30/06/10
Left Edinburgh at 7am with a filthy hangover from sampling what must’ve been all of the local brews. The train journey to Manchester Airport passed quite quickly with the only activity being a man boarding at Preston insisting that he find out everybody’s name on the train.
Checked in at Manchester Airport and was allowed the 0.5kg excess on my hold luggage. A woman with lots of hairspray, lots of gold and fake nails sprayed me with a rose scented perfume in Duty Free and I told her it was disgusting. It offended her greatly and she proceeded to bitch loudly with her spray cronies and I tried to mask the smell with 6 other scents.
Couldn’t face the inflight complimentary Warsteiner. Vague memories of leaving the last bar the night before in search of dinner at around 2 or 3am, finding food, loosing bar, finding hostel and deciding food inedible.
Flight into Frankfurt was delayed which stressed lots of passengers with connecting flights which I didn’t really appreciate until we hit the epic queue at passport control and I found that gate A30 was the other side of the airport about half a mile away. Super quick flight into Torino where I started reading Anna Karenina.
Landed in Torino and freaked out when both bank cards wouldn’t work in the bancomatico and (tried to) rush around to find an alternative atm with Massive Suitcase. Just made the airport-Porto Nuova bus and caused problems by not having the exact €5 fare. Reached Porto Nuova and booked onto the next Cuneo train which was 2 hours away instead of the imminent via Fossano connection as scheduled. Went for pizza and wine and tried to acclimatise to the 30°C.
Onboard the Cuneo treni the conductor was having a difficult time getting 5 young lasses to pay the fine for not having tickets and was not happy that I hadn’t stamped my ticket at all. Phone battery proceeded to die mid- sorting out meeting my ospiti at the train station. Arrived into Cuneo 30 minutes late and hauled 20.5kg up 3 flights of stairs and found Simone who had probably been waiting ages.
Vino e pasta on arrival – a great welcome! The sleeping place is a multifunctional arts venue which has temporary bedrooms constructed and camps beds which were very welcome!
