Ok, maybe that’s a tad harsh, Turin wasn’t THAT bad, but I certainly won’t be going back there!
Now I must clarify: nothing SERIOSULY went wrong, but nothing at all seemed to go right, either. It was the endless miscommunications, inconveniences, wrong decisions and busses-stop errors all adding up that turned into the most hilarious two days I have ever survived. It all started in Pisa, where our train was delayed by an hour, where I almost got pick-pocketed and where we learned that the overnight train we wanted wasn’t actually running the days our schedule book told us it was (see my last Blog post). As soon as we arrived in Turin we headed to the street to catch the bus.
This is where things get sketchy: we had two options for busses to take us to our hostel, the “58” and the “58/”. Yeah, I know, figure THAT one out! Each route offered two options for stops close to our hostel, but it wasn’t well explained at all. Anyway we found the bus, but no place to buy tickets. We tried asking people but – SURPRISE – no one speaks English in Turin! This is where Kathryn’s new best friend enters picture: Rebecca’s English-Italian Dictionary (sorry Bec, you’ve been replaced). Anyway, it’s a long ridiculous story, involving a lonely half-hour wait alone with all of our luggage as Rebecca wandered off to find tickets (which she got from a parking meter, I think) but I won’t go into detail on that – see Rebecca’s blog for the detailed account: http://www.thebewwilderedpilgrim.blogspot.com/. Once we were ON the bus, with validate tickets in hand, I started to relax a bit and broke out the dictionary to brush up on my Italian. I figured out and recited the most necessary phrases first, including “Help!”, “We are Lost”, “We are looking for Via Modane”, “I don’t understand”, etc. Eventually I started having some fun and was saying things like “I like the baby”, referring to the cute baby in the carriage next to me who was playing with my backpack. As it turned out, our Italian language lesson came in VERY handy when, as we were still giggling about the cute baby, the baby’s mother pointed to the door and said “via modane”. We turned beat red and followed the helpful couple and their children off the bus and said “grazie” many times as they went into their home and pointed us in the right direction.
Finding our hostel, then, wasn’t too hard, even though it blended right in with all the other apartments in the neighbourhood ( we were way out in the suburbs in a residential area). When we checked in we discovered exactly what happens when you book a 20E/night hostel last minute. We were in a 4-bed all-women dorm (thank GOD we had no roommates) without a lock on the door. The bathroom doors didn’t lock either, and neither did our windows. Our windows, in fact didn’t even close! They did have beautiful sheer curtains though, beautiful... but they did make getting changed a tad awkward. The bathrooms featured a lovely full-sized bathtub with a showerhead on a hose. Ok, so no shower, it wouldn’t be THAT bad, right? WRONG! No hot water. Three good things about our hostel, in its defence: it only cost 20E/night, it had free WiFi and the complimentary espresso in the morning was actually good. I had three. On our first night we decided that since it had been a difficult day we would relax and go out for a real Italian meal (i decided to allow myself one good meal in France, Belgium and Italy and to eat as cheap as possible for the rest of my meals). We had a great meals of bread, salad, pasta and wine at an authentic restaurant swarming down the street from our hostel. It was kind of fun to point to something on the menu and see what arrived at our table: it was delicious!
Friday, our full day in Turin, didn’t have too much on the schedule but we figured we’d ask people at our first scheduled stop and go from there. We went to Mary Help of Christians Basilica (which was called something else, obviously, in Italian). It was BEAUFITUL! I think it’s my favourite Church so far – and I’ve seen TONS. We managed to communicate to a woman there that we spoke French so we had a French brochure and began to wander. After praying at the grave of St. Don Bosco we went into the Chapel of Saint Francis de Sales which is attached to the basilica, and ended up walking right in on a group of young pilgrims from CANADA! Ok, so they were ALL from Canada, but they were speaking English. As it turns out, they were youth from Salesian youth centers all over the world that were there for a mini world-youth-day-type pilgrimage. The priest from Toronto who was leading them was very nice and let us join in for a bit, which was nice because everything was supposed to be closing (Italy shuts down at noon for some reason) but everything was open for them. Once we had seen everything there we set off towards the Cathedral of St John the Baptist to see the Holy Shroud and the grave of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassatti. It was closed to we wandered for a while and found... nothing. By the time the church opened at 3 we were hot and tired and unimpressed with Turin. The Cathedral was nice but nothing too impressive (the shroud was not on display).
After this we hopped on the bus to go to the train station to reserve some more train tickets and went 15 stops in the wrong direction before getting off the bus and going back the right one. An hour later we got into line for tickets and waited an hour to find out plan C wasn’t going to work and that we’d have to change our travel plans AGAIN. Urrgghh! From the train station we thought maybe we should get some snacks for our 15-hour train trip the next day and went in search of a supermarket. We found it, bought snacks and some yogurt and rice for supper and went back to our hostel to pack, blog, and eat.
