Where in the World is Tim?

Well that's the past tense, isn't it? And so help me if anyone tells me to fix it... I've heard enough puns about 17th century architectural styles to last several life times. If you don't understand what that means, count yourselves among the blessed.

My actions over the past week can only be described as 'jet-setting', and I trust that you, my loyal readers would like it if I recounted my journey for you. The question becomes (if you'll permit me to think outloud) 'where to begin?'. The beginning seems like a fitting answer, but I'm not actually sure when that was. Setting the itinerary, booking tickets, packing, leaving my flat, leaving for the airport, getting to the airport, flying, landing, checking in, these are all fitting places to begin if I choose to tell my story chronologically. However, I'll level with you, as I write I'm bound to get distracted and go off on some tangent that will throw my whole narrative off its chronological track. My blog posts will become a flaming trainwreck of lost time, plot holes, and references that really dont make any sense no matter how you look at them. But I feel I owe it to you all to make some attempt to tell my story, so I'll try. Starting from the middle, and trying to fill in the gaps as I go.

It was dusk by the time the train pulled into the station. I couldn't be certain of the exact time because of the problems I'd had with my watch in Ancona, but my eyes still worked perfectly well, or at least well enough to see that the sun had gone down but there was still sufficient light to see the Tuskan hills turn hazy blue out the window of the coach cabin that my ticket said I wasn't supposed to be in. The fact that the windows were second class did nothing to dull the view. However, there had been an added thrill to looking out first class windows when we hadn't paid for them, but the conductor saw to it that we were put back in our propper place. One day the revolution will come, and even second class ticket holders will be able to look out first class windows.

The problem with trains is that they assume you know where you're going. Roads are marked with signs because everyone is going somewhere different, and planes only have one destination. Trains are the unhappy medium that require that you know exactly when to get off. There are two tricks to surviving train travel. The first being that you should get off when the train stops, the alternative tends to be dangerous (exceptions are made for those persons who have a pre-ordered a horse to run beside the train that they can jump on, or persons who realize that their knife fight on the top of the caboose is about to be suddenly interupted by the trains entry into a tunnel with a low ceiling). The second is to look at the signs within a station that identify its location. Travellers to Florence (called Firenze by natives who know about the city's quadrupedal founder) should note that the train station has within it no identification signs in it at all. If you are going to Florence you are supposed to know where you're going and know when you get there, if you miss it then you obviously had no right setting foot there in the first place and maybe you should consider Naples (this is, of couse, hyperbole. No human being ever deserves to go to Naples, it is a crueler punnishment than the death penalty... which was banned in Italy during the mid-18th century).

Alyssa, my travel buddy for my Tuscan adventures, and I were part of that audacious population of aliens with the gaul to try and cross Florences impregnable defenses. The Italiens never stood a chance. Not since the sack of Rome by Charles V, or perhaps even the barbarian vandalization of the falling Empire, has an Italian city fallen so easily to outsiders. Unsure of where we were, Alyssa and I threw our luggage from the train whose coal filled engine blazed like the Inferno itself (the train did not have a coal burning engine, and thus the fire prevented it from achieving a velocity of 88mph), we threw ourselves headlong from the burning train and took cover under an nearby gypsy. Moments later the armored safe-car exploded raining cash and little pieces of Mr. Woodcock with it, but there was no time to make ourselves rich. As the train dispatched its supply of self replicating repair Nanites, I ran out of the station to try and find any sort of a clue as to what city we were in while Alyssa guarded our bags from, oh, lets say a tribe of super intelligent baboons with machine guns for hands (all of this happened, trust me).

None of the locals responded to my flawless Italian as I asked what city I was in, they all knew I didn't belong. I rushed into the street, finding one of the largest Italian Gothic churches I've ever seen (not the famous one) but no signs saying 'yeah, that's right, your in Florence'. I knew the train must have been getting ready to depart for Turin (its final stop), so in a last ditch effort to find out where Alyssa and I had landed ourselves I asked a (gah) American.

Success! Florence at last. Alyssa was elated that her battle with the baboonbots hadnt been for nothing. Together we forged ahead into the heart of the city to find our hostel. A journey that would take less than five minutes, but end in sinister tragedy. For an ambush had been laid for us at the hostel, but not by Florentines or cyborg-apes. No, at the hostel we encountered a far graver threat... Bible Belters!

To Be Continued...

-Tim