To see part one of this post, click here!
Zurich airport was a lot bigger than Geneva's. It took me awhile to find my way out of the inner workings of the terminal. It was like a giant maze of escalators.
My next flight to Florence wouldn't be for another 11-12 hours so I rented a small room for the night beforehand. I wanted to find that room, my back was killing me, my internal clock was..I can't even describe it, and I haven't slept in how many hours.
I finally found the place and when I got myself settled in, I thought it would be a good idea.
it wasn't.
It wasn't like I could just backtrack and go back if I wanted to.
I didn't realize that once you went through passport checkpoints, you could just walk back again. (It was my first time traveling...leave me alone) So I just had to walk all around the airport and find the dayroom again. The airport was quiet and a bit lonely. Only a few people were around, most of them hanging out at the bar.
I heard a peruvian pan pipe playing at some point, the music getting louder as I kept walking. I thought it was coming from a speaker, but someone was playing it outside the entrance to another corridor.
I was getting hungry and I didn't want to eat another pack of crackers and Nutragrain bar.
I stopped at what looked like a Swiss deli, except a sandwich and a drink cost about 20 U.S dollars..heck no.
So I bought what I thought was Apple Juice...(I can't read Swiss, all I saw was a giant apple on the bottle and I thought 'apple juice')
It took me an hour or so to walk all around the airport back to my dayroom. I sat at the window, , sipping the mystery apple drink, singing cheesy, romance songs,watching the snow fall and airplanes taking off to far off destinations. Now that the excitement of traveling had quieted down, it finally hit me just how far I really was from home. Staying in that room that night, I wanted to go back home to my family.
I was feeling rather lonely and sad, with certain memories coming back to me.
I was feeling rather lonely and sad, with certain memories coming back to me.
I woke up at 5 and got ready to leave. I heard a knock at my door and it was the receptionist coming in to tell me that my dad just called and that he'd call back a half and hour later. I was really excited and touched that my parents called me. I went to the office and sat there for awhile,jumping up when I heard the phone ring. I started to tear up a bit when I heard my parents voices,
even though the first thing the said to me was
After awhile, it was time for me to go. On my final flight to Florence.
I went to my gate and saw that it said "Firenze". I thought I had made another mistake. I checked my ticket over and over again.
No I didn't misread it this time. We had to take a shuttle bus down to the plane, where it actually wouldn't take off until an hour and a half later. I was glad that it was morning, now that I could actually see the clouds and landscape below. We flew over beautiful mountain peaks and rivers, eventually the landscape became dotted with grand country villas and estates. Soon I could see more and more buildings and apartment complexes (Even an IKEA too, didn't know IKEA was so popular in Italy)
and we were soon arriving in Florence. Once I got off the plane, picked up my luggage and took a taxi to the orientation hotel, I was smiling so much. Florence is almost the same, yet so different from the area I had lived in. When I saw the duomo in the distance, I got really excited. All of my fears and sadness were gone, and I was looking forward to my three and a half month journey here. I could already tell that this would be the greatest experiance of my life...so far.
(end of that day's entry..)
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