Well, eating turned out to be much more of an adventure than we had bargained for! As Rebecca was busy blogging I cracked open the rice to discover it was not very good.
I kept eating it, though, until the moment I stumbled upon a little miniature octopus in it. Then two baby octopi. Then three baby octopi! I dared Becca to eat one and agreed to buy her pizza if she did. After I took a great video of her eating and swallowing the entire thing, we headed out into our neighbourhood to find a slice of pizza. Not hard, right? We’re in Italy. WELL here comes another surprise: since it was “the day before August 15th” most shops and cafes were closed. The only thing we found that was open was a Chinese Restaurant (thank God for the Chinese and their ever-present always-delicious food no matter where in the world you are). We had to use the dictionqary and pointing to order, though, and got laughed at by a little girl – I have never felt for foreign!
It was that night that we laid in bed, laughing until we cried, as we composed the Pros and Cons of Turin:
Pro – Our hostel has free Wifi / Con – It doesn’t have hot water
Pro – There are lockers for our bags / Con – There are no locks on the bathroom door
Pro – We have a book to tell us all the train schedules in Europe / Con – the book is wrong
Pro – We haven’t needed an umblella / Con – we are wetter from sweat than we were from rain
Pro – We found a “supermercado” / Con – It sold us baby octopi
Pro – The people are friendly and willing to help / Con – no one speaks our language
Pro – There are tons of markets, cafes and pizzerias / Con – they’re all closed
Pro – Italy is very Catholic / Con – they disappear for days leading up to the feast of the Assumption
Pro – Ham & cheese sandwiches and Pizza / Con – we’re both allergic to them
Pro – The bathrooms on the train are free / Con – They’re filthy
Pro – There’s a breeze / Con – Our windows don’t close
Pro – the curtains are pretty / Con – they’re see through
Pro – Becca has lots of blister packs and band-aids / Con – I have lots of blisters
Pro – iPods and mini laptops / Con – they keeping dying
Pro – We’re laughing / Con – it’s because our lives are ridiculous
Pro – making a pros and cons list / Con – living through all the cons
One of the few happy memories I have of Turin came at midnight on the night before we left. As Becca and I laid in bed, trying desperately to sleep since we had to get up at 5:15 the next morning to get to the train station, we laughed to the point of tears as we recalled our short two-day visit to Torino. This involved making a list entitled “The Pros and Cons of Turin”, which I will include at the end of this post. It’s funny that the most “difficult” time of our trip could turn out to be the one we will most likely remember more than anything else.
Now I must clarify: nothing SERIOSULY went wrong, but nothing at all seemed to go right, either. It was the endless miscommunications, inconveniences, wrong decisions and busses-stop errors all adding up that turned into the most hilarious two days I have ever survived. It all started in Pisa, where our train was delayed by an hour, where I almost got pick-pocketed and where we learned that the overnight train we wanted wasn’t actually running the days our schedule book told us it was (see my last Blog post). As soon as we arrived in Turin we headed to the street to catch the bus.
This is where things get sketchy: we had two options for busses to take us to our hostel, the “58” and the “58/”. Yeah, I know, figure THAT one out! Each route offered two options for stops close to our hostel, but it wasn’t well explained at all. Anyway we found the bus, but no place to buy tickets. We tried asking people but – SURPRISE – no one speaks English in Turin! This is where Kathryn’s new best friend enters picture: Rebecca’s English-Italian Dictionary (sorry Bec, you’ve been replaced). Anyway, it’s a long ridiculous story, involving a lonely half-hour wait alone with all of our luggage as Rebecca wandered off to find tickets (which she got from a parking meter, I think) but I won’t go into detail on that – see Rebecca’s blog for the detailed account: http://www.thebewwilderedpilgrim.blogspot.com/. Once we were ON the bus, with validate tickets in hand, I started to relax a bit and broke out the dictionary to brush up on my Italian. I figured out and recited the most necessary phrases first, including “Help!”, “We are Lost”, “We are looking for Via Modane”, “I don’t understand”, etc. Eventually I started having some fun and was saying things like “I like the baby”, referring to the cute baby in the carriage next to me who was playing with my backpack. As it turned out, our Italian language lesson came in VERY handy when, as we were still giggling about the cute baby, the baby’s mother pointed to the door and said “via modane”. We turned beat red and followed the helpful couple and their children off the bus and said “grazie” many times as they went into their home and pointed us in the right direction. Finding our hostel, then, wasn’t too hard, even though it blended right in with all the other apartments in the neighbourhood ( we were way out in the suburbs in a residential area). When we checked in we discovered exactly what happens when you book a 20E/night hostel last minute. We were in a 4-bed all-women dorm (thank GOD we had no roommates) without a lock on the door. The bathroom doors didn’t lock either, and neither did our windows. Our windows, in fact didn’t even close! They did have beautiful sheer curtains though, beautiful... but they did make getting changed a tad awkward. The bathrooms featured a lovely full-sized bathtub with a showerhead on a hose. Ok, so no shower, it wouldn’t be THAT bad, right? WRONG! No hot water. Three good things about our hostel, in its defence: it only cost 20E/night, it had free WiFi and the complimentary espresso in the morning was actually good. I had three. On our first night we decided that since it had been a difficult day we would relax and go out for a real Italian meal (i decided to allow myself one good meal in France, Belgium and Italy and to eat as cheap as possible for the rest of my meals). We had a great meals of bread, salad, pasta and wine at an authentic restaurant swarming down the street from our hostel. It was kind of fun to point to something on the menu and see what arrived at our table: it was delicious!
