Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Bobby don't call her Whitney

I haven't had a cogent thought over the last several days so I'm going to recount a story from the past to compensate for my decided lack of personality in the present:
When I was a senior in college my roommate and I signed up for an intersession course (a course that meets for a month between first and second semester) in Italy. We arrived at the bus stop early one morning and met our professor and fellow classmates. They were not ideal companions for such a trip but there was an attractive female and a guy who seemed like he might be cool and we were headed to Italy for the first time so everything else was ancillary. We started drinking on the plane and arrived in Florence in jovial spirits.
By the time we checked into our hotel we had established enough of a relationship with our classmates to venture out into the Florence night with one another. We decided to go to a local Irish bar (as all Americans seem to do upon initial arrival in a foreign land) and started drinking heavily. I recall several Guinness' a bunch of shots and maybe a car bomb here and there.

Then the night turned black.

When I came to I was sprinting through the streets of Florence.

I wasn't really sure why I was running, in fact I had no idea why I was running (think Memento) but I figured there must be a good reason, so I kept up my frantic pace and dipped behind an alleyway corner after a couple blocks to evaluate the situation.

After a couple moments I peered back and saw nothing. I had no idea what I was running from but more importantly I had no idea where my run had brought me. I was in Florence without the slightest idea where I was, without any idea about the whereabouts of my hotel, and no clue as to its name.

I was fucking lost.

I stumbled around for a while trying to figure out how this had happened and how I was going to remedy the dire circumstances I had found myself in, when I remembered that there was an internet cafe across the street from our hotel called the Internet Train. So I went up to the first person I saw and asked them if they knew of the location of the Internet Train.

Apparently Internet Train in Florence is like Starbucks in New York because the person started pointing in about fifteen directions telling me the many locations of the Internet Train.

This was not good.

I began aimlessly walking around Florence approaching cabs and cop cars asking if they knew where my hotel was, getting blank stares in response and then stumbling away in frustration. I had no idea what to do and kept coming upon various Piazza's thinking I had seen them a million times before.

Finally, at around 5:30 in the morning, angry and distraught, stumbling through the empty streets of Florence, I came upon an Internet Train that looked familiar. I turned to my left and there was my hotel in all its glory. Rarely have I seen such a beautiful site.

With spring in my step I went up to the reception desk, got my key and called it a night.

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