Como lake and travel stories | October'14

When I was back home for the summer, I spent one of the afternoons walking along the river with a friend, and having one of those very particular summer all-in-nothing talks; being safely back home I tend to have the dangerous freedom of wondering through all the adventures I had and dwell on those to be. I told her a number of stories about my travel – all of them had in common disastrous circumstances, lots of missed transport means, mess and surprises of all kinds. It took her some time to stop laughing; she told me afterwards that I should write them down for the sake of all the other people who might make the same mistakes. I said - well, I actually have blog for that kind of embarrassing travel stories, but then, when I kept thinking about that, - how many of those embarrassing details do I really have here?

So, well, for a point of information: my travelling is always a mess; it looks all so nice on photos and in the stories, but I’m always late or too early, my trains are cancelled, planes break (seriously, happened in Dublin airport), I sleep on benches or don’t sleep at all for days, and my passport had been through all kinds of troubles. I still wonder if it means that I completely fuck it up or that I actually do it right, but at the very least I have a plenty to remember, and that counts. Plus, the brain is such a clever little thing – after a while we forget all the upsetting details and that’s where the stories become all funny and nice.

That’s why what I was going to write about a beautiful Italian lake is going to be a story about how we messed that trip up and how it didn’t manage to spoil a thing after all – before I will forget all the disastrous details again, I want them all here, weird and unfortunate and sweet as they were.

For a reference point - this is Como lake - absolutely worth
all the troubles.

The lake is called Como, and, as I said before, it’s beautiful. Generally speaking, it’s a giant upside-downed letter “Y” on the Italian north; its’ waters reflect the surrounding Alps and shores are ever full of towns and villages, all of them being connected by the transport system of ferries. The lake of Como is named after a town on its southern side, and the town of Como was actually where we were going. Why we were going there – well, my good friend from Belarus came to see me in Italy and was eager to go around as much as possible, while I didn’t find it in myself to let her go alone. As we were going to speak a lot of Russian anyway, one of my Russian-speaking university friends joined us at 8 in the Saturday morning on the train station. We – kind of – planned the whole thing the previous evening through the website of Trenitalia – Italian main railway company – and fancied ourselves being – kind of – prepared.

Como being only an hour far away from Milan, we were supposed to get from Pavia – my university

Lovely Trenitalia

town – to one of the minor stations in Milan, change there again to yet another Milan station and from there to go to Como at last – with two changes altogether, because taking direct trains is lame (and expensive). We were a bit worried because of the approximately 8 minutes which we had for each of the changes, but, surprisingly enough (notwithstanding Italian trains’ tendency to be late on regular basis), we were in time for the first change, took the second train and get off for the second change perfectly in time once again. Excitedly discussing our unusual luck, we checked out the number of the platform (1^st), went there, made selfie, waited for the train, and, as it came, boarded, being extremely proud of ourselves for the perfect timing.

Being already in the train, I checked the time and announced that we are “lucky indeed” – train came even earlier than it was supposed to.  Doesn’t really happen in Italy, I added. After a moment of silence somebody asked if it’s actually our train.

Well, it wasn’t.

A train going to Bergamo – another town in the Italian north region of Lombardy – came to the platform where we were waiting for our train to come, and, frustrated and panicking, we realised it as the train was already heading out of the city.

We took off on the next station, which, luckily, was still in Milan, and even better, the train we were supposed to take was making a stop on that very same station as well. We run to the scheduled

The selfie might have played it's role as well.

platform, waited there for quite some time; weather was shitty, taking into account how sunny and hot it was even yesterday; I was wearing shorts and complaining quite persistently; my friends were annoyed by me annoying them, cold weather being cold indeed and train being really delayed.

After something which seemed an eternity but was 20 minutes in fact, my friend left us to check the timetable boards in the main building. She came back all sunny and smiling and said - we are so fucked up; the train wasn’t there anymore. I took my turn to leave, double-checked the timetable board and approached one of the station assistant, who told me that the train had come 10 minutes ago to the 3^rd platform. “But we were on the 3^rd platform for the last 20 minutes” I said, being nervous and messing up Italian times and grammar. Nothing changed – the station assistant was quite persistent in saying that we “missed it” in the way mysterious and unknown. To save the time - the mystery of the disappeared train has actually remained a mystery. We took our time going around the station and exploring something which seemed to be one of the creepiest districts of Milan. The next train came in an hour; in the meantime we had some great time on a children playground nearby; I lost an euro by putting it into a non-working vending machine on the train station in a vain hope for a hot chocolate; we were freezing. At last the train came; we boarded and for a while even felt kind of sorry for parting.

He looked even sadder that day then he looks on the picture. The station was called Monza, but we prefered to call it Harlem - for some obvious reasons.

My lovely friend and guidelined for a proper treatment of playgrounds.

Freezing and greenish, we gave high-five to the giant hand next to
the train station in Como

If you think that that was it, you are wrong; the weather was gradually becoming worse; I took off my green sweater and put it around my waist, trying to warm my tights and looking like a weird, greeny penguin;

after we arrived to Como, we found McDonalds and hided there, eating cheap hamburgers (90 eurocents per piece!) and staying in the queue for the bathroom; I looked into the mirror and got frightened by the fat, greenish penguin I've seen there; at last, we came out and started a long walk around the lake.

Not just the lake, btw.

Definitely not just the lake

Surprisingly enough, on the train station a touristic infocenter
was opened. We were given this lovely map and lots of
instructions concerning the way to organise our time best.
Not that we let other people to organise us that easily,
but nice try, Como!

Right after I took first couple of photos and was changing the lens, my camera died, but I really stop complaining now; the thing is that we – two Russian-speaking friends of mine and a greenish, fat penguin that I was – had a great time, with all the delays, cameras not working, hamburgers being not enough, shorts being short and sun coming out from the clouds 10 minutes prior to our departure from Como in the evening – in fact, it got out just to hide almost immediately behind the mountains surrounding the lake all around. None of this mattered much; we didn’t just have Lake Como, we made it through to it, freezing and happy, and together. I could really use that hot chocolate I didn’t get on the train station, but instead I was going around the lake with a cup of a cheap tea from McDonalds, picking cherry tomatoes from the lunch box we took with us and it actually felt really good.

I have a passion to make photos of peple making photos; probably, that's why my camera is discharged so often and fast.(

The town with a yacht club is always a good town.

Another guideline from our dreamteam - how to effectibely cover people, who sit on the stairs behind you and spoil the landscape.

Now I wish I would take that ferry trip around the lake, but, probably, I will save that for a day not quite that foggy, and for a train which would come in time, and, probably, for some other people visiting me in Italy some other time. There is time for everything, and that was the time for being late, and messy, and feverishly happy. Fair enough.

There was a moment - when the sun came at out of the clouds at last, right on the edge of the mountain peaks; we were walking the old city at that moment, with the lake behind us and walls of the town’s Duomo running up on our left, all so magnificent, and clean, and huge. I’m writing about it because, you know, there was nothing like being right there at that particular moment.

So, after all – train might have disappeared so that we would have that moment together. It could also be due to Trenitalia, or it might have been an unsolved mystical mystery I sometimes feel so unhealthy interested in.

But, really, -

Such things make the journey and destination matter both, doesn’t it?

It definitely made ours’ to.