Operation Escape from Malta began at 1100 on Saturday morning when we realized flights to and from the island were indefinitely cancelled. The only information Ryanair could give us was that maybe possibly they would be moving planes on Tuesday if the Volcano stopped erupting and the moons aligned just right…
If you’re up to date on the posts, you’ll know that I recently spent six months trapped on an island. I’m very much so well aware of the fact that, if you can’t fly off it, you’re pretty limited in how you can escape. Since my scuba gear was still in transit, I had to get pretty creative. We went down to the lobby as a group and bought minutes for internet use. Wireless internet is not as readily available in Europe as it is in the states. Everyone got on separate terminals and started doing research. Between four of us, the best plan we could come up with was a ferry to Sicily followed by a ridiculously long train ride up through the entirety of Italy. Around 1230 we decided to commit to this plan as no one could come up with any other ideas, and despite the fact I was traveling with two maintainers, neither developed the ability to conjure an ash proof air craft. *sigh* To congratulate ourselves on committing to a plan, we got lunch at one of the English pubs in the area and ordered comfort food and beer. We had to check out of our hotel room regardless since they decided to jack the room price up to 300+euro in light of the fact that a number of tourists were stranded. Thus began our downward spiral into the realm of the dirty backpackers. As we were thoroughly enjoying our food/drinks (while surrounded by our luggage) and patting ourselves on the back for the well thought out plan, we overheard a couple of British tourists complaining about the ferry schedule. As this was our only way off the island and therefore integral to our plans, we asked them to clarify. Apparently there was no ferry leaving that day and the very next ferry was at 0430 Sunday morning. Awesome!
We ran to the hotel across the street to call a cab to get to the ferry landing area and get tickets. No, we didn’t volunteer the fact that we weren’t actually staying at said hotel… We were quickly turning into travelers, living off the land, salt of the earth backpackers. We did what we had to do to survive even if it was ethically a little grey! Whatever… The cab arrived about 5 minutes later and we told him to take us to the ferry area in Valletta. So far, every cab experience in Malta had been decent. Cabbies were engaging, informative, genuinely nice people. I think it was indicative of our vacation’s nose dive when this particular driver was the worst. If I haven’t noted before, most cabs in Malta aren’t really marked. They just look like the drivers’ normal cars, which they probably are… So for starters, this guy’s car was falling apart. His tires were squealing around curves even when we were going slow. He said it was because the road was hot. Now, I don’t know a lot about cars but I DO know that tires make that sound when they’re bald and are having problems with traction, not just because the road is hot. I wouldn’t have necessarily been pissed at his disregard for our safety by encasing us in a metal death trap driving 90km/hr on Maltese back roads…but don’t lie about it! Also, he was incredibly negative the entire 20 minute trip. At this point we were still optimistic about our chances of leaving the island with relative ease but anytime anyone in the car made some kind of comment he automatically tried to rain on our parade by making some antagonistic response. It could have been something as simple as “Oh the sky is really blue today.” He would have interjected with something along the lines of “No, the sky isn’t blue. In point of fact the sky is a colorless dark void of humanity that will crush your soul.” Needless to say, we spent the last half of the ride in silence…except the tires. I do have to say that he gave us one good nugget of information buried in his dissentient rants: that Malta was going to close off the roads soon because the Pope was flying in that day. What this meant for devout Maltese catholics was that their ultimate spiritual guide was going to literally bless them with his presence. What this meant for us was that we were now stuck in a town with no chance of finding a place to sleep as the hotels would undoubtedly be full and no chance of leaving by automobile which is the only feasible transportation in Malta. So…not only were we stuck on this island, we were now trapped in its capital.
Did we allow the claustrophobic situation get us down! NO! We pressed like the good air force officers we were! We got out of the cab with our heads held high and walked into…an empty ferry office… We scrounged around for about five minutes until we found a brochure with a phone number on it. Called the number, which happened to be the correct one, then proceeded to spend an exorbitant amount of euro on an hour ferry ride to another island. *sigh again* Since we were stuck in Valletta for the next twelve hours we decided to find an internet cafe and look for train tickets from Sicilian towns to Sacile in northern Italy. A lot of businesses were closed for the pope’s arrival but after walking around for a bit we found one. After divvying up the research beforehand (still having to pay for computer use) we hopped on different terminals and our best route ended up being a cab from Pazzollo to Siracusa and a train from Siracusa to Bologna to Mestre to Sacile. The train left at 0800 Sunday morning and arrived in Sacile at 0100 on Monday morning. Every other train arrived mid-day Monday and some of our crew (not me of course) had to get to work so we really needed this particular train. This also meant our ferry had to be perfectly timed as it was supposed to arrive at 0600 and the cab ride between cities was an hour giving us an hour buffer. Ugh I’m exhausted just typing this.
Anyway, we decide to commit to this plan of action so we pull out our credit cards and go to order our tickets online at Trenitalia…and were denied. So we keep trying…and keep getting denied. What we didn’t know at the time was that, due to the Volcano and thus the influx of people buying train tickets, trenitalia had stopped accepting foreign cards and would only accept cards from Italian bank accounts. Of course, they didn’t put this on their website. They did offer a helpful customer service line but every time I tried to call the listed number, I would get an answering machine. I figured the Italians saw what was going on and just took the day off. I wont judge them. We’ve all been there. So we decide to take a break and come back to try later. We wander outside and bump into a mass of people on a blocked off street. OH YEAH! We forgot the pope was coming. We were hungry but decided to wait around for half an hour to see him drive by and wave at us from his popemobile, which is made by Mercedes FYI.
They looked bored to me...
He had his bullet proof windows down which I thought was odd but hey, I guess he was relying heavily on both God and the rooftop snipers, who, from my vantage point, seemed to be chatting and smoking cigarettes during the entire entourage. It was actually pretty cool to see such an internationally influential figure on a random trip. The only other time this has happened to me was when I was in NY as a youngster and saw the, then president of Gabon. Consequently it was also the same time I learned Gabon was a real place. Regardless, the pope was much cooler.
After seeing his Holiness we decide that maybe we’d attained some good luck by being in proximity so we tried the internet cafe again, only to be thwarted yet again. Since we’d committed to the ferry, we decided to lock in a cab (which also charged a ridiculous fee) from the Sicilian ferry landing to Siracusa and just hoped we could buy tickets at the counter there. After our third major group decision for the day we decide to grab some dinner and figure out what to do with ourselves for the next six hours. We tried to stretch dinner out as long as possible but it only lasted two hours…the staff was giving us the evil eye for keeping them there. Finally we just meandered back to the ferry area which wasn’t as sketchy as you might think. There were a few nice bars and restaurants a block over. Drew and friend decided to stay in the deserted ferry check-in area and nap in shifts. Julia and I decided that, despite looking like hobos at this point, we would go share a bottle of wine and read our books at an outdoor cafe. Besides, the ferry office only had bevelled wooden seats so I really needed a night cap to help me sleep. We eventually went back to the ferry office for a few hours before our check-in time and laid down for a little nap. I was dozing for about fifteen minutes when I heard the most annoying sound in the world. Giggling female middle-schoolers…only they were speaking French! I opened my eyes and realized that we’d quickly been surrounded. A group of roughly seventy-five middle/high school French kids, who, I can only assume were stuck on a school trip when the Volcano happened, had filtered into the ferry landing area (which wasn’t that big and the acoustics made everything really echo). The chaperone to student ratio sucked as there were about three adults in the entire crowd. This was highlighted by the fact that after trudging through a dozen groupings of them to get to the bathroom I found that a number of them were using the public restroom to make out. What I wouldn’t give to have known the French version of the phrase “GROW UP AND GET AN APARTMENT YOU BANAL JUVENILES!” This simultaneously made me feel old. Whatever, I was tired and cranky and surrounded by chatty French kids while stuck in a space the size of a double wide. This gives me a new appreciation for teachers. My mom is a teacher, and the fact that she leaves work every day without killing a student is really commendable. Thanks mom and all other teachers for allowing the youth of the world to thrive at that strange stage in life. This also makes me realize why I hate the French. Before that night it had really only been theoretical conjecture. Now I have proof.
Our happy little band of travelers spent the next hour staring at each other while making uncouth comments under our breath and imagining the floor opening up to devour everyone that wasn’t us. This didn’t happen sadly. Oh and before you judge me, keep in mind that it was 0300 on Sunday morning and we hadn’t slept since our San Julian’s party night, Friday night… I’m not a morning person, but when I don’t really know what morning is I get both frustrated and ornery. Anyway, 0400 rolls around and we start lining up, only to get put in another holding pen in the next building (Militarily, I should be used to this). Finally we boarded what was honestly a phenomenal boat. It was incredibly spacious which allowed me to find a place to lay down far away from the children. Unfortunately about five minutes into my nap a stewardess (not really sure what you call a boat’s “flight attendant”) woke me up to tell me that laying down on the seats was not permissible. I just stared at her with a dumbfounded expression while she glared back with what I could only describe as antipathy. I sat up for a few minutes so she would leave me alone. Then promptly laid back down. Another, much more pleasant yet still irksome stewardess woke me five minutes later to remind me of the ferry’s policy of sitting up-right. Now, I don’t know if it was my desperate need for sleep or that I’m quick witted (probably the former) but I convinced her that if I sat upright I would get horribly seasick and throw up on everything and oh gosh I would hate for anyone of her staff, including her, to have to clean that up… I’ve never gotten seasick in my life but it could happen. I guess my disheveled appearance lent credence to this little white deception. She left me alone and I slept for a solid 45 minutes!
Of course the ferry was late pulling into port. It was about 0630 when we pulled in which left us an hour and a half to drive an the hour journey and hopefully buy tickets at a tiny station in Siracusa providing there were tickets left and that someone was manning the counter. We started getting a little pushy on our way off the boat and were somewhat scolded as we were pushing through groups of slow moving kids… Honestly my sleep deprived thought at the time was: WHAT? Women and children first?!?! This isn’t the effing Titanic, we have a train to catch!
The cab was there, which was a small miracle as the email correspondence the company wrote in broken English was less than comforting. I was too wired to sleep so I did get to see some of the orange/lemon groves in Sicily and do think I want to make a legitimate trip back down there. We finally arrived at the station and hopped in line for tickets. There was a small group in front of us. They were having what I can only assume was a thrilling conversation in Italian, however, they were moving slow and our train was actually at the station waiting to go. Finally they left and we were able to buy tickets…the only problem was that our seat numbers were missing. The person at the counter did not speak English so by our powers combined we pulled together enough of or Italian knowledge to figure out the gist of what he was explaining: because of the influx of train riders, we had tickets on the trains…we just didn’t have guaranteed seats. This meant that we could have spent the next 17 hours on our feet. Whatever, we got on the train and grabbed four open seats. We did luck out and during the trip through Sicily we weren’t ousted by people with legit tickets. Sicily was genuinely beautiful and I really want to go back down there and see the sights from something other than a dirty train window. Towards the end I did nod off (still sleep deprived) and apparently most of my other travel companions did as well. It wasn’t real sleep of course. I would sort of lose unconsciousness when we stopped at every station. I did wake up at one point to note that we had been stopped at this one station for much longer than normal but promptly fell back asleep. At this same “station” Drew ran back into the train car (I had no idea he’d even left the proximity) and exclaimed like a kid at Christmas “GUYS WE’RE ON A BOAT!!!” I woke up enough to inform him that “No, we are on a train.” and started to doze back off. However, he kept insisting for some reason that we were actually on a boat. Julia, who was picking up on things much more quickly than I was tried to clarify: “Wait…we’re on a train on a boat?” This captured my attention.
When we were googling how to get from Sicily to northern Italy, mapquest and google just had lines spanning the blue parts of the map between Sicily and the mainland. I assumed these lines were bridges. I was wrong. We wandered out of the train at this “station” and realized we were stopped because the train had pulled into the bottom of a giant ferry (train track included obviously). Anyway, we were able to wander around the top deck, see both pieces of land, get some snacks at the ferry snack bar, and secure ourselves for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately the “securing ourselves” didn’t work out as we kept getting ousted from our seats at every stop. Inevitably someone would stop by and have a ticket with the seat number we happened to be sitting in. Julia’s and my solution to this unfortunate turn of events was to invade first class, sit down like we owned the cabin, and just rack out till we had to depart for another train at Bologna. It actually and unexpectedly worked. No one bothered us and we slept for another solid 45 minutes. I should note that on this leg of the journey we were able to see some of the Amalfi Coat, Naples, Rome, and Florence from our dirtied train window…whatever, it was better than nothing!
The Bologna to Mestre leg of the journey was pretty uneventful except for the fact that there were no open seats period. We were on one of the nicer trains so we stood in the bar car for a few hours chatting with Australian steel traders. The train attendant that checked our tickets was nice enough to inform us that seats were available in one of the farthest cars…but we’d already ordered Heinekens at that point so why bother?
Finally we landed at Mestre only to wait another 45 minutes for our train to Sacile. We decided to pass our time with the only thing that was open: McDonalds…this was a gross mistake but we were starving, tired, and quite grungy at this point. The train came and we arrived in Sacile around 0100 on Monday morning and all we had to do was make the 10 minute walk back to our respective homes. I made it. I hadn’t had real sleep, despite my attempts, since I had woken up 40 hours prior. No shower for almost two days. I wanted to curse the volcanic ash which I ironically never saw. And I still had animosity towards French children. Yet, somehow, all of this paled in comparison that I was able to fall asleep in my own bed.
And I slept…forever…
