We've all been there. We all dream to meet our friends from exchange again and it always feels impossible, or too far in the future, but this time it finally happened. My friend from Ecuador, Anita, and her friends flew to Europe for the first time this summer. It just worked out perfectly because we contacted our friend from Germany, Torben, and we all met in Milan, which is where we spent most of our time, but not all. Let's see where we went.

Artistic Venice and its Canals.

Since my Brazilian friend and my Italian friend have never been to Venice before, and I was planning to go there with my exchange student friends, I decided to extend the invitation to everybody. The seven of us went to this beautiful city for one full day. I was the only one who visited before, therefore I was guiding them from one place to another.

Everywhere I go I try to find a way to see the place from above. Fondaco Dei Tedeschi seemed to be the answer to our problems. What's particularly good about it? It's free! You just have to book your visit and wait for your turn. Was it beautiful? We don't know! ...It started raining just as little as ten minutes before our booking and the staff was forced to close the terrace due to weather conditions.

So we moved to the next attraction: Quinn's "Mani" (hands) sculpture.

Gone. It was gone. I was just assuming that the sculpture was going to stay long term but it actually has been three months since its removal. We continued our walking tour of Venice and by lunchtime, we reached Piazza San Marco, and so did our bad luck.

We were tired, hungry and rained on. We spotted some steps on which we were planning to sit on but we barely had the time to get close to them that a lady told us that it was prohibited to either sit or eat there. Confused, we found out that in Piazza San Marco it is prohibited to sit on the steps or eat, otherwise people can get tickets between €25 and €500! We just didn't like the way they approached us, and other tourists too. I told my friends that I was sorry we were treated that way and that even if I am Italian I have never experienced anything like that in the past, so we ended up eating our paninis there, because yes, apparently it is okay to eat as long as you stand. Weird.

The results of our Google research "Where to go or what to do in Venice when it rains" didn't really satisfy us so we ended up recharging our energies at Burger King.

We enjoyed the day anyway, in fact, we met two tourists from Vienna that were really nice to us when we kindly asked to take some pictures, but we also met another lady at the station who gave up two taxi passes (worth €60 each!) because she was leaving and wasn't going to use them anymore. Very cool! Shoutout to Italotreno staff for allowing us to sit together even if we were assigned random seats when we purchased the tickets.

Milan, an Alpha Global City.

I was born and raised in this city, I showed it to several of my international friends over the years and I never get bored of it, although bad luck decided to follow us back to Milan from Venice. I specifically chose Sunday because Pirellone observatory opens to the public and the view over the city is really cool - but I found out that Comune di Milano stopped the visits temporarily, which means that we were not able to go. At least I googled it before we reached the place, so we went to these places instead: Piazza Affari (the stock exchange), Duomo Cathedral, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (the exclusive shopping mall), Piazza Liberty, Quadrilatero della Moda (the fashion district), Castello Sforzesco (a 14th-century fortification), Arco della Pace (the arch of peace), Chinatown, Garibaldi & Piazza Gae Aulenti (which hosts the highest skyscraper in the whole country), and ended our walking tour in Navigli, where we had aperitivo. