Life at the moment seems to be all about the hustle, and, to use an
abused phrase, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Juggling paid
teaching, unpaid work I find interesting, and having just been offered
an internship I really really want, I keep surprising myself at being
all, well, happy. But the hustle is tiring, and sometimes it is
hard to know whether you’re running towards your own goals, or just
sweating it out on the proverbial treadmill.

Having finished my degree a good one and a half months ago, I have
finally conceded myself six days of Holiday. Well, I’m in Milan, soon
to be taking my nan up to the mountains near Venice. A holiday of
sorts, but not one that tends to be very relaxing. My Nonna tends
towards waging war on my possibilities of uninterrupted sleep: as a
chronic insomniac she seems to take anyone sleeping as a personal
insult. She once woke me up at 8 am (on a holiday morning!) by ringing
the front door bell until I got up to answer it.
She had the keys.

What I like about going away for brief periods of time - even if it is
to be a luggage mule, errand runner and recipient for all packing
stress – is that it temporarily cleans the slates. You can stop, think
and take stock, as home life shrinks into enough of a miniature model
to be in some ways analysed.
.
My arrival at Bergamo airport, via a morning interview in London and a
lost passport in Stansted, was, all things considered, remarkably
successful in that I arrived, on time, with possessions, limbs and
dignity pretty much intact. Hurried along by the departing bus driver
I bought tickets to Milan, and sank, gratefully, into a front row seat.

Having slept all the way there, I awoke, dazed and confused in
Brescia, over an hour away from Milan. We pulled in just after
eleven o’clock at night: just in time to see the last train to Milan
leave the station.

After having panicked, scoped out the station and spoken to the local
police, I eventually resolved to hang out in the station with some
backpackers until their train arrived at half one, and then sit on the
bench outside the station’s police booth until 4.44 and the first
train to Milan. Not a great plan, but a plan nonetheless.

After a typical ”only you” reaction from my nonna, my mother
unexpectedly just laughed and approved of my sitting it out in the
station plan. Whilst her laugh helped, funnily enough, I had been
more expecting (hoping for?) a “of course you should stay in a
hotel and of course we will pay” reaction.
And yes I am an adult, thank you very much.

“You are never really alone” was the advice from the
friendliest hippy backpacker, and I was reminded of how much life you
can pack into two and a half hours. After the usual “life, death and
miracles” backpacker talk I’d surmised that the italiante trio had met
in a commune-style community is Tuscany, had known each other for
years, and were travelling Europe festival to festival baking pizzas.
They offered quite a few times that I should join them, and I briefly
missed that absolute freedom that travelling gives you to go
“You know what, fuck it, why ever not.”
(Because your almost ninety year old grandma is waiting for you in Milan, wrongly
thinking you have sensibly booked into a hotel, that is why not.)

Like night-time stations the world over, this one was populated by the
stoned, drunk and permanently lost. We were offered two separate
broken and/or possibly stolen phones; played football with two drunks
and one of the permanently lost; were offered weed by an
entrepreneuring but absolutely smashed dealer who resolved to follow
the hippies to their festival and sell weed there, until the nights’
amnesia claimed him; and had a small committee of drunks/stoner/lost
dealing with the three Spanish hippies who had €50 stolen by the
ticket machine.

Given that there were about 6 people in the station apart from us,
this was a group effort of a night’s performance. The play seemingly
climaxed with one the drunks collapsing in the centre of the station,
flanked by a chorus of onlookers, spread eagled like a man shot in
full flight, his cheap carton of wine discarded, pouring out red wine
from his chest like a gunshot wound.

But it turned out this was merely the end of Act one, the curtain down
heralded by the train arriving and boys departing with half-true tales
of stolen money to stave off the fines.

Left alone on the platform, I realised that the plan (plot?) as it
stood, contained two major flaws:
Firstly, the stoned drunk etc… had not left with this last train, and
were all rather curious as to why the lone female in the station had
been abandoned by her six backpacker/hippy companions. Secondly,
although sitting on the bench in front of the police post is probably
the best way of sitting alone on a bench in a semi-deserted
train-station, it is still a deserted bench in a station populated by
vagrants, drunks and druggies (yes, ok, all six of them). Whilst the
best bench available, it still didn’t wasn’t a great option as far as
seating/sleeping arrangements go. But with just over three hours to
go until my train, leaving the relative security of the police flanked
bench to go search for a hotel didn’t seem like a great plan.
I decided to get myself adopted. I’d noticed that there were some men
in an open office doing what looked like the track controllers night
shift. I shuffled up doing my best ‘lost little girl look’, (which,
admittedly, isn’t that good.) “Um, I was wondering whether I could
come sit in the office? Just I don’t want to sit on the platform on
my own…”

The train controller looked out down he platform at the huddled
vagrants/drunks/druggies and back at me doing my best ‘timid but
wide-eyed scared’ look (again, not great at these things). “Oh very
well…”

Curled up on a massive padded office chair, I allowed the weirdness
of the situation to wash over me. With eyes that struggled to stay
open, I was being benignly questioned by the track controllers. In
front was a six meter wide green, red and yellow constellation: a map
of used/unused tracks. They were watching a badly dubbed US American
teen flick and my vain attempts at nodding off were interrupted by
periodic announcements, fast trains hurtling past and the ridiculous
ringtone they’d chosen for their office phone.

They eventually took pity of me (or maybe my answers were particularly
boring) and I was shown an unused office where, lights turned off and
draped over an assortment of chairs, I managed to snatch two fitful
hours of sleep.

Having presumably warmed to the idea of having adopted a stray
Anglo-Italian for the night, I was offered tea when I emerged bushy-haired and startled-eyed at dawn, and reminded of the train times to Milan. Suppressing an urge to hug them
all, I was off into the new day,.