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Atlas, rise! It’s time to leave the airbnb!

We took the train towards the islands one last time. It was a rainy day, so our coffee break quickly evolved into lunch with a deliiiicious tiramisu. Yum! Later, we evaded the rain by visiting the Museum of Natural History, which had a great collection of fossils and other artifacts. Well worth the 10 €, especially if you’re a dinosaur kid at heart.

But already, it was time to go back to the continent, with one last train over the lagoon.

There, I said my fond farewells to Venezia [Venice], but mostly to Duha, who will be on her way back to Toulouse (and work, ick!). I am so grateful to her for coming twice despite all the shit happening in her life right now, as I’m grateful for anyone else joining me on this wonderful trip, and everyone sending me nice words on the way. It helps.

I jumped in a train to Bologna, thinking I will arrive far in advance for the early check-in of the hostel. But something had other ideas, and our train stopped just after Padova [Padua]. For a *long* time. Rumors started to spread, and no one near me was talking proper english, so they told me the train will leave in three hours, after already an hour delay. Fuck.

I emailed the hostel to ask if there could be a way for late check-in, but they basically told me to fuck off and good luck finding an hotel. Grrrr… There are no other affordable accomodations tonight in Bologna, I may well end up sleeping at the station.

At least, I had time to plan everything (except Switzerland) up until the 17th of June! I hate it, but prices are already going horribly high. The round-trip ferry to Malta costed me a whopping 96 €… So far, the plan is as follow (by date of entrance): 31st San Marino, 3rd Italy and Switzerland, 7th Liechtenstein, 8th Austria and Italy, 9th Vatican City, 10th Italy, 11th Malta, 16th Italy.

The train ended up going again after two and a half hours. May I point out that whatever in the Italian trains jam the GPS signals does his job freaking well? Despite being in a fix place for 2.5 h, my phone GPS never managed to be precise enough to register a point there. That’s why these days you only get straight lines on the maps.

Finally in Bologna, I raced to the hostel, and called the manager. At least he didn’t make me pay the late check-in fee.