Where’s Mussolini when you need him?

Julie’s train spotting, her report from Italy;
I'm in Milan of course. I've had some problems with my email not sending and receiving from my blackberry for two days, so I sent you a couple of emails, but they never went anywhere.

Yesterday I had Tiramisu in Venice, the city that invented it...perfecto! Venice was very cool. Unlike any other place on the planet, and amazing in many ways. Also kind of stinky and run down in places as well. But I'll give them some slack...like about 2 or 3 thousand years of slack!

We also stopped in Verona, of "Romeo & Juliet" fame. It was just the most beautiful little city I have EVER seen. I would love to go back and spend at least a whole day. We were there for about an hour. There is even a huge coliseum, like for gladiators and lions and shit. Really amazing.

Today we mostly wasted our morning going over to the Art Foundation to scout for our shoots. Long boring story there, ... but as we were on our way back to the hotel to get ready for our afternoon shoot, we got STUCK on the subway!! First it sat still for a long time, then it moved very slowly and every time it came to a stop, it wouldn't start up for like 5 minutes, while we all huddled together like sardines.

Finally, they announced something (in Italian, of course) and everyone looked disgusted and started getting off the train. So of course we got off the train too, figuring it was broke or something. I mean, who wants to be underground in a broken train? So then suddenly they announced something again and people started running back onto the train. So like lemmings, we followed.

Then, after the train started moving, to our astonishment, it suddenly stopped and began moving BACKWARD! It took us back 2 stops. We saw the train on the other side now reversing it's direction as well and we figured out that for some reason, they switched the direction of the whole works.

Now hundreds of people are all going up and down the stairs and escalators to trade sides and get to the opposite side of the tracks so we can all go where we intended to go in the first place.

OK, so you think now the story is over? NO! We got on the other train, which now is going our direction. It indeed moves one stop in the right direction. Then it stops, starts the same shit it was doing before with the waiting and the slowness. And AGAIN reverses direction! Of course now the Italian cuss words are flying like fresh pizza dough, along with the wild gesturing they are so famous for. So we just got off the train and started walking. It was raining pretty hard now so that was fun too. Whew! And our work day was really just getting started.

Fast forward and now it's 10:33 and I'm going to lay my head down for a good night's sleep.

Love you,
Julie