Catching up on nothingness in Padova

Catching the 5AM train to Padova was tough. To begin with, we had to change trains in Milan, which meant our 4 to 5 hour journey was split right down the middle, and secondly, what we expected to be a night train (it has beds) turned out to be a regular train without said comfortable flat surfaces. As a result, Paul and I tried best we could to curl ourselves onto the seats provided, Paul opting for the rest up against the window and stretch your legs over the end of the chair, whereas I went for the curled up along two chairs in the fetal position maneouver. Either way, neither of us got truly comfortable and sleep was fleeting. We had an hour stopover in Milan, during which I somehow managed to catch half an hours shut eye on the hardest stone bench you've seen in your life, waking up with some of the most excruciating pins and needles in my left arm I've ever experienced. The train from Milan to Padova wasn't much better, as it was quite full, which meant we were restricted to our own, single seats. I tried my best to rest my head on the table between us, but this ended up hurting my neck more than the stone bench did, and after a couple hours travel we'd finally ended up in Padova.

My hostel was a kilometer and a bit down the road from the station, and a short ways down the road Paul split off to go and lose consciousness in his apartment. I continued on my way, sweating continually into clothes that already had over 24 hours of constant wear in Italian weather, and combined with the previous two days of long distance walking, my entire body was about ready to self destruct by the time I'd managed to hobble through the door of the hostel. This was about 11AM, and I was informed that I couldn't actually check in until 4:30. I was, however, able to leave my bags in the luggage room, but it meant that the relief shower I so desperately craved was currently out of my grasp.

Not completely dismayed by this point, I walked back to the station, where a public park was situated, only to find it closed for some reason. In fact, every park around the area seemed to be locked up on this particular day. I spent nearly an hour trying to find a suitable patch of grass to rest my aching body, and nearly losing my marbles completely, I finally found one under a tree near a road intersection that I settled for, and feeling like a regular bum managed to get a couple hours fitful rest there. Finally my hostel opened for business just as I'd made my way back down, and thankfully the showers were of high volume water and I was finally able to bring myself to some level of respectable personal hygiene. Unfortunately by this stage it had hit 6PM, and I got a call from Paul enquiring as to whether I was ready for dinner. This meant I didn't get a chance to have a proper nap, but we met up all the same and managed to find a pizzeria that he was aware of, followed up by a couple of beers.

It is interesting to note that at this point in time in Padova, all of the pubs have closed up, and moved into little shacks along the river. This is pretty cool, as they are all centrally located, and apparently this event happens every year. We spent some time up there, although only until 11PM, as one disadvantage of the hostel in this city is that it has an 11:30PM curfew. The local beverage of choice is an "aperol spritz". It tastes kind of like Campari mixed 50 50 with a pale beer, and is quite nice. It is also quite cheap, and we generally alternate between an ale and one of these.

The next day I committed to finally having some rest, and I spent a good portion of the day in the park just near our hostel. I was a bit frustrated that I didn't check out this park the day prior, as it is in the main square of Padova. In fact, the Prato della Valle, Paul informs me, is the biggest square in Italy, and the second biggest in Europe behind Red Square in Moscow. The place is awesome to relax in, as the elliptical garden area with a nice little fountain in the middle is encircled by a moat/canal, with regularly placed statues of famous local figures on either side. The day consisted of a lot of nothing, including a lunch with Paul, which no doubt consisted of pizza, followed by the dumping of photos onto the inter-tubes. We met again later for dinner, on this particular night dining on a new animal, known to the Italians as "Caballo", or to the rest of us, "Horse". The meat is nothing special, and kind of tastes like a poor beef steak. I won't be rushing out to get it again, but there's something novel about being able to add another species to my carniverous repertoire. We followed the experience with another few drinks at the pub shacks.

I spent the next day seeing some of the sights around the city, after catching a morning nap in the park. I saw a couple of churches, one which is supposed to contain the body of St Luke, however Paul is (and I tend to agree) quite skeptical of the validity of this claim, as the story of how the body was lost, found many hundreds of kilometers away a good deal of time later, and then brought to the church is sketchy at best. There is also the Basilica di Sant'Antonio da Padova, which contains several relics of the old saint, and one of the interesting things about it is that you can walk around the back of his tomb and touch it. This is actually a bit depressing, because as far as I can understand it, the saint is involved in finding lost things, particularly people, which is expressed all too painfully in solemn expression on the faces of those praying whilst holding their forehead or hand on the sarcophagus. No cameras were allowed in the place, so I can't show you some of the fine artwork and opulent relics, which included the lower jaw of the good saint, and, as Paul informed me later, apparently his tongue. Needless to say, these things looked particularly disgusting, but the golden viewing cabinets they were contained in were quite impressive.

After a longish lunch with Paul, I went back to his university office and helped him work out a problem he had with a Fortran program he was writing (which means I can now say I have had something to do with developmental research in the field of nuclear physics), and spent the rest of the day in my now favorite park della Valle.

I spent the following morning from 10 till 1 at the local hospital (they don't seem to have private doctors as such) trying to get a prescription for some antibiotics for a minor skin infection I have developed from all of the stress I've put my body through. I had to wait in the emergency room amongst a bunch of other patients waiting to be seen. There was one other Australian in the room who wanted to get his finger looked at which he'd dislocated a week ago in the Ukraine, as apparently the Ukrainian hospital system isn't too flash. The guy was a roadie for the George Michael concert that is touring Europe currently, and had a few interesting stories to tell about what he'd been up to for the past few weeks. About two and a half hours later I finally managed to see a doctor and tried to explain the situation. I had no less than three people all in the room trying to communicate with me and they began discussing anaesthetic and surgery, and it took me a while to convince them that I knew what was going on, and that no, blades and needles were not required, but please give me some antibiotics to treat the infection. This is one situation where the language gap becomes somewhat scary, however one of the nurses involved with looking after me during this whole ordeal managed to speak a word of two of English and between us we managed to get through it. She was very happy and helpful, and also pretty cute. She looked kind of Spanish, and got very excited when I mentioned that I was headed back to Barcelona to meet up with a friend of mine. Eventually they agreed to give me a prescription, and also gave me a referral to go see the specialist surgeon on the upper floor. I assured them I would (I won't), and the cute nurse took me down to pay my bill, which luckily only came to about 20 euros. I thanked her again, and after she had dissapeared back into the wards, I quickly made my way out of the place. I caught up with Paul and his recently returned supervisor for lunch, and then made my way to the pharmacy to pick up my medication.

I expect that tomorrow (yes, I've finally caught up to current time with this thing) I'll head to Venice with an American guy from my hostel. I'll be in this general area of the world until my flight back to Barcelona on Tuesday to meet up with Miriam, and between now and then I expect to spend two days in Venice and one in Verona as day trips from Padova. It's been good to finally get some rest here, and the run-down sniffles I'd developed from Pamplona seem to be all but gone. There's not much to see generally, but I'm a huge fan of the Prato della Valle for chilling out, and it's a good central spot for anyone looking to check out Verona, Venice, Bologna or any part of north east Italy.

My general plans have changed somewhat from my initial idea, and I've decided to give the rest of Italy a miss for now. I can barely stand the heat even up at this latitude, and heading any further south with the stories I've heard from Rome and Naples would surely spell my doom. Instead I plan to head to Munich from Barcelona, possibly stopping off at Freiberg where Paul will be exploring the Black Forest, from there to Innsbruck, Austria, to Salzburg and then to Vienna. It will be interesting to see how this affects my 80 day timeline, and it may turn out that I have a bit of extra time to explore some of the eastern countries. This could involve parts of Poland, or perhaps further north to Scandinavia. If anyone has suggestions, I'd be interested to read them in the comments!