ESCAPE FROM ITALIA

By the time you are reading this we’ll be in AUSTRIA! I had no internet contact while we were in Venice. I didn’t think the place we stayed would have any, but I was kind of hoping that someone in the area would have wireless I could tap into; but no such luck. As I write this we still have one more day left in Italy. I have to say the country has been thrilling and fascinating, but I really am ok with the fact that on Sunday we enter back into a nation that is a little more ‘sane?’ But again, it’s a trip I’ve always wanted to do, I’m glad we did it- and it’ll be fun to look back upon. And seriously, I don’t think I care if I EVER eat pizza again!

I had to include this picture though. I had read online that the Italian rail union was planning on going on strike at 9pm on Thursday night (the day we traveled from Florence to Venice). Sure enough, as we are waiting near the tracks in Florence we hear all this shouting and yelling outside on the street- and slowly more and more police started to gather inside the train station. Carol (being a state cop’s daughter notices immediately and goes, “oh, oh , the police aren’t looking happy”). Of course our train is late, and I’m thinking I’m five minutes from freedom from this place--- Pretty soon all we see are red/white/green flags waving inside the train station- and the demonstration comes walking through the train station and some of the flags read “Transpertato”--- they must have been told they weren’t allowed to make noise in the train station though cause they were silent marching through. Then at LAST! “Bin 6” and our train arrived to wisk us away to Venice. I never did find out if the rail system went on strike again; I’m sure they did. It sounds like they do a lot. All I know is our transportation out of Venice and over to Austria is the Austrian bus system. For some reason the Italian rail service dropped their train service from Venice to Klagenfurt (no one from Klagenfurt can figure it out either) but there is a WONDERFUL first-class bus that takes you from the parking lot (Trochenetto) to the train station in Klagenfurt where we can catch a quick 5 minute train to the little town of Krumpendorf where we’ll spend the next month J.