Do the Sicilian Sprint
July 9, 2015
For me, a good portion of the reason I write blog posts is to keep track of all the ridiculous adventures I have while traveling abroad. And when I say “ridiculous,” I mean those “good story” adventures when you and your friends do something mildly stupid, suffer consequences of some sort, then retell the story and relive your stupid moments. I’ve had a lot of good adventures so far this summer, but haven’t done anything really dumb that results in a good story (e.g. see “It only takes 3 minutes if you run” post from June 2013). I guess this is good… right? Maybe this means I’m getting more mature, growing up, getting better at traveling, right? Well, probably not, but I’ll say that for now.
Most of these “good stories” from the stupid antics usually involve me sprinting through the streets of Mediterranean towns. So you can imagine that I was quite pleased when I finally got to sprint for transit in Sicily, although at the time it was incredibly nerve wrecking and caused my friend and I into go into a slight, but controlled panic. The ladies of my trench and I had rented a car for the weekend (which, in itself was an amazing adventure, but has few “stupid antics,” which, again, I guess is good) and after driving around Sicily all weekend, two of us had to return the car. We admittedly left a little later than planned, but also made some directional mistakes (although, in my defense, we had finally done the Sicilian directions plan and just followed the signs to Catania… but somehow never actually made it to the highway and took country roads all the way there instead… ugh). We had told the car company that we would drop the car off at 7pm, 40 minutes before the last bus went back to our town. At 7:15 panic began to set in as we were still not within sight of the airport, were semi-lost, and were positive that dropping off the car would take much longer even we were planning it should (factoring in Sicilian time). Around 7:25 we had finally rediscovered the airport signs and speedily headed towards the car return area. Our plan was for me to sprint to the ticket office to buy our bus tickets after dropping off the car, and for my friend to take care of the final car drop off procedures. After arriving and telling the car drop off guy that our bus left in 10 minutes (who did not seem to care… he might have actually gone slower after I told him that), I made a mad dash for the ticket booth, passing two other groups of friends from the excavation along the way, both of which looked incredibly confused by me, and rightly so. Upon arriving at the ticket booth and buying the tickets back the ticket salesman looked at me like I was crazy and announced that the bus was late, in a tone that sounded like I should have known that the bus was late and that I was ridiculous for running for the bus. Late... of course. Such is life in Italy: whenever you bust your ass to make an important connection (this was the last bus back to our town until the next day, so we were making last resort back up plans to stay the night in Catania and take the butt-crack of dawn bus the next day, and would have arrived late to the dig the next morning - the ultimate shame), the bus/train/plane is always late. However, had I not sprinted through the airport parking lot like a crazy person, I know that the bus would have been early, by some insane miracle, and we would have been stuck for the night and late to the excavation the next day. This is the Italian way. I guess looking like an idiot was the better option.
I will admit, there was something that felt right about running for it - up until then I felt like something was missing from my summer. I guess I have to get in at least one crazy American sprint for transportation in each summer to feel right. Hopefully that was the only one. :)
On another note, I'm pretty proud of my friend and I not really panicking during our return trip mishap. It's good to find those people who can enjoy the ridiculousness of a bad small mistake and just be silly about it. Thanks, Katie G!
