Preface: (Once again, I am very thankful for the opportunity to travel, I will keep traveling this is another short story about some of the things that can go wrong while traveling.)
After a trip out of the country, a friend said to me, “How was your trip? It looked so amazing!” I commented back, “It photographed well.”
This is a story about a trip just like that. It was a trip where the photographs were great, but the real-life experience wasn’t at the same level.
Chapter 1: Travel as an idea. The exciting part.
A little over a year ago I got a call from a dear friend. They were getting married in the fall of 2023 and had asked me to officiate their wedding. I gladly accepted and then as time went on I realized the details weren’t coming. confident it would all turn out alright I didn’t contact them until about 2 months before the projected wedding date and asked them for the location of their wedding and the time. Turns out they moved the wedding to Italy and wanted me to officiate still. Yay.
It was a Monday after I was filming a wedding near Appleton, Wi (that Saturday) and i couldn’t find a flight to get me to Italy in time for the 3pm ceremony on the shores of Lake Como. I explained this problem to my friends (Evan & Jocelyn) and they (on the phone as I told them) found me a flight that would leave from Chicago Sunday and arrive in Milan Italy 3 hours before the ceremony. It’s roughly a 90 minute drive from Milan to Lake Como.
If you’ve ready any of my latest few blogs you know what a terrible traveler I am. If something can go wrong, it usually does, and at the end of my trips I’m usually left with a few bumps and bruises. I think this is just part of life, growing up, learning how to navigate through uncomfortable spots, growing, and coming back with a few good stories.
After talking things over with a few friends who kept telling me how short life is and how I should travel more I got myself excited to go to Italy. My therapist Tom Mills and my Dad told me how amazing this trip would be. This was a bucket list country for me. I wanted to go to Lake Como for some time as a few of my favorite movies had been filmed there. James Bond, Casino Royale, and Star Wars. My friend Jesse Maste from Mast Films encouraged me to get some content while I was in Italy for my video business. He had recommended this couple that he booked when he was in Italy and so I contacted them, got a date saved and then found I could rent a boat for a bit of the shoot as well. I bought a wedding dress on Lulu at the recommendation of my friend Meg from the louie photography and packed my bags. I asked the model for her measurements, and bought 2 to make sure we had the right fit. I packed it all into my rolly-carry-on hard-shell bag and proceeded with the plan.
Sunday morning arrived after the Saturday wedding.
I made it to the Chicago pay-lot and got to my flight fine. Easy. Fell asleep for a bit, woke up in Dublin, charged my phone with some crazy adapter, charger that I had bought for the trip and proceeded to Italy. By the time I landed in Italy it was 10am. I think that’s about 4 am Central time, and so I was tired. I bought a shot of espresso, and used the airports WIFI to message my friends that I had landed. Jocelyn (bride) texted me back, “Tim, get the next taxi to Lake Como.” I asked a lady nearest to me where I could get a taxi. The lady told me I should rent a car because it was the same cost.
I liked that logic, and proceeded to rent a car. I didn’t have time to look for a travel SIM card so I didn’t have cell service. This was probably my biggest mistake.
At the rental car counter the lady let me know all they had were manual transmission cars. She asked if that was ok. Without any other options , I told her it would be no problem. I knew how to drive a manual transmission from when I delivered sushi at Tokyo steak house 15 years prior. How hard could it be? The only other problem I needed to solve was how to navigate to Lake Como. Remember I don’t have a working phone and I can’t speak Italian and so trying to use road signs seemed like a difficult task. I asked the rental car staff if they had GPS system for the car. The staff said they had a GPS system that stuck to the windshield of your car and it would be included for free. I asked if it was in English and she said she it was not, but she could change it to English. I was thankful because navigating a GPS’s menu in Italian also seemed nearly impossible.
She changed it to English and gave the GPS to me, and I proceeded to leave for Lake Como.
Chapter 2. The beginning of my trials.
In the parking garage I rolled out in neutral to block the already very small main street way in the parking garage because I couldn’t figure out how to put it in reverse. Embarrassed I put it in park, (blocking the only way out) and went to find someone to ask them how to reverse it. The rental car attendant was so kind to show me that underneath my Fiat Panda’s stick shift knob there was a trigger mechanism that needed to be pulled up in order to shift the lever into the reverse position. No Problemo!
Somewhere in between the rental car desk and garage the GPS reverted back to Italian. I cannot speak Italian, I cannot comprehend Italian. The suction piece of the GPS that was supposed to mount to the windshield also proved faulty. The best solution I could find based on the odd contour shape of the dashboard of this fiat panda was to put the GPS on the passenger side seat. As I plugged in the GPS I heard a robotic Italian women’s voice say words that had 0 meaning to me. The nice thing was when I could look over at the GPS on the passenger seat I saw that I had roughly a 1 hr 29 min drive to Lake Como.
I immediately ran straight into Milan traffic on their highway system and came to a standstill within 3 miles. As my car sat in between two Italian semi-trucks (they’re a bit narrower and boxier in Europe) I also then proceeded to stall out the car. The drivers behind me realized (eventually) that I wasn’t good at manual driving and started giving me a little space in between all my starts and stops. Every restart and release of the clutch my car rolled back scaring the drivers into giving me ample room so they no longer rode my bumper.
Eventually the road system opened up and I started to travel much more quickly.
When I arrived to the southern border of Lake Como, I had expected beautiful views and spacious roads, I found that the roads were very narrow, filled with lots of turns, and about 25 mph the entire way around the lake. The driving was so intense especially with the manual bit, and me having to look at the passenger side seat to navigate where I need to go I couldn’t enjoy any of the views. Some parts of the road you had to stop so that oncoming traffic could pass before proceeding as the road was too narrow.
When I finally arrived in the vicinity of the Villa (according to my gps) I realized It was very different than expected because I had expected some signage. Maybe a giant sign with a blinking light to let you know you’ve arrived at the Villa Regina Teodolinda.
There were no signs on the building at all. It just looked like an old house next to other old houses. Because of that I had to knock on a few doors before figuring out where I needed to be. What I did actually, was walked into a house that was a cafe, asked to use the WIFI, messaged the bride, and asked her where she was. She told me, and I walked nearly the entire perimeter of the Villa before finding the entrance.
Chapter 3: A brief reprieve
So here’s the good part of the trip but the boring part of the story- I officiated Jocelyn and Evan’s wedding, I was nervous but it went super smoothly. They are an awesome couple. I love them both.
Here’s the wedding trailer their videographer made: LINK
After we drank aperol spritz, I talked with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while danced a lot, drank a few more aperol spritz and then we went to bed. Now on to my 2 days of character building.
Chapter 4: birthing pangs
The next morning I was awoken by Brady (roomie and groomsmen) panicking that he missed his taxi back to the airport for his flight to Chicago. Brady didn’t have money for another flight to Chicago and didn’t have cash for another Taxi. This was a problem. I said “Hey man, I got a car, I’ll drive you, lets go.” I gathered my things quickly and ran down to the car. I loaded it up and started it. It didn’t start. The car’s battery was dead. I never figured out how the car died, it had lights that shut off automatically- but it died. I gave Brady some cash for another Taxi and then turned my attention to my dead vehicle. I was supposed to meet that model couple later this day to film.
In Italy, people don’t just have jumper cables in their car. I asked the Villa concierge to help me call the rental car companies insurance thing I purchased. She did, and had a good conversation and then explained to me. She said “He said he will be here in 20 minutes. But I know where he is driving from. It will be 3 hours. He was lying and I don’t know why.” I think there’s something really humbling about having to rely on someone’s good graces to speak English and help me solve problems that I realized I didn’t have the same control I would have had back in the states. I think it’s good for me but I normally don’t like having to rely on strangers to do normal every day things.
While waiting for the mechanic to arrive everyone else from the wedding party left. Some left for Sardinia, some left because it was their last day in Italy and they had been enjoying their time earlier in the week. Either way I felt a little bit lonely. I used the time to fly my drone, book that boat for the model couple, and go for a quick 6 mile run out and back in Italy. This was the only time I ran on this trip and I lost 8 Lbs. In the US I run every day at least 5 miles. I think the stress of traveling caused me to drop some weight.
Around 3 hours later the mechanic arrived from another town across the lake and jumped my car. Once it was started I drove to the James Bond Villa . On the way I ended up driving in an alley and along a dock that was meant to be a walking biking lane only. Fortunately for me the Fiat Panda was so small it could fit through the “do not enter” gate at the end of the walk that allowed me to spill out onto a legal road again.
Once at the James Bond Villa I toured it for a bit, walked around and saw some of the beautiful gardens, posed for a picture where star was was filmed, and tried to just gather myself. The big part of my day was coming up where I was filming this model couple at 4 o’clock at a park we had picked out. We had arranged meeting at 4 at a garden park, then driving to the base of lake Como to take a boat before parting ways. Me back up to an Air BnB I booked, and them to Milan.
Chapter 5: The hour of my trials
I still didn’t’ have a phone so connecting with them was tricky. Once again I found a cafe, got on WIFI, messaged, and then arrived at the park. Somehow I walked entirely across the park 2x before finding them. They had walked across the park as well and we had missed each other twice. What are the odds. It’s a small park and time was ticking until we needed to get to the boat. I said hi, and then invited them back to the car where I went to pull out the dress I bought off Lulu for Yana to wear. When they arrived I greeted them and we went to my car to get the white dress I had bought off Lulu’s. It was nowhere to be found. I started to get sick. To be creative you need to be in a certain head space. This headspace cannot be stressed, anxious, etc. I was not in a good headspace. My mind was saying “this is going to be a complete waste, you’re terrible at traveling, this is way more than you bargained for, maybe I’ll just stop doing travel events. The situation was, I was paying this couple, paid for this dress, paid for a boat, and all we had was Yana wearing a very plane black dress made out of some sort of cotton. Yana said “I would have never worn this had I know you didn’t have the dress.” I explained it was totally my fault, and I didn’t know what to do. They were kind enough to say “hey let’s do an engagement shoot.” and that was all the encouragement i needed at the time.
We shot some lovely stuff near this garden on Lake Como, and then headed to the south of the lake. Because of the debacle with the dress we were running late for the boat we rented. We showed up 30 minutes late for our 30 minute boat ride. We did the boat ride and I captured drone photos, video, and video and photo on my dslr camera. After we finished I needed to pay Yana and Guiseppe. They told me that we could find an ATM machine and get some cash out. I told them I couldn’t find anything in this country and so they’ have to assist. Sure enough we found one and as I was pulling money out Yana and Giuseppe could tell that the day of unfortunate events was wearing on me. It was a different shoot than I had planned but it was still good. They were kind enough to give me a discount because – well I guess they are good people and they could tell I wasn’t getting everything I had hoped for and props to them. They were just kind. Thank you Yana and Giuseppe. After paying I asked them where I could find a place to get a SIM card for my phone so I could have a GPS.
Yana said “I think the best thing to do after a day like this is just go to bed. Don’t do any extra things. When you’re having a day where everything is going wrong sometimes going to bed is the best option.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Chapter 6: Mental fortitude breached.
That night I woke up at 2am. Jetlag I think. I went for a walk down near the lake and realized nothing was open. The streetlights were spotty and I couldn’t see much of the water but I could hear it. I walked up the street half a mile or so, thought about life. Walked back to my hotel. This is where travel fatigue started to get to me. Death by a thousand decisions. I had planned on returning the car at 11am and then boarding my flight to Tirana, Albania to see my good friend Sajmir and Irma in Lushjne, Albania. I like seeing the world but I was feeling lonely and I like seeing friends more. Where my plan went wrong is that the airport I returned the car was not the same airport I needed to fly out of. I had thought of this before going to bed but comforted myself with the thought “If my flight from Milan, Italy to Tirana. Albania isn’t’ out of the same airport I flew into I has to be out of a Milan airport so it must be close. How far away can it be?” The answer will surprise you.
There are 3 airports in Milan. Milan Malpensa International Airport (MXP) which is the largest and handles the most long-haul international flights. Milan Linate (LIN) which is closest to the city center and serves mostly flights from within Italy. Bergamo (BGY) is located well outside Milan but is a busy hub for flights within Europe and the UK.
I had flown into Milan Linate, rented a car, needed to now return that car to the same airport and needed to get to Milan Malpensa. Italy is not like the US. The U.S. has designed an efficient road system since most of the roads and cities were built after the invention of the car. Italy has been around for thousands of years so the cities and roads were not designed first and foremost with cars in mind. There is not a direct road from one airport to the other. To make matters more complicated I essentially drove from Villa Regina Teodolinda (marked in purple at the top of the map) down to Milan Linate and then needed to get an uber in almost the opposite direction I had just driven. I needed an uber because my car was returned at 11:45 and the train would take too long. I looked at my phone. An Uber would cost $180 and get me there at 12:30pm. That’s before security, check in, and what if I missed my flight? Would I just stay at the airport and try and book another? I knew my friend Sajmir would leave at 1:30pm from Lushjne to get the Tirana airport to pick me up and I didn’t’ think it was right for him to make that drive if I missed my flight so I used the airport Wi-Fi to message him on Facebook and asked him not to come get me unless I confirmed I had made it to my flight. I booked the uber and watched $180 fly away from my bank account and got into the back of an Uber. Once on the road the uber driver asked me what time my flight departed. I told him 1pm. He didn’t seem to take it in and then started driving casually. I checked the ETA-12:31pm. Maybe, just maybe they won’t close boarding and I’ll make it in time.
The Uber driver then took the wrong exit and added 15 minutes to the drive. I now looked an ETA of 12:46 pm for my 1pm departing flight. Hope began to slowly leave my body. I wondered if God was testing me. I started to pray I would make my flight. I started to mentally just lose it. How is traveling this stressful?
The driver asked me for the 2nd time what time my flight was leaving. I told him again 1pm. This time he understood and started to accelerate. Once at the airport I jumped out of the car with my backpack and rolly and walked as fast as possible though security -somehow I get through the line for security and to my boarding gate by 1:05pm. I was all gas no brakes. I needed to get on that plane. The gate agent for Wizz air boarding gate asked me what flight I was getting on and I said the 1pm. She turned around looked out the window and with wide eyes back and me and said “Run!”
At that point I did begin to run, I pushed through the boarding gate door and a loud airport alarm sounded through the entire terminal. An airline steward at the other end of the tunnel frantically yelled and waved her hands at me to turn back, as I turned and looked back in the opposite direction the gate agent who told me to run continued to tell me to run and pointed towards the plane. I am not much for conflict and this tested my fragile constitution. I eventually board the plane against all hope and said quick” Thank You God” prayer. The first thing I noted when I boarded the plane was that this Wizz Air Airplane certainly smelled like it’s namesake. Wizz air is the Spirit airlines of that portion of Europe.
Once seated I remembered my friend Sajmir and that I needed to let him know I made it on my flight. I asked exactly 6 people around me if they had a hot spot I could use or if the plane had Wi-Fi. 2 didn’t speak English, 1 didn’t answer the airline steward said she didn’t have service either and she was actually living in spain so her cell service only worked when in spain and I don’t reemmber what the said but I coulnd’t find a way to contact Sajmir. I had enough things that I had worried about and I decided getting on the plane was bonus enough- even if I didn’t have a ride once I landed.
My flight in Wizz air was uneventful, I think they tried to sell me a $4 can of soda and crackers on the flight and get me to sign up for a credit card but I don’t quite remember. Once I landed my phone connected to the wifi at Tirana airport automatically from the last time I was in Albania and I started to get notifications. I got a facebook messenger audio call from Sajmir, he asked if I had landed.
I said I had – Sajmir said “Why didn’t you tell me, I would have left to come and get you?”
I said- it’s my fault, it’s ok. He said that he would either come and get me (90 minutes from now) or I could take the bus. Sajmir does a lot for a lot of people so I didn’t want to inconvenience him and agreed to take the bus. On my way to the bus a taxi driver intercepted me and said he’d take me for $50 on the 90-minute trip from Tirana to Lushjne immediately. The bus would force me to wait 30 minutes before departing. This cab sounded really agreeable to me after the $180 I spent to go 45 minutes in Milan and so as I was agreeing with him- and sajmir was on the phone with me- Sajmir said “put me on the phone with the Cab driver.”
I did. They yelled in a different language for about 5 minutes with lots of hand motions, and then with a dejected look on his face the cab driver handed me my phone back. I said “hello Sajmir?” Sajmir said, ” Take the bus”
I did and paid $10 and arrived in Lushnje 90 minutes later.
Later I learned what was said in that Albanian shouting match. Sajmir had said “You will not rip this man off! He is my friend!” And the Taxi driver had retorted “Come on brother, let’s win some money for Albania!” haha.
It felt good to have someone stick up for me after 3 days of less than idea travel. I think the biggest take away I had was how important it is in life to feel like you have people who advocate for you. I met Sajmir from a missions trip I went on with my church. I knew his heart and saw how he acted and treated others consistently. Now on this recreational trip to visit him I got to be a benefactor when I felt most desperate to have someone advocate for me through my travels. It meant more than he will probably ever realize. The rest of the days in Albania he refused to let me pay for anything. Coffee’s, meals, a place to stay. I still like travel but I like having friends more.
I can’t say enough kind things about his heart and the church of people he serves. If you want to learn more about his ministry or give to it, here’s a link. Click this Link
Cheers.
-Tim
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