European Countryside from the Rails

My trip to Milan back in earlier this month started off with a very long day.

Sylvia and I woke up at 4 am to catch a taxi to the airport for our supposed flight at 6:30 am that turned out to not actually be booked. Opodo.com, you suck. So we did what normal people do and sit in the McDonalds Cafe for an hour, then decide you want to take a train 10 minutes before it leaves the airport station. So of course, we bought our tickets online, ran to the kiosk to pick them up, waited behind people who were taking their time trying to figure out how to work the kiosk in general, ran even faster to find the train (this involved running in circles like lunatics and me spilling coffee EVERYWHERE), hopped on the train, out of breath, two minutes before it left, and had to walk all the way through first class, where people were dressed in business attire, while we panted our way down the aisle. At this point, it’s only 6:32 am.

The rest of the day involved mostly sitting on trains - 12 hours worth actually - and running and/or speed walking to our next train. We took five trains in total that Friday and had to transfer 4 times, two of which were in Italian train stations where neither of us could read the signs. What a day.

On the bright side, we got to see the beautiful Austrian and Italian countrysides from our 5 different train seats. It was breathtaking. We saw towns spattered through the valleys of the Alps’ foothills. We saw rolling hills that looked like the Window’s desktop background photo. We saw forests and mountains and houses in the cutest little towns, and we took so many photographs.

It may not have been the most responsible trip I’ve taken, and most certainly not the most well-planned one, but it definitely taught me a lot about what to do when things don’t work out. And that riding a train (or five) can definitely be considered a workout.

PS. All of these photographs were taken with a cellphone on a moving train, through the glass window! It's so absurd how nice they all came out! Austria's and Italy's beautiful, mountainous countrysides really are just that amazing.