Moving East

I met with an old friend of Toby’s: an expert in museum exhibit case design. Sandro sent a car to meet me, and he gave me a personal tour of his workshop. The work they do is like magic: enormous sheets of glass swing effortlessly open, seemingly weightless, to reveal air-tight mechanisms and environment-controlling devices. Like seamless pieces of art, they are beautiful themselves and virtually disappear when an object is placed inside.

After showing me around a little, we went out for lunch in a tiny restaurant where he had once treated Toby. We had a leisurely meal, chatting with owner, cook, and sole waitress, as well as the only other customer lingering after lunch. It was a pleasure to catch up after so many years, and I was able to share Toby’s final escapades around the world.

Later in the afternoon, we parted and I grabbed the next train headed east. The furthest I could get from Milan was Trieste on the Slovenian border, so I would have one last night in dear old Italy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any contacts or hostels or couchsurfers in that city, so I decided to have my first urban-camping experience.

I hiked around the city for a while, scouting for parks or well-protected spaces. Eventually I settled on a commercial mall’s entrance area that had wonderfully large but low-hanging bushes with little light. Sheltered from wind, sight, and the cool morning air, I crawled into my sleeping bag. I was up and out when the cleaners started to make their rounds.

I bought a bus ticket towards Budapest, but it only went as far as Slovenia’s capital: Ljubljana. I fell asleep in my seat and so began my first experience in eastern Europe.

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~ by jjstr on April 23, 2010.