palermo

arrived via ferry and started walking through the dodgiest streets i had seen ye at 5 am. i wasn't sure when the hostel staff would allow me to come in, so i decided to wait at least until 8am. found a spot with free citi wifi and waited it out, trying not to fall asleep and have my shit stolen.

i let myself in and after half an hour more of waiting, finally encountered the old italian lady that ran the place. she let me rest in the common area until check-in time. some hours of dozing later, i heard a bit of a commotion at the reception. another traveler had found a huge bed bug on her sheets. everybody wanted to leave and tried to get their money back from the italian lady and her son, neither of which spoke the tiniest bit of english.

there was no other hostel available in town, so i grouped together with 3 other people from the hostel, brad from the uk, henry from the us and marilou from canada, to book an airbnb for two nights. like this, the bed bug refugees were born.

we had a lot of fun over the next two days, consumed ungodly amounts of wine and had the most unhinged conversations.

sadly, i didn't explore the city much. i was occupied making plans for the coming weeks. i had gotten an invitation to visit a friend from the us for a week free of charge. after some considerable doubt about why he would do this and about the necessity of booking transatlantic flights for fun at the beginning, i finally agreed.

i was actually very close to staying one more day for a date with an fsj-volunteer from leipzig that i had met on tinder, but circumstances prevented it, so i boarded the bus to catania.Read more