The First Passport Stamp

In 2011 I decided to go back to school and get a Master’s degree.. The first year I was lucky enough to score a part-time help desk job while I got my prerequisites done. One day, while on campus, I was strolling through the DePaul student center and saw a flyer that said “TRAVEL TO ITALY!” This caught my attention because, not only have I always wanted to go to Italy(as mentioned in my first post), but who doesn’t want to go to Italy? So I took down some info and spoke to my academic advisor about the trip. She said it sounded nice, but I might have a hard time getting in as a grad student in a program designed for undergrads. I applied and got set up for an interview with the two professors hosting the trip: Gretchen & Nancy.

The interview was amazing, the professors and I meshed immediately and they really didn’t seem to care what my major was or that I was a grad student. They advised me that they only had so many spots for people to go with them, and so they’d be carefully considering how to formulate the best group. A few days later I got an email that said I was approved!

But that approval came with a pretty nice price tag of around three thousand dollars. Yikes, how was I going to come up with that on my 15$ an hour part-time computer repair salary? I did some digging (and ill spare you the boring details) but I was able to rope this trip in to my financial aid package. Everything was falling in to place.

We were scheduled to leave in October of 2012, and in September when school started, we had class to prepare for our trip, the things we’d be learning, and the assignments we’d be given (after all, it is a study abroad class). We even got some Italian lessons from the resident Italian instructor. As we got in to the meat of the program we found out the details. 10 days in Europe. 7 days in 3 different Italian cities and 3 days in Tallinn, Estonia. And I’m like ‘what in the entire hell is an Estonia?” That’s right y’all, I’d never heard of it.

I thought to myself, you can either do a ton of research and be as prepared to go to Estonia as you are for Italy, or you can just be adventurous and wing it. I chose the latter.

We’re a couple of weeks out from the trip and I am a bundle of anxiety and excitement. Anxious because I am horrifically afraid of flying, and this flight is 7 hours to Germany and another 2 to Italy. Fortunately I mentioned this to my Dr. who informed me there is medicine I can take to ease my flight anxiety, she gave me just a couple of pills to try, and I was able to sleep/relax the whole flight for the first time in my life, what is this miracle drug?

I was 26, and a super travel novice, outside of the occasional trip every year or two I hadn’t done much traveling, and never out of the country. So when I walked on the plane, a Boeing 757 I was in amazement at how huge it was, I was a kid in a candy store. There were stairs…STAIRS on the plane! Not just one flight, but two, one going up to first class and one going down to a hall of restrooms. Wow! I settled in to my seat, and luckily only one other person had a seat in my row (she’s a classmate of mine). I popped a Xanax and waited to see what would happen. It’d be another 20 minutes or so before takeoff so I figured I’d be good. And boy was I good.

After about 10-15 minutes I started feeling my eyes get really really heavy and but my body felt very light, almost as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Was I sleepy? Was I high?? What the hell is going on here!? That was the first time I was ever able to take off in a plane and not clench the armrests for dear life. I fell asleep shortly after we reached cruising altitude and was awaken by a nice German lady asking me if I wanted red or white wine with my meal. I chose red, and enjoyed a hot meal of chicken, veggies, a dinner roll and a salad. Word to the wise, don’t drink on the Xanax, it enhances the effect. They had to wake me up for the next meal too, and when we got to Frankfurt, I was kind of like a zombie.

By the way Lufthansa is still by far one of my favorite airlines.

In the Frankfurt airport is where I get my first ever stamp on my passport (that I had just gotten two weeks ago). I was so excited! I was looking around the airport because all of the signs are the same but different. The exit signs don’t say “EXIT” as they do in the states, instead it’s an icon of a stick figure running through a door “Ausgang” I read on one sign and determine it to mean exit. This is cool…but wait…is that a….

Goddamn McDonalds…I kind of rolled my eyes at it, but a class mate was like, NO, you have to try McDonalds in Europe! I’ll talk about that in a different post.

Finally after another flight we arrived in Padua, Italy. It’s a small quaint town with a lot of history and very friendly locals. We stop in a café to have lunch, and fortunately most people speak English. Immediately after having the first few bites of my sandwich I notice that there is something different about it. I’d later find out that American bread contains twice the amount of sugar as European bread.

We all get settled in to our rooms in the strange little hotel we stayed in, and I learned the hard way that floor 0 in the elevator is not the basement it is the main lobby. It took me a few lost adventures to figure this out.

We headed out as a group into the city for some sightseeing, observation and of course to take some super touristy pictures. The locals didn’t seem bothered by us and seemed happy to give us directions or sell us things. We had a superb dinner at a local restaurant complete with more what….WINE!! It was then that I learned two important things; 1. You have to pay for water in most places 2. Wine is cheaper than water

#3. BONUS: I’d spend a lot of time dehydrated, ha! We spend two days in Padua and then headed to Verona and then to Venice….

.