Friday, our full day in Turin, didn’t have too much on the schedule but we figured we’d ask people at our first scheduled stop and go from there. We went to Mary Help of Christians Basilica (which was called something else, obviously, in Italian). It was BEAUFITUL! I think it’s my favourite Church so far – and I’ve seen TONS. We managed to communicate to a woman there that we spoke French so we had a French brochure and began to wander. After praying at the grave of St. Don Bosco we went into the Chapel of Saint Francis de Sales which is attached to the basilica, and ended up walking right in on a group of young pilgrims from CANADA! Ok, so they were ALL from Canada, but they were speaking English. As it turns out, they were youth from Salesian youth centers all over the world that were there for a mini world-youth-day-type pilgrimage. The priest from Toronto who was leading them was very nice and let us join in for a bit, which was nice because everything was supposed to be closing (Italy shuts down at noon for some reason) but everything was open for them. Once we had seen everything there we set off towards the Cathedral of St John the Baptist to see the Holy Shroud and the grave of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassatti. It was closed to we wandered for a while and found... nothing. By the time the church opened at 3 we were hot and tired and unimpressed with Turin. The Cathedral was nice but nothing too impressive (the shroud was not on display).
After this we hopped on the bus to go to the train station to reserve some more train tickets and went 15 stops in the wrong direction before getting off the bus and going back the right one. An hour later we got into line for tickets and waited an hour to find out plan C wasn’t going to work and that we’d have to change our travel plans AGAIN. Urrgghh! From the train station we thought maybe we should get some snacks for our 15-hour train trip the next day and went in search of a supermarket. We found it, bought snacks and some yogurt and rice for supper and went back to our hostel to pack, blog, and eat.
Well, eating turned out to be much more of an adventure than we had bargained for! As Rebecca was busy blogging I cracked open the rice to discover it was not very good.
I kept eating it, though, until the moment I stumbled upon a little miniature octopus in it. Then two baby octopi. Then three baby octopi! I dared Becca to eat one and agreed to buy her pizza if she did. After I took a great video of her eating and swallowing the entire thing, we headed out into our neighbourhood to find a slice of pizza. Not hard, right? We’re in Italy. WELL here comes another surprise: since it was “the day before August 15th” most shops and cafes were closed. The only thing we found that was open was a Chinese Restaurant (thank God for the Chinese and their ever-present always-delicious food no matter where in the world you are). We had to use the dictionqary and pointing to order, though, and got laughed at by a little girl – I have never felt for foreign! It was that night that we laid in bed, laughing until we cried, as we composed the Pros and Cons of Turin:
Pro – Our hostel has free Wifi / Con – It doesn’t have hot water
Pro – There are lockers for our bags / Con – There are no locks on the bathroom door
Pro – We have a book to tell us all the train schedules in Europe / Con – the book is wrong
Pro – We haven’t needed an umblella / Con – we are wetter from sweat than we were from rain
Pro – We found a “supermercado” / Con – It sold us baby octopi
Pro – The people are friendly and willing to help / Con – no one speaks our language
Pro – There are tons of markets, cafes and pizzerias / Con – they’re all closed
Pro – Italy is very Catholic / Con – they disappear for days leading up to the feast of the Assumption
Pro – Ham & cheese sandwiches and Pizza / Con – we’re both allergic to them
Pro – The bathrooms on the train are free / Con – They’re filthy
Pro – There’s a breeze / Con – Our windows don’t close
Pro – the curtains are pretty / Con – they’re see through
Pro – Becca has lots of blister packs and band-aids / Con – I have lots of blisters
Pro – iPods and mini laptops / Con – they keeping dying
Pro – We’re laughing / Con – it’s because our lives are ridiculous
Pro – making a pros and cons list / Con – living through all the cons
Love the pro & con list - the cons make it more of an adventure!
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