Day 8 – Part Drei – I’ve never done this before…

No. Wait. I have.

I have to visit the train station to make a reservation for my journey to Berlin. My FOB (Forward Operating Base) is a cafe / restaurant near Magenta Carducci and I have to make my way to Garibaldi Train Station. Here on GoogleMaps in the path I took. It’s a nice day and I have lots of time so I decide to go on foot. It’s about three clicks, not too far. So as I’m walking it I realize, hey I’ve done this before.

See back in 2006 during the Greatest Time Ever (TM) I was visiting Jan and Rita in Monza. It was the week after their wedding and I had made plans to meet up with some of Rita’s nice Italian friends for drinks. It was Friday night I think. There were some logistical problems and by the time I got to the bar it was almost 01:00. So we clear out of there at around 02:30 and this leaves me with about 4 hours to kill before the trains start running.

Now, as everyone knows, to get to Monza from Milan one has to take a train from Garibaldi. I have with me everything I need: map, compass, sense of adventure. So here I am, I’m slowly making my way across the city to the train station. I’m walking thought this real quiet area, it must be a little after 05:00. There’s almost no traffic around. Suddenly I hear a loud CRUNCH. I look over and see this car has backed into a parked Smart. So I run up just in time to see these two guys speed away. I get their license plate number and they see me get their license plate number.

So what do I do? Half of me want to go home and get some sleep. The other half wants to wait for the owner of the car to show up so we can nail those hit-and-run assholes. I wanted to leave a note but I had this fear that the asshole guys were just waiting to come back and take it from the car before the owner showed up. Full disclosure: during this same trip I had several other experiences with the Italian police the results of which discouraged me from contacting them.

So what I ended up doing was writing two notes – with my contact information and the license number of the other car. One I put on the windshield. The other I stuffed into the damaged bumper. I figured if they came and got the first note, they might not think to look for the second one. Now I know what you’re all thinking: I should have hidden a third note. But if my memory serves me, and it doesn’t, I only had enough paper for two.

After all that, I’m not sure if my solution worked because I never got called, but I would like to think dude got his car fixed and the other guys paid for it.