to lie and say we had four, and to act innocent, but they are very strict and threaten to report it. They yell at Rachel, and say that tonight there is no way that five people can stay there. So it’s 10:00 at night, and one of us has to go stay somewhere else, or we’ll all get in trouble. I was the one who didn’t check in, so I was freakin out a little bit.  We start to brainstorm, and remember that our friend Tom, from Australia, is also in Venice with a few others. So we call him and ask if he can help. He says that one of us can stay there, and spoon with him in his double bed, and it shouldn’t be a problem. So Madison, the brave soul that she is, takes one for the team and volunteers to go stay with Tom. Rachel and Mindy go with Madison to take her to Tom’s hotel and make sure everything is good, and then we planned to just meet in the morning at the train station to leave for Florence.  Everything’s good to go- we thought.

This morning, we get to the train station early and are sitting at Mc Café, waiting for Madison to meet us. We finally see her, and she looks so flustered. She tells us of her night with Tom and the others, who were all crazy drunk. They broke things at their hotel, and got into a fight with the owners for being loud and crazy when other people were trying to sleep. Apparently, they were cussing every other word, and the owner was threatening to call the police. Meanwhile, Madison is hiding in the room!  She hardly sleeps, has to spoon with Tom, and then this morning goes to leave. She walks out, and the owner runs after her, grabs her and drags her back inside! He calls her all kinds of names and cusses her out, and tells her that he knows that she snuck into the room, and that he’s going to call the police. He asks for her passport, but she only gives him a driver’s license, and he makes a copy of it. He makes her pay 25 Euros, and is yelling at her in Italian! She said she was shaking because she was so nervous.  But somehow or another, she got out and made it to the train station and met up with us, and now here we are, on our way from Venice to Florence. What a trip!  On to Florence, then Como, then Milan, then quick flight to Thessaloniki, Greece.  Here we goooo.