Catania Reunited

Today was essentially a throw-away day. We had nothing planned other than a ridiculously long train journey to Catania and, eventually, meeting up for drinks with Liam Hair and Ben Grebert.

We had originally planned to fly, but Jack somehow managed to book the tickets for the wrong month. As a result, we were forced to take the train and hope we could recover some of the money from the flights by changing them to a different time and destination. In the end, we managed to get some value back but had to put more money into changing the flights and booking another one to make the whole thing worthwhile. It was very much a use-it-or-lose-it situation.

The only interesting part of the train journey was crossing the Strait of Messina between mainland Italy and Sicily. We had assumed the train would either go through an underwater tunnel or somehow cross on a bridge. We were very wrong. Instead, the train literally drove onto a ferry. We sat on the train as it was loaded onto the boat, then spent the journey sitting inside our carriage while we were ferried across to Sicily. Once we reached the other side, the train was unloaded and continued directly onto the Sicilian rail network. It was actually a pretty cool experience - although it would have been significantly more enjoyable if we hadn’t lost almost two hours dealing with technical issues getting the train on and off the ferry.

Our original flight would have had us in Catania around midday, meaning we could have spent most of the afternoon with Hairy and Ben. Instead, the train meant we were initially looking at around 6 pm, and after the delays, that became closer to 8 pm. Not ideal. Still, we eventually made it to Catania and caught up with them for a few drinks. We got very quickly and very thoroughly drunk off Aperols and shots before meeting a couple of girls from Arizona. We ended up chatting with them for a while before eventually calling it a night and heading home.

The best part of the night was obviously seeing Hairy again after 11 months. It was especially good knowing that, with me still having plenty of travelling ahead, it could potentially be another eight months before I’m home again.Read more