One Way Not To Start A Business Trip

I have a pretty good gig going, gotta admit. A lot of my coworkers are stuck on an endless cycle of flying up to Portland for some part of every week, and there’s nothing wrong with that the first few times, but it’s getting old. Six o’clock flights, cheesy hotels in the ‘burbs with little kitchenettes, and long hours in the vast gray or tan cubicle farms that the company has scattered about up there. Now, some of them are in Taiwan this week, and some others are in India, but no one seemed particularly excited about any of it. Meanwhile I got to come back to northern Italy.

It’s all business, of course. I wouldn’t be here if the project was going well and there isn’t much in the way of sightseeing on the agenda. Maybe a really good restaurant or two. But still. I’m a dozen or twenty kilometers north of Milan. No complaints allowed.

One thing I’ve done though that I really didn’t want to do was lose all my credit cards.

In Atlanta I bought lunch in between airplanes, and put my wallet in my laptop backpack so I wouldn’t have to sit on it during the long flight across the ocean. In Milan I came out into baggage claim and decided it was time to get some euros at the currency exchange. Looked all through my backpack: no wallet.

Do I really need to recount the ensuing three hours? Shuffling from lost luggage to the airline to the airport carabinieri, trying (mostly in vain) to get a net connection so I could get some critical phone numbers, hauling a backpack full of books and laptop and two heavy suitcases (tools, parts, a weeks’ worth of clothing, spare shoes, I don’t know) up and down and up and down to different floors, and finally after doing all I could do discovering that the rental agency wouldn’t give me a car because I also lost my driver’s license?

A car? Yes, thanks to some big festival, all of Milan and every hotel near a train station is booked solid, so I’m out in the boonies, a nice place I’m sure but no train station so I need a car to get to the office. This problem will be solved by the fact a colleague is joining me tonight, and he can drive. Unfortunately he’s from England, so I’m not sure he can drive in Italy.

Oh, of course he can. Brits drive on the continent all the time. So I’m told. Anyway, it’s five-ish outside and dinnertime but eight in the morning to me, and I stink, and no one within ten kilometers speaks English, but I did get some cash and a ride by using my resources, so I guess all will be well because it will end well, though the well part hasn’t happened yet. Traveling’s never really easy, but this could have been a whole lot worse, so still no complaints from me are allowed, no indeed, I get that.

One way out my window:

The other way: