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Illustration by Juliana Neufeld
The train ride to Florence was like exploring an art gallery of landscapes that filled the window frame perfectly. My travel habits were and still are to just go with it, so there was no plan. I’d been staying in Rome but was taking a short trip to Florence for a coffee roasting and cupping class. I just assumed that any mode of public transportation I would need after getting off the train would be somewhere nearby. Youthful innocence with a slight absence of fear can be exciting but completely irresponsible. My only plan was to take a public trolley to the course. How difficult could that be? Well, it was. I got lost and couldn’t find the exact stop. I noticed that the streets seemed less crowded than in Rome as I circled the various streets in search of the stop, with some streets looking bare. A few shops were open, and shopkeepers did their best to direct me, but even I could see in their eyes that only divine assistance was going to help me get to where I needed to go.
I was hungry and cranky, and it was hot. It was the middle of summer and I soon learned why the streets were so barren. Florence was celebrating the feast of its patron saint, San Giovanni. I had only 20 minutes to get to that class and by that point, I had found an underground shop plaza, sat myself down on a cool concrete bench, and decided that I could probably learn how to roast coffee from YouTube. I sat there contemplating whether I should grab a taxi but mostly thought about how I should have planned better, been better, and how it was childish of me to just go with the wind in a foreign place. Oh, how disappointed I was in myself, and I had only myself to blame.
Perhaps San Giovanni gave everyone a break in Florence that day, including its guilt-ridden visitors. But as soon as I accepted defeat and thought about whether I wanted pasta or a sandwich to heal my regrets in life, I looked up and as you would see in the movies, there was a tunnel opening right in front of where I was sitting, with the sunlight shining through it beautifully. I stood up, almost mindlessly, and walked toward it and up the stairs. Just as my feet landed on the surface of the street, I looked up and there was the stop I was looking for with the trolley arriving in less than five minutes. I felt tears forming in my eyes.
The trolley ride was quick. I followed the directions from the platform the shop provided. I even used the GPS on my phone as backup, but being navigationally challenged, I was still running in circles. The streets were even more silent and scarce on street signs and I was afraid that I would truly not be found, ever, again. I walked back to the platform and sat on a bench waiting for the next trolley, resigned that this was not meant to be while e-mailing the course administrator that I would be a no-show.
My phone pinged quickly soon after and I received a reply that Angelo, the course director, was going to come find me and bring me to the shop. He looked flustered when he found me standing sheepishly near the stop, and I was overly apologetic watching him wheeze from running to come to get me. But he said he was happy that I didn’t leave, and he assured me that I would have a great time.
I joined the class, which included friend groups from Switzerland and Turkey. After we shared the many espressos we made, and for me on an empty stomach, which gave me heart palpitations, they invited me to have dinner with them.
After our meal, we walked for hours through the city, with no direction, just moving how and where we wanted. We shared stories in the warm and breezy Florentine night about everything and anything, as if we spent a lifetime together and were never strangers.
At the end of the evening, the couple from Switzerland invited the group to the rooftop of their apartment complex to watch the fireworks that were set to go off to celebrate the holiday. We all sat on the ledge that had no barriers, but none of us were scared, at least from what I could tell. We talked about how this was meant to be as fireworks lit the sky. And after the adventures of the day, it became clearer that the map inside us does lead us to the exact right places.
Lilian Kim lives in Toronto.