By oncptime
I made it into Florence from Rome around 7PM. I was quite pleased with myself. I’d managed to navigate my way through the Italian countryside and end up smack dab in the middle of Florence, my home for the next four months. Sloughing my two bags from the ever-heady platforms of the train station, I bee-lined for the nearest payphone. I was going to call my Italian contact, get the keys to my new flat, move into said flat and begin living the good life.
“I’m sorry,” Petra’s pleasant recorded message intoned. “The Florence & Abroad office is closed for the week. Our normal business hours are Monday through Friday from 8AM to 5PM. Have a nice day.”
I was floored.
Travelling abroad, I’d unconsciously developed a very self-centered sense of being. I’m catching busses. My train got in a few minutes late. I’m freaking exhausted and need a place to stay.
All of my energy for the past few days had been so oriented towards finding my new home that I hadn’t really stopped to factor in anyone else’s schedule. I’d worked myself into the notion that my arrival to Florence would warrant some type of special treatment.
Why wouldn’t the travel office be open at seven in the evening? Surely someone would be waiting up for me. Surely someone was waiting, worried that I’d be lost and alone and homeless and be accosted by ruffian gypsies wandering the Florentine streets all by my lonesome.
This “me-centricity”, in addition to being annoying to any lookers on, was downright irrational. As the sun set and I fumed myself senseless, it became obvious that I would need to find a place to stay for the night.
“Dove si trova un ostello piu viccino?” I read from my Frommer’s pocket guide to a bored looking cab driver in awful Italian. Where could I find a hostel close by?
The New Ostel, I discovered, was about 15 minutes away on foot, tucked into a dusty corner of Via Jacopo not too far from the train station. The hostel’s aesthetic was an odd fusion of Japanese karaoke lounge and sleepy American bread and breakfast. Squash lounge chairs crowded the outdoor patio leading up to a main entrance that could only be described as Shinto in design.
The proprietors, a young Italian-infused Japanese family, catered to the needs of young weary travellers in a very no-nonsense way. “20 euros for the night gets you a bed, two beers, and access to the wi-fi. We don’t have bug spray.”
They did have a bed though, and sheets, and a pillow, and a place for me to recharge my dead gadgets and my battered body. Despite my initial despair at not having entered Florence in the most together of ways, I found comfort in my shared bedroom at New Ostel. “It’s nice here, Deb.” I sighed to a close friend over Skype after I’d unpacked and wandered around a bit. “ The weather’s gorgeous and the wine’s cheaper than water.”
That last joke elicited a warm chuckle from a sun-worn, bearded blonde man sitting on one of the squashed couches across from me on the hostel’s wifi-enabled patio. “Amen, brother.” He agreed in unmistakably American English.
That’s how I met Tom. It’s also how my first weekend in Florence got a little…hostile.