The big day is here. C + I rip up to Ciro Marina from Tronca, early morning Friday, with our private driver. We’re booked for a single night in a B+B, and it could all be a bit rushed, but we aren’t due at the wedding until 5pm, and it’s only an hour drive, so we should be safe enough.
Ciro Marina is, as the name implies, another coastal city, but it’s a bit more populated than Tronca was. The marina itself isn’t gigantic, but it’s a decent size, docking somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 nice looking boats.
After a light lunch, and plenty of time to kill, C and I settle down with the chessboard outside a little gelato shop and start messing around a bit (she’s hooked on the game). I’ve been doing a combination of playing seriously against her, as well as teaching her some opening concepts / traps (Fried Liver Attack!).
I notice the ice cream shop owner (Ice Cream Man) is watching our game fairly intently from the side, and I invite him to play a game against C. He’s super happy to jump in, and I play the role of the nervous coach, pretending not to watch too intently from the side or let my face give away any clues, while secretly hoping C destroys him.
He’s not particularly good, but it’s C’s first live over the board game against anyone who isn’t me, and she’s definitely super shy / nervous. She capitalizes on a few of his mistakes, but she makes a few bigger ones, a bit too big to survive, even at their relatively novice level, and Ice Cream Man takes the W. Tragic.
He asks to play me a follow up game, and I quickly wipe him off the board. Someone had to redeem C’s honor. We chat a bit with Ice Cream Man, while I sip a few beers and C munches on something sweet, and kill the extra hour or two we have before the wedding. We promise to come back for more games soon, and then roll back to the B+B to get dressed up.
I clean up pretty well when I have to, and I daresay K-dawg’s suit looks sharp on me, though the pants are a little tight round my gigantic hockey ass. C’s also fairly easy on the eyes in her summer dress and heels.
The Italian boys from Albania have just gotten in last night from Milan to a different neighboring town, and are a little hungover, but sans the bachelor, are more than happy to scoop us up and gift us a lift to the wedding venue. The kids are absolute beauties. We nip back to their hotel to pick up their plus-ones, and then rip to wedding venue in two cars.
And what a venue it is. The wedding itself is taking place several miles inland on some gorgeous farmland. Ancient Italian stone buildings meet with a beautiful expanse of crops (olive trees and grape vines are prominent) spread out over low lying hills that seem to roll forever into the distance.
Small meet and greet, where I get to catch up with some of the lads, but priority number one is the ceremony, which kicks off almost right away. Some music, some churchy songs, and a long winded speech by the minister (it seemed beautiful, but of course, it was in Italian, so I was mostly guessing what was being said based on the context). It’s possible I tear up a bit. I resist the urge to pelt Danvinci and Wifey with the ceremonial rice as they walk down the aisle, and chuck it at some of the boys instead. Seems like a safer bet.
Just like that, the beautiful couple are officially locked in as life partners. I feel a little out of place, but it’s actually super cool to be invited to be a part of something this momentous, and I’m looking forward to the festivities with the boys + C.
Tons of people have heard about me and are interested in meeting me (degenerate, Asian, Canadian who just got invited last minute), and we start to put down some prosecco as we make our rounds.
The boys and their plus ones have great energy, and we also meet this South American woman around our age, Isabella, who speaks perfect English and is definitely looking to get rowdy.
More prosecco and mingling give way to the first dinner service. I mean, it could have easily been the only dinner service, one of the most ridiculously large buffets I’ve ever been a part of. Steak, burgers, pasta, seafood, cheese, salads, and a bunch of shit I can’t identify. There’s way too much food.
Collectively as a group we stuff our faces, and we don’t even make a dent in the offerings available. I assumed this WAS dinner, but after an hour or so of this (which includes a bunch of red and white wine), we’re ushered off to another section, a stone courtyard, where the official dinner tables are set and waiting for us. Apparently now, we chase down the food and wine, with more food, and more wine.
We’re sat at a table with Isabella and her BF, plus The Sheik from the original crew (sans a plus one) and a few others. Three course meal follows, interrupted between every course by dancing, games, and general festivities. Conga line, groomsman throwdown, giant dance circles, you name it, it’s a hell of a time.
Slight dampener in that C isn’t feeling well around 11 or midnight. She seems pretty intent on walking back to the BnB on her own, which is not something I’m going to allow, for safety reasons… the walk is at least 45 mins and it’s well after sunset. I manage to recruit one of the boys to ferry us back for a quick 10 minute ride, drop off C with a kiss, and then roll back to continue sending with the lads for the one proper night we’ll have together.
Everyone’s fucking trashed and exuberant, it’s glorious. More dancing. Isabella is getting a little bit handsy, trying to pull me onto the dance floor with her… maybe a bit overly so. I end up shutting it down quickly but politely, no hard feelings there at all. Probably not badly intentioned, but was a bit weird considering we both rolled in with plus ones.
Party has moved poolside where dessert is served, and I make sure to stash some to bring back to C who has a crazy sweet tooth. A final ceremony where the newly married couple stands with a bunch of towering sparklers shooting fire into the night sky behind them, followed up by more drinks and dancing late into the night, but before you know it, it’s over, and we’re on on our way back to the BnB.
Part ways with the lads, with a quick discussion about some brunch plans the next day, and I tuck C in (she scarfs down the dessert I’ve brought back for her) before we drift off to sleep.
Beautiful ceremony, and I’m truly honored to have been a part of it all. Way more fun with C in tow, would have been a disaster being stranded by myself out there. Most of the lads are up in Milan for work; I’ll have to make sure that I pop by and visit at some point in the future. They’re also definitely invited to my future wedding; the Italians really know how to do it right, and these lads are awesome.
Alrighty, so we’re finally off to Italy! After some hemming and hawing, C has agreed to accompany me to Italy to be my plus one for this joyous matrimony between my dear, longtime, friend Davinci, and his lovely wife, ummm, wifey. Yep, totally know her name at this point. Our rich and storied friendship, which consists of getting fucked up with his boys two nights in Albania, is sure to endear me to all of the bride’s side of the family.
The wedding is on Saturday, near the cozy eastern seaside town where Davinci grew up in, Ciro Marina. CHIRO, Maaaareeeeena. Really fun to say the town name, it just rolls off the tongue in a pleasing way. But we aren’t there yet, it’s only Tuesday. Since I’ve never been to Italy, I decide early on that it would make the most sense to try and spend at least a week there. The whole planning process is a is bit of a mess.
C, who has onboarded herself rather late, has certain accommodation standards, and has taken it on herself to organize the Airbnb and train tickets. In exchange, I am handling wedding gifts for both of us, plus food and drink for the week. However, there are a few hiccups right off the bat.
For starters, we are struggling to find a ton of places that seem reasonably priced in Ciro Marina. Additionally, I 100% need to have a good internet connection so that I can continue streaming / coaching throughout the week so I don’t go broke. As a kicker, there are no direct flights into Ciro Marina; the nearest airports are in Lamezia Terme or Crotone. Have you heard of any of these famous locales? Me neither.
Seaside towns are notorious for having dog shit internet connections, and for some fucking reason, a lot of Airbnb / Booking.com hosts refuse to post explicit details on their download / upload speeds. So there’s a lot of back and forth between myself, C, and various hosts, trying to get these luddites to run an internet speed test. Plus an additional back and forth between C and I as we tried to find a compromise between a guaranteed internet connection and her standards.
In case you were unaware, I absolutely detest planning. I don’t amble around aimlessly, I walk with intent to a destination. I don’t browse around in a store. If I’m in one, it’s because I know exactly what I want, I go in, I buy it, and I get the fuck outta there. It’s not the initial organizing part of planning that bothers me, but the inevitable tedious feedback loop that follows as soon as there’s any additional input involved. Maybe I need to take a meditation class or some hippy bullshit. I have infinite patience in some ways, but in others, I have an incredibly short fuse.
So in the end, it makes a lot more sense to just give my single requirement of fast internet to C, and then let her handle that. Or at least, it should have. She picks a spot on Airbnb, but her card doesn’t work, and instead of checking the booking, I end up just shipping her my credit card info to throw down for the place. Without double checking what she’s booked. Like a god damn fool.
We end up with a nice place in a “neighboring” town on the east coast called Tronca for the first six days, 2 flights into Lamezia Terme on the west coast from Paris and Tirana, 2 flights back to our respective cities from the same airport at the end of the week, one night in LT before our flights out, and train tickets between LT and Tronca. Surely, there won’t be any issues getting to the actual wedding destination. Surely, there will be Ubers, cabs, or car rental and we’ll be able to hop around as we please. Surely.
But hey, we have a really nice romantic getaway planned in Italy. The C saga continues! We’re going to a random Italian wedding with some cool new friends, and we’re going to get to spend a bunch of time beachside, together. Planning has been a shitshow, but excitement is running high.
I take a lift to Tirana airport with Big Will, and we roll up in record time. He’s swerving back and forth like a maniac, we’re both hacking darts inside the cab, and the music is pumping. Dude’s just an absolute beauty.
As an added bonus, K-dawg and Bobo are both at the airport the same time as me. They are flying out to Japan for a couple of weeks, and our flights are only an hour apart. So instead of my traditional solo airport lager, we are able to grab a morning drink together and have a little chitchat over a smoke or two before they have to hop on their plane.
My flight takes off soon after without issues. I’m in an emergency row, so I can stretch my legs out and have a chuckle over the fact my one way flight cost me all of 37 Euros. Man, travelling in Europe is crazy. (As an aside: I didn’t exactly roll to Europe with a suit, but K-dawg is an absolutely beauty and has hooked me up with a couple of pieces from his personal collection. I’ll be looking sharp at this thing!)
Touch down and breeze through security like I’m an Italian national. Canadian passport strikes again! Couple of drug sniffing dogs give me a once over, but I’m clean as a whistle baby. Now I’m chilling in the terminal and have two hours to kill until C lands in from Paris. The town itself isn’t that far from the terminal, and I’m feeling pretty peckish, so I figure it can’t hurt to go grab some pizza in Italy and see what the hype is all about.
It’s nine in the morning and there aren’t a ton of options available on Google Maps, but I do find a restaurant about a 5 minute drive into town. So I flag down a cabby, hop in, show him the restaurant on google maps, and tell him that I’m going to grab some pizza. He doesn’t speak a lick of English, but I figure the Google Map location I show him on my phone leaves no room for error. Turns out, once again, I’m dead wrong.
We have taken a few overpasses to get from the terminal to the restaurant, and all seems good, until all of a sudden, we make a right when the map wants us to go left. I’m telling him in a pretty calm voice that he’s going the wrong way, and that I’m trying to go to the restaurant on the map, to get some pizza. He repeats loudly, “pizza, yes, pizza”, and continues driving the wrong fucking way.
I’m starting to get pretty damn frustrated at this point. I raise my voice, and am frantically gesturing at the phone, repeating, “restaurant. pizza. We’re going the wrong way!”. We’re already on a one way highway that’s headed completely the wrong direction towards the south somewhere. I zoom out on google maps, and finally realize what’s happening… there’s literally a town 30 miles to the south called “Piazza”. Pronounced “Pizza” obviously. For fuck sakes.
The driver can tell at this point that he’s doing something wrong, based on how agitated I am. It finally dawns on him that maybe, I want to eat pizza, at the restaurant, in town, at the location I have marked on my GPS in front of his face, while miming myself eating a pizza. But it’s too late. This is literally a one way highway that goes all the way south to the town of Piazza, with zero turnoffs, and a metal railing separating us from the road back. This is going to be at least an hour long detour. There’s not much that can be done at this point; he’s still running the meter, but I tell him that he’s not getting more than 20 Euros, not that he understands a damn thing. Probably for the best or else he’d probably try to drop me off in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.
The drive south is scenic at least, but I’m a little too steamed up to really enjoy it at first. We both calm down about five mins into the drive, trauma bonded by our shared taxi prison and this hour long waste of both of our times, and he hands me a mint as a peace offering. I apologize for getting heated, and I think he understands, solely based on my conciliatory tone. We settle into the rest of the drive, and he finally gets me to the destination five minutes away from the terminal, an hour later. Here’s your 20 bucks, now fuck off.
Lamezia Terme isn’t particularly pretty. Ghost town with a few scattered old people, rusty orange / red dirt color and buildings that look like they are slowly falling apart. Including the restaurant. I get the impression that it’s an aging community / a flight hub at best, and there’s not a lot of new blood coming through.
I’m still excited to try an Italian pizza though. So I’m more than a little bit miffed when I try to order one and they tell me they won’t fire up the pizza ovens for another 3 hours. I swear to god, Europeans are more allergic to work than I am. Basically nothing on the menu is available, so for the first meal I’ve ever had in Italy, I order… a hamburger.
A fucking hamburger. In Italy. Ridiculous, but one of about three lunch items that were available. Of course, it’s Italy, so they have no idea what a hamburger is. There’s no bun, there’s no lettuce, there’s no ketchup, there’s no cheese. I literally receive a plate with a single beef patty, a slice of tomato, and some fries. No condiments at all in fact. “Ohhhh, but Brando, it’s a deconstructed hamburger, the condiments would just detract from the authentic flavors”. Shut the fuck up and give me my ketchup.
Anyways, C pulls up, we slam a coffee, and make our way to the train station. We get our ID’s checked by some cops on the way, probably haven’t seen an Asian in town since WW2. We are a healthy 4-5 hours ahead of our train, and figure we have more than enough time to pop over to the beach on the west side of town. She’s fairly insistent that we hop on a bus, but I have my doubts about public transportation here, and end the argument by just whipping my phone out and grabbing us an Uber.
The beach is about a twenty minute drive out west. A nice, rocky beach. Small rocks, so not super painful on the feet, but not exactly the pristine white sand of Tulum. But to be fair, the view is pretty beautiful. And hey, we have each other.
Throw down our towels on the rocks, cuddle and embrace a bit. I throw on my swim drunks and hop in for a dip, while C sets up the chessboard and tries to entice me into another game. She really is hooked on chess, it’s great. Altogether, a pretty nice time.
But we don’t have a whole lot of time. We def aren’t missing our train. So we pack up with about 2h to spare, and roll back to the main junction where the road links up with a small forest area adjacent to the beach.
Check my phone, and I’m at 2% battery. Uh oh. It turns out that if my laptop isn’t plugged in, it doesn’t charge my phone. I’ve put out an Uber request, but we’ve seen maybe four people out here the entire hour and a half we chilled on the beach, and the Uber ride search is coming up completely dry.
I’m suggesting to C that she install Uber on her phone, and that we start walking back more towards civilization at the same time as we try to order one so we hedge our bets. But despite being only a twenty minute drive back to the train station, the entire journey is essentially highway; walking back MIGHT get us back in 2h. I just figure that if we start walking closer we’re more likely to get one of the 2 Uber drivers in the whole town to pick us up.
But C “doesn’t have enough data” to install Uber. Which may or may not be true. I’m casting some doubt here, because if you recall, we’re only an hour or two out from a disagreement about taking Uber or bus to get to the beach. We may also both have a bit of a stubborn streak. Hmmmm, interesting coincidence that what she wants to do is roll over to this “bus station” and take a bus back. And that there’s no way she can acquire enough data to install Uber. I’m still trying to charge my phone via laptop on a picnic table, but before I can plead my case any further, she’s off and walking away from the main road down a dirt path. Towards this “bus station”.
Well, fuck me boys. I guess that’s the end of the discussion. We walk twenty minutes down a dirt path with stress levels through the roof, take a left onto a super quiet street, and are now in an abandoned neighborhood with some decrepit houses on the one side, and a field on the other side between the road and yet another highway. We arrive at the “bus station” which is literally a gravel square cut out of the adjacent field with a faded sign that’s illegible.
My phone is now dead, and we have an hour and a half to get back to the train station, or we’re going to be stranded in this town for at least another day. Plan going swimmingly so far. I ask her to at least try to hook onto one of the houses wifi connections, but they are all secured. It’s not like she can admit now that she can add more data so we can try to cover all our options and put out an Uber request. So, we’re fucked basically.
No easy access to the houses either, no visible paths to the front doors, and it’s a long shot anyone is home right now anyways. Don’t really want to be hopping fences in the Italian countryside, I have a feeling all small towns in the world are all sort of the same. They probably don’t take kindly to outsiders, and with a massive language barrier, the last thing I want to do is get attacked by some kind of Italian redneck who thinks an obvious foreigner is attempting a break and enter. We could walk, but we have all our luggage, and there’s no way we’re going to make it to the train station in time.
I’m still trying to charge my stupid phone with my laptop, and then, out of nowhere, a car rolls up onto our abandoned road. Female driver, about 40 years old. C makes the approach, asks if there’s a bus coming. No bus. Maybe there never was a bus. Never saw that one coming. C asks if we can borrow her phone. Nope. Female driver clearly looking to get out of here, basically rolls up her window and fucks right off. Friendly.
Ok, part of it is clearly the language barrier. But still, come on. Take a look at me. I obviously don’t belong here, we’re lost tourists, a little help would be great. I’ve basically come to terms with the fact we’re going to miss the train at this point. I’m more or less ready to just start walking; it’s going to be a miserable walk, but there’s not much else to do but suck it up.
Miracle of miracles, a second car shows up. In the middle of nowhere, a second car. Husband and wife this time. Also in their forties. C flags them down once again (she’s petite and sweet looking, not to mention white and female, definitely the play here). They speak a tiny bit more English than the first driver, realize that we are completely fucked, and offer to lift us back into town. There is a god! Or at least, nice people still exist.
We pile our stuff in with us into the backseat of their car, and hitchhike back into town with the couple. It’s going to be tight, but it looks like we’re going to make it. They drop us off a few blocks from the train station, and I offer them twenty euros, but they just smile and wave it off. “Have a nice trip, get the fuck outta our car”. But for real, those guys were a lifesaver, this could have been a wholeeee different trip if the day 1 fiasco went just a little bit differently.
We rush into the train station, manage to figure out the platform we need to be on, board the train, transfer halfway along the journey to a bus, and make it to a bus station just south of Tronca. We’ve reached out to our AirBnB host, and he’s arranged for his buddy to pick us up and drive us to the apartment. Ride goes smoothly for 10 Euros, and we make it there without any further hiccups.
C and I could have been a little bit more salty with each other, but neither of us holds a grudge long, and the second we made it onto the train, I think the overwhelming feeling on both sides was relief. Crisis averted, time to enjoy Italy!
Brando's Rambles 