Sunday, 22nd of September, 2019.
This time it is not totally, completely my fault. I try to do the most right thing: not going to the hitchhike spot which looks like more a highway. So I go to the one in town, just outside of the “front door” of Verona. After some twenty minutes I realize that would not work out. So another fancy hotel, wi-fi, and I get the coordinates to the other spot. Very soon I am there, after passing through a weird kind of family park, which would be perfect for camping. I am quite satisfied with the spot. I just hope it is not a highway. And that someone pick me up soon anyway.
L. does. He is not going to Verona but apparently he knows a better spot. Now thinking about everything that happened, I get to the conclusion: who the hell he think he is to decide where he will take me and what we will do on my day? As so many Italians, and men, he thinks he can take me, as a lady I am, to have an enjoyable day, just because I am a foreigner, and in this case, just because I am a hitchhiker. Italian men have a huge Arabia blood percentage. Plus, I am almost sure I lost Robert when I was getting in his car 🙁
I tell you what happened. He calls his police officer friend and I think he is just trying to find a good spot to drop me of. Bullshit! He wants to show me off! We meet his police officer friend, G., in a hotel, we drink a glass of wine, I do not talk too much because my Italian is not good and G. does not understand my “Espanhano”. Then L. decides they must to give me a nice last dinner in Italy. What? I just want to carry on with my travels but does anybody ask me what I want? No. So they say I can spend the night at G.’s house (probably just because L. had plans of sleeping there as well); we meet some other friends of him in town (old men, quite nice, but I know that in somehow, all of then have second intentions in their mind), and L. buys me another drink (the orange one I was so curious about it, at least that); and we decide that they will cook a risotto at G.’s house. We go there.
The risotto is nice, we have some more wine, cheese, bread, and a lot of fruits and a strudel. Apparently it is a rule that all Italians must to eat very fast.
I was ready to go to sleep when L. says that we should go to this town festival, quite about the Oktoberfest. What? And why in the hell I did not say that I was tired and just want to go to sleep? Afff… So we leave the house before 10 in the night and come back after midnight. Ridiculous. I do not even want to write about it.
In the end, with that huge house, we sleep in the same room. I kind of think that he had high hopes of something happen. Yuck! Disgusting! In the morning I even have to hear, when G. asks him if he slept well, something like “Of course I did, sleeping in the same room as a beautiful girl”. Yuck! Disgusting. After the most weird breakfast I ever had, warm milk with cookies, we leave.
L. will drive me in the way to the next town, closer to Switzerland. We have a coffee first, with some croissant (which they called pasta, probably to not agree with the French) and then goodbye.
Probably things happen for a reason. And there was a reason for why I should get stuck in Italy for one more day. The thing is: because I was in a different direction of where I had planned before, not in the way to Lugano, I decide to go direct to my volunteer work and not to Geneva first. But I got a bit confused with the directions, and going forth and back, it took me the whole day.
The first person who takes me it is a guy from Romenia, Catarino, and I admit that I was bit afraid of him at the beginning, but he showed himself a very sweet guy. He try to help me as much as he could but in the end, I just have to go back one town from where he dropped me. At least there were some beautiful views in my way (as you can see in the featured image).
So I relax and took some pictures. After that, Anita and Hans stop for me. They are a very nice couple. The directions to our destination though, Merano are quite weird. The whole way it is through the mountains and I get a bit sick again. Again? Yeah, again. The last time it was in Sant Vicent del Castellet, Spain, when we went to hunt some mushrooms. I thought back in that time, that it was the Nutella sandwich, but now I understand that it was the mountain. The high altitude to which I am not used to. But as soon as we got down again, I got better.
In Merano, loads of tourists everywhere. I get a little stressed because I need to find a place to get wi-fi and it is impossible. Finally I manage to find a place and get the directions of a Spar and a place where I could maybe make my camping.
The supermarket it is closed. But just because it was the wrong one. I was stupid enough to not realized I should go further a little bit. Instead of that I thought it was closed because it was Sunday. Which I should know it was not a problem because I saw online that even on Sundays this one stays open until 7.p.m. So I pay 2€ in a stupid Chinese sandwich in this Chinese shop, because I am afraid I will not find anything else open. Five hundred metres ahead, I get in an open supermarket, which is not even the one I was planing to go, but another one. I stop by to get some food anyway.
Looking for a camping place, for the first time I decide to make my camping in this open space, like a park but with no signs or anything, and not to hide. I should know, I felt that something it would happened. In the middle of the night, two security guards came and told me it was not allowed to camp in there because it was the campus for the University. But they were really nice and I just told them I would pack my things and leave. They do not even wait in there to see me packing, they just left. I left to.
I take my chances again just beside this small building, in their kind of garden, I fit my tent exactly under a tree, so I think it would be hard to someone to see me. Still, the people leaving on the second floor could (maybe) easily hear me. But they did not.
I managed to leave the place in the early morning just a bit before they turn on the lights. Now I am trying to go to Switzerland!