Day 8

---

Yet again another travel day. Only this time instead of having the usual train, we had one with compartments like they do in the Harry Potter movies (the theme music from the movie got stuck in my head as we took our seats). It was neat to know what it's like to travel in one of these. I also noticed that in the period of one train ride they actually change the direction of the front of the train. It was strange and I'm not quite sure the purpose of this. All I know is one minute I'm facing forward, and the next I'm backwards. It's tricky. We had a hard time getting around teh station as this was our first day being in a place where neither of us speaks the language at all. But, the whole train ride I was hungry (I didn't eat much breakfast) and the moment we got of the train at the station we managed to find a cafe and bought a panini. It was actually really good (especially since it was a train station)! The bread was spiced in such a way that it brought out the flavor of the melted cheese and ham. Well worth the €3 that we payed. But despite the fact that we did not speak the language, we managed getting around, but we were a little worried about finding the hostel. To our great luck (is that a saying?) we ran into a nice girl from Brazil who spoke english and was staying at the same hostel that we were and walked with us to find it. When we got to really look around the area of our hostel we found out that there really isn't that much to do in Milan. At least around where we were staying. Also, our hostel felt more like a bus station than a hostel. As Jo said "it felt sanitary but not clean." Also, our window wouldn't open so it was really hot and stuffy in our room. Plus the matresses were made of this hard foam that was REALLY uncomfortable. Not the best hostel so far. The only things in the area was an internet cafe and a supermarket that's open until 9pm. So we did the only thing we could do...bought pre-made chicken and baby potato meal and a carton of gelato (Italian ice cream) and a couple of forks, ate our dinner sitting on a bench in a green area in the center of a busy round-about, and used the internet until bed time. Not a very eventful day. Oh, but it was a thrill dodging the maniac drivers here to cross the street to get to the benches at the center of the round-about. They don't use their blinkers to tell if they are exiting from the round-about, so you sit there as five cars in a row go the other direction and just when you're about to cross, the cars start to drive toward you making it impossible to cross (of course they would!). We had a laugh sprinting across the street though. When we finally got back to the hostel from the internet cafe we met our roommates for the night hear in Milan and one guy they met that day at the hostel and were hanging out with. They were two girls from Australia with really interesting names (I'm guessing nicknames?) One named Sock and the other Merf. They were already a little drunk so they were really open and friendly and invited us to play "drunk UNO" with them. Intead we passed but chatted with them for a bit. The guy with them was from all over the U.S. but is living in Amsterdam. We were just chatting and laughing and having a good time, but right at 12pm, timed almost too perfectly, the guy from the US said "you know a good way to loose weight?" (the topic we were on at the time) and a split second after these words came out of his mouth the hostel shut off the lights for the night and we were sitting in the dark. None of us knew that they turned all of the room lights off at 12 so we were a little confused. It was all pretty funny. We were joking about what he meant by this perfectly timed comment. 😊 What an interesting way to end the night. After stumbling through our room getting ready for bed, I finally climbed into my stiff bed and attempted to fall asleep over the hall noise, the heat of the room, and our snoring, slightly inebriated Australian roommates. Tomorrow will turn out to be a more eventful day, as the trend seems to be. Ciao!

---