Who in the sunshine, who in the night time, Who by high ordeal, who by common trial...

And who shall I say is calling?

--Leonard Cohen, "Who By Fire" 

Our trip was nearing its end. And I admit, I had gotten a little burnt out from the elaborate planning we'd done to get ourselves through five countries and many, many destinations in two weeks. So when it came time to book accomodations for our one night in Milan... I just... didn't. I kept meaning to. I looked on couchsurfing. I looked on Air Bnb. I considered various hostels. But at the end of the day, what it came down to, was that I was sick of planning. We were gonna wing it for our last night in Milan.

This was a stupid idea.

Our plane was one of those board-a-bus-to-go-50-feet-onto-the-tarmac-then-get-off-the-bus-and-walk-up-the-stairs kind of planes.

Hustlin it through the airport in Milan to catch a train.

By the time we arrived in Milan, around 10, we'd woken with the hot Mediterranean sunrise, (Jo even went for one more swim before leaving), driven about 4 hours on mountainous, narrow, oceanside highways, almost faced the prospect of being stuck in Krujë and missing our flight because our car was planted in the back of an expensive Mercedes, flown about 2 hours back to Milan, gone through customs, gotten our bags, found the train and only just caught one of the last ones going into Milan proper. When we emerged from the train station and gotten our bearings, I was completely exhausted. I hadn't liked Milan that much the first or the second time I'd passed through, and I didn't feel excited about being back for a long night without any place to sleep. But I had talked Jo into skipping the Duomo on her way in because I had been in a hurry to move on to Venice, so that's where we headed.

   

After bathing in the otherworldly majesty of this crazy ornate church we wandered over to the edge of the square where we found an outrageously overpriced restaurant and settled in to one more pizza and some well-earned alcohol. Afterwards we felt more relaxed and optimistic, so when I suggested we head back to Ostello Bello, where I'd had such good luck the first time around, we figured why not.

Dinnertime view with our companions, Big Boy Blue and Jo's pitifully unnamed pack.

The moment when Joanna realized she could no longer pretend she didn't need glasses: when I observed the statues at the top of the spires on the church and she remarked that no, there wasn't anything up there. I gave her my glasses and she had to admit defeat; couldn't see half the detail on the church. (These photos are mostly courtesy of Jo!)

This was a good idea.

Not only did they have a bed for me (which I didn't end up using, but I paid for just on principle, because I liked the place and because they were good to us), they let Jo and I hang out in the common room/bar all night and they gave us both their customary free welcome drink even though only I paid for a room. They also gave us free shots of Limoncello and t-shirts because it was their 10th anniversary. So we forwent sleep and spent the night laughing and drinking with like-minded wayfarers and the employees, and soon after the sun rose we rode the metro back to the train station, where Jo headed for a train to take her to the airport. Her flight was leaving bright and early but mine wasn't until late afternoon, so after as emotional a goodbye as we have ever had (I couldn't have asked for a better travel companion or all-around friend) I headed back to the hostel to shower, get some free breakfast and coffee, pack up my things, mail those stupid Albanian postcards, and head off to the airport myself.

There isn't much left to tell of the amazing adventures I had last summer. It was a long trip back from Milan: first to the Budapest airport, then on the bus to the closest metro station, then onto the metro into the center of town and Nyugati Station, where another train waited to carry me on my quiet, dazed way back to Göd. It felt like a lifetime and a half had passed since I'd left; I felt the way Bilbo Baggins did upon returning to the Shire. It's hard to explain the weirdness of waking up in one country, in a tent, by the beach, and falling asleep in another, 1300 km away, in (temporarily) your own tiny couch-bed. It feels so utterly alien and jarring that maybe for a couple minutes you close your eyes and you feel the warm Hungarian night's air rush in through the train's open windows and you block out the voices of the passengers around you and you feel completely dislocated from all time and space. You just are, without location, without age or past or future, just the purest present tense you will ever know. It's what it is to travel, I guess. Here's to many more summers like it.