My European Venture: Looking back at Como – Bellagio – Lugano

I haven’t blogged at all for a long time now (Lazy me!). So I have lots to write about. My Everyday Mischief for the past years are gonna be revealed here and my memory will be put to test. I am very bad at remembering things so these posts will hopefully help in  exercising my weak memory. 😉

Year 2013. Having been selected for an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to study at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, I got to travel abroad for the first time in my life in this year. And from then on I’ve traveled to many countries, seen beautiful places, met people from different cultures and it has been an interesting journey.

This post is about my trip to Lake Como (Lago di Como) in Italy and Lugano in Switzerland.  I was eager to travel right from the instant I set foot in Europe. Its vast diversity in culture and the natural beauty and the historical places intrigued me! Como was my first trip. Me and a good friend Divyaksh bought tickets in Trenitalia and set out for this short trip from Torino.

The Running Man

The first thing I noticed when I started planning for this trip was  the shape of  Lake Como. It resembles the legs of a running man! The boot shaped country has a lake that is shaped like the legs of a running man! Interesting! Reaching Como (town at the foot of  the lake) by noon, we walked around in the small town exploring the beautiful buildings and the traces of its Roman  origins. Though not as beautiful as the other nearby towns like Bellagio, this was a good starting point of our trip.

A must try at this place is a local variety of pasta called Pizzoccheri.

It is a type of short tagliatelle, a flat ribbon pasta, made along with greens and potatoes and topped with Parmigiano Reggiano or Grano Padano cheese. We found this really delicious and gave us the energy to move on to the next stop in our itinerary, the beautiful town of Bellagio.

Bellagio

This town is located at the place where the two legs joined. Standing at the tip of Bellagio, we joked about this location and giggled like silly teenage kids in biology class. We had a good laugh later thinking of our silliness. We found out that George Clooney owned a villa near this town. Finding a place to stay in Bellagio on a tight budget is impossible. We went around asking people if someone offered a place to sleep the night. Finally we decided to take the ferry to the not-so-touristic village of  Menaggio. We found a youth hostel right near the dock, facing the lake and decided to spend the night there. We met a few other travelers and had fun sharing stories with them and got tips about places to visit during the coming days.

The Angry Italian

Early morning we were woken up by an angry Italian man in his fifties. He had reached our dorm room (which had four beds) at 4 am. He was shouting at us in Italian and we were gaping at him without understanding a word he said. It was our first month in Italy and we were still learning basic Italian. We replied with just “Non ho capito! Non ho capito! Scusa!” (I do not understand, sorry!) every time he opened his mouth to shout at us. We were bewildered at what had caused this man to be so upset! Later we found out that we had forgotten to turn off our alarms and this man was not able to sleep because of it! Poor man!! Again we were so stupid!! We freshened up, had breakfast and went out for a stroll along the lake, enjoying the beauty of the lake, dawn making it a mesmerizing sight.

Lugano

We took a bus form Menaggio to Lugano. We crossed the border to Switzerland going through a security gate where the Swiss Authorities peeked into the bus for namesake. Without any delay we reached Lugano and here I met a childhood friend of mine. It is so exciting to meet  someone you know so well in a totally different country and speak your own language! We walked through the town enjoying its picturesque parks and Lake of Lugano. We saw some interesting street arts!

Later we went to the top of a hill in a Funicolare. We found out that Switzerland is extremely expensive for non-residents. The residents have something called as a half-card which gives them reductions on all rates throughout the country and for us this Funiculare ride was pretty expensive. Well… having reached all the way till here we did not want to miss out on the awesome sight from the top. So up we went!

Switzerland is thrice as expensive for non-residents 😦

There was a church on top of the hill and we went on the roof of this church to get a birds eye view of Lugano. The sun was playing hide and seek in between the clouds. It would have been loads better if it was not so cloudy. We were lucky only for a few seconds when the sun shined over us.

We came back down in the funicolare having loads of fun recollecting the things that we used to do in our childhood days and telling each other our experiences after reaching Europe. As the day came to an end, so did our trip. We bid each other goodbye to meet again soon and Trenitalia brought us back to Torino, to prepare and look forward to out next destination!

Rome! Here we come!