Trenitalia is a government owned train company that controls most of the railroad in Italy. Between August 25th and August 30th 2019, the company was put under acute stress by the arrival of five travellers. Arriving from the United Kingdom in the late summer season, these travellers would go down in infamy as the most obnoxious weirdos to ever hit Italian public transportation.
Villa La Vescogna was a beautiful, 17th century mansion, a few hours outside of Milan, in the small town of Calco. We were awestruck when we first arrived. Mainly because it was a castle. It was painted in a sun worn yellow and its shabby chic aesthetic made us feel as if we were in Italy. Obviously we had arrived in Italy hours before and toured Milan but now we were in Italy. We had seen pictures of the AirBnB but we didn’t really believe it would be there. I expected a shed with maybe a small view of a castle due to the low cost of our stay. So when we were brought to our own wing of the house, it was hard not to see ourselves as living in the lap of luxury.
The reason the villa was so cheap was due to its location. Calco was, as Siro our guide and soon to become friend and concerned adult figure said, merda (shit). And it was. There was nothing. But in our own Villa La Vescogna we had an oasis. And we had Trenitalia.
The train to and from Milan took around 40 minutes and realising we didn’t have much to do in the merda town that was Calco, we decided to grab dinner in Milan. Pizza and gelato consumed, the train back seemed to be simple. It was later in the evening, so we had to change but Trenitalia had an app and so our travels should’ve gone seemingly without a hitch. There were five of us, and with confidence you have in bigger groups, we didn’t really create a step by step plan. When we arrived at the transfer station (after an hour waiting at the Milanese station, waiting for our train to go) our next problem arose. The platform we were supposed to go to, didn’t exist. Wondering if it was a Harry Potter situation we had on our hands, we went to the vending machine where we got talking to a group of three teenagers. They were the typical type of white boys who so desperately want to be black so they can say the n word while rapping. They were the type of group that you would avoid if you were travelling alone, but we outnumbered them and so took the next sensible course of action; we became friends.
They told us that the mysterious symbol for our transfer platform was in fact, a bus station.
“A bus! I haven’t been on a bus in 10 years!” Was my friend Tyla’s reply.
Tyla actually took the bus almost every day to uni. But, we were all in the excited fever of an adventure, saying things not because they were true but because they would add to the hysterics we all were in. We followed our new guides warily, but the bus did in fact exist. They taught us Italian curse words and claimed to be the sons of a famous Italian singer. When they found out we were going to Calco they wondered what five tourists were doing in a place that was so merda. The bus trundled along the dark, empty roads of Lombardy and when the teenagers left we waved them away, the laughs continuing long after they left.
If that night was a small hiccup, the next day was a travel disaster; all the best days are. We had planned to rent a little motorboat at Lake Como however when we arrived to the rental place by the ways of the longest taxi ride in the world, the boat had been booked for the wrong day. Ready to drown each other in the pristine Como waters, nothing to do and significantly poorer - we sunbathed by the lake. Lake Como is known to be a place of luxury where the rich and famous like George and Amal Clooney own property. This is true but the lake is rather large and we found ourselves not in the luxurious town of Como, but rather at the caravan park section. Instead of brushing elbows with the upper echelon, we were hanging with German tourists who brought their own accommodation. The size of the lake also proved to be a hindrance in another factor. All the train stations were on the other side of the lake. With a group too large to hitchhike and no boats taking us across the lake (we asked the previous rental company whose eyes and tone seemed to say merda, these idiots again) it felt like we would be trapped in the caravan park forever. After about two hours of walking around trying to find a way to get across the lake, we finally asked a garage for a taxi number so they could take us to the nearest station.
Again, I say we. Obviously the best course of action was to pimp out the three girls in the group. A few batted eyelashes from an English girl can make Italian men very helpful. I feel if my friend Rawdon and I had tried, we might have garnered a much different reaction.
The nearest station was an abandoned country station called Piona. Seeing the train we needed to take pull away from us, and another one not coming for a whole hour, Gaby and Tyla put out their towels and began to sunbathe on the empty platform. Rawdon started practicing his splits. Sonya and I went exploring. The platform was overgrown with weeds and if we hadn’t seen the previous train depart just before we got to the station, it would be assumed that no life had encountered it in 30 years. It was beautiful in the way abandoned things are. It felt loved in the way forgotten things often are, at a distance.
As if reincarnations of our friends from the night before, three teen boys were playing music on their portable speaker in the small wooden house attached to the platform, their own private rave echoing into the Italian countryside. They looked at the sunbathing, the splitting and the now play-argument Sonya and I were having and mimed snorting a line. I would have understood the assumption. We seemed to be in our own private bacchanal, intoxicated beyond belief. However, with barely any money between us for a taxi, coke was definitely off the table. Yet again, no substances needed - just the hysteria of trying to get home. We laughed and joked, trying to convince them that we were everything from one large, weird looking collection of siblings to a a group of interrelated married couples. They nearly bought it. Soon our friends departed on another train, yet another triad of loitering teen boys entering and exiting our lives with promises of Instagram follows and meeting up in London. Unlikely.
Our ever reliable Trenitalia turned up and as we got on the train, we caught the attention of the conductor. Well, not all of us, but Tyla’s willingness to talk to everyone had saved us multiple times before and the conductor was no different. He pointed out the view - Lake Como at sunset. There was a certain magic about it, which made our long, strenuous journey worth it. We ducked in and out of tunnels and every time we came out, the view was back to greet us as if for the first time. The sun and the lake, our European summer journey truly felt complete.
Our conductor told us we had to change at Lecco and when we got there we were guided to the nearest gelato shop (a lot of gelato was consumed on this trip). Captivated by Tyla, he seemed to tell her his whole life story, including the fact he had recently broken off his engagement with the woman in the ticket office. He then brought us back to the station and onto a train and we waved as he left, going back the way we came - saying goodbye to a man who we only knew for an hour, yet had bared his heart open with a smile.
In the end, it took us 6 hours to get back home from our Lake Como excursion, and the next days we decidedly stay put at the villa, not wanting to test out our Trenitalia luck any further. We were comfortable at the villa and the town of Calco was what you made of it - meaning, it was in fact, ever so slightly, merda.