Wednesday, 18th of September, 2019.
If going to Pisa it was difficult, leaving it it is even worse! A nightmare! Even when this nice guy, Giovanni, drives me out of Pisa (at least), and drops me in the next town, things do not get better. By the opposite, they just get worse! So Giovanni drops me at McDonald’s, outside of Lucca. He is a nice Italian guy and ha his share of hitchhike times as well, plus he is incredible surprise about what I am doing. He even offers me fifty Euros! Which, what I think now by stupidity, I refused. That money it could come very handy in the near future, since now I know I am running out of it and will not be able to get some soon. The problem with the place where he drops me it is not just that it is a horrible place, where the cars cannot stop, but also it means that I will need to hitchhike to Florence again, to the horrible spot where I was again, and nobody would pick me up again! Maybe I am being too pessimist. Maybe if I had gone there now, trying to go to Venice, things could be different. Maybe. But then something else happen.
This couple is going to the a town nearby (unfortunately I cannot recall the name), and they say that from there I could grab a train, for just a few Euros, to Florence. I had decided already to take a bus from Florence to Venice anyway, and even had checked the timetable already: the cheapest one, €19 and would leave at 14h30. So taking the train and not just trying to hitchhike it sounded like a good idea. The nice couple drive me to the station and show me everything in their phones where should I go in Florence, because this train would bring me to one station, but once in there I would need to leave the station, grab a city train to another place where I could finally take the bus. They do all the search for me, which is very lovely. I buy the train ticket but there is no one to check it in the station, either on the train, and I do not needed the ticket to leave the station (like in England or Spain, for example), so you make your decision if you buy the tickets or not. People keep saying that there are random checks by security guards… I do not know. In the city, me and other people cannot buy the ticket for the city train from the machine at the station because it is not accepting cash, just cards. So we do not buy it. Again, no one to check anywhere so at least this time I saved €1,5.
On my final destination, the Flixbus garage, I buy the bus ticket to Venice. But now I have to pay €25 because they simply raised the price. Just like that. From morning to afternoon they raised the price in €6. Fuck you your shit fucking capitalist society! I hate you! Waiting for the bus, I hear some people complaining about the delay of their bus, plus they are saying that calling the company service was shit, because they kept telling them that the bus it was “on time”. I talk with a nice lady from Germany, also backpacking.
The bus it is surprisingly good! Not just with wi-fi but with plugs for charging electronics! Great for me since my computer is out of battery. Yay! I will change in Bologna so this trip should not take long, just one hour and a half. I am exhausted so after checking some directions for Venice, I decide to rest a little bit and finish later.
Once in Bologna, another freaking crazy chapter of my travels it is about to start…