Consider This my Cheap Substitute to Therepy

Before I begin this second installment, I’d like to apologize for the delay. Yes, I realize that you’re all dedicated readers and that your little eyes were probably brimming with tears of disappointment when you discovered that I have been a slacker. I assure you, however, that it will never happen again—well, maybe not never. I’m full of broken promises. For instance, I promised myself that I would learn a bit of Italian before I crossed the pond, but instead I filled my head with useless knowledge, instead. Good decision, Lauren, now it takes you twenty five minutes to pick out one jar of peanut butter. You’ll never meet any Suave Mediterranean man if they all think that you’re one fry short of a happy meal.

In all seriousness, though, I am going to warn you that this post may be unnecessarily long. After all, I’ve been starved of technological contact (that sounds weird) for days now! In fact, let me hit you with our internet situation and then I’ll back track to my first few days in Firenze.

As of now, we live in a quintessential Italian apartment. What do I mean by this? Well, Gina (my roommate) and I sleep in a room that can only be described as museum-esque. That is, when we walk through our white wooden door we enter into an absolutely cavernous bedroom complete with intricately tiled floors which lay opposite to a floral mural on our ceiling. Needless to say, the Italians know about more than just noodles; they can rock the feng shui, any day, too. Perhaps to live in such prime real estate, though, we need to pay the price. I say this not because we have some hooligans down our block selling drugs or because we have some vagabond gypsy roaming the halls: no, nothing that harmless. Instead, we walked into a situation with ZERO internet connection. In fact, if it hadn’t been for our friend Anthony (thank God for him), we would still be living in the stone ages. We did, however, rig up my three-foot long Ethernet cable to our router that is attached to the ceiling. Long story short, to receive internet access, which is undoubtedly illegal, we hold the laptop in one hand and type with the other while trying to stick to an elaborate balancing act so as not to damage the merchandise. I’ve almost dropped my computer four and a half times. Graceful. Back on track, though. Let’s chat about my first few days in a new country.

As any good story teller knows, to properly fill in an audience, one should start at the beginning. Then, when she reaches the end, she will stop. As will be the same with this little snippet, so let me take you to the morning of my departure first.

I was unceremoniously awoken to the bleating noise coming from my alarm clock at 8:30AM. Please pay attention to this time. Apparently the stupid thing did not realize that it was my last day for four months on American soil because if it had, I would like to think that the clock would have magically sprung to life into a butler named Jeeves—as all butlers are in my fantasies—and served me piping hot Belgian waffles to bid me a proper adieu.

Well, as you guessed it, nothing in my imagination ever works out the way that I planned, so I clomped out of bed and dusted off my culinary skills. What sat on my plate after said warm up, was an egg over easy with a broken yoke, a crispier-than-I’d-care-for piece of wheat toast, and a blob of ketchup (duh) to tie it all together. Regardless of what slop was staring back at me, I had no time to enjoy it because I was subjected to a solid last-minute interrogation courtesy of my mother. Again, sorry, mom. In short, it was the same old song called “Don’t Lose Your Passport” with a refrain of “Never Take an Eye off Your Bags (ah ha a ha).” Of course these songs were bumpin’ the first few times I heard them, but after they become overplayed, you’ve got to change the tune.

Perhaps I’m too harsh. Yes, ok, I’m too harsh, but a writer cannot lie. Sure, I embellish, but that’s what I do! Therefore, I will make no apologies, but instead get right back on track, fast forwarding through the boring parts, of course. For instance, I will not bore you with my seat mates because I’ll never see them again or the 75 year-old woman wearing a fluorescent pink feathered sailor’s hat (sorry that I couldn’t creep out a photog, Sas). I will however, inform you all, not only because this caused me a head ache and a half but because if I had to go down, I’m bringing Lufthansa (my airline) down with me! In fact, it’s eating me alive right now. I even deleted this long wind up to the story, but I’m going to come right out and say it: MY LUGGAGE WAS LEFT IN MUNICH! Oh Good God, that feels amazing. Now I know that these things actually are therapeutic. In fact, I may even have the confidence to stand up and shout it from the rooftops: MY LUGGAGE WAS LEFT IN MUNICH! MY LUGGAGE WAS LEFT IN MUNICH! Ok, enough. However, drink it all in, people. I rocked the same clothes—nay, the same underwear for more than 48 hours. Seriously, great first impression in front of my Californian roommates. At that point, I didn’t even care about the Europeans; they’re used to forgoing a shower for at least a week. These ladies, though, are pretty trendy. Needless to say, I did my very best at staying down wind from them.

I guess all of this was just my luck, though. Things we going too well! My first inkling that the whole voyage would unravel was when I boarded an aircraft in Florence that was no bigger than the paper airplane that I tossed at my brother’s head when I was a snot-nosed little kid. Right away I should have lost faith in the project. However, living with a step dad who is so trusting that he leaves the front door wide open, practically holding a “Welcome-to-our-home,-burglars-from-the-tri-state-area. Please-come-rob-our-home” sign stretched in his arms, I must have grown soft. In fact, I didn’t even question it, I just followed the crowd and boarded. In my defense, though, what was I supposed to do? Set up camp in Munich? I wasn’t diggin’ Saurkraut and Weinerschitzel for dinner perhaps.

No matter the reason, I arrived in Florence only to notice that I, and half my plane, was luggage-less. However, like an idiot I stood, mesmerized by the empty baggage carousal, longer than I care to admit, but let’s just say that 27 minutes feels like an eternity! So, finally after I, as my dad advised me, stopped and assessed the situation, I came to realization that I had no control and that my next step was to wait with the heard of other disgruntled, sleep-deprived, and starving passengers to file a missing bag claim.

I waited for nearly two hours in a line so slow it made me envious of the one-legged beetle that I watched scramble across the dirty floor. Damn that little cripple could move! In any normal situation, I would have been nothing short of irate. And yes, for the record, I still am a bit. However, my bags arrived from Germany two days later, no worse for the wear. Was it an inconvenience? Obviously. Did I reek of plane/cab—naturally, but I made it and I got a story out of it, which we all know is constantly my goal in life. I guess my biggest problem at the time of writing this piece in my notebook was that at the end of this epistle, it suddenly clicked that I had been resting my dirty, sweaty socks on my PILLOW! SICK! I had to put my face on that! As if the infrared studies weren’t horrifying enough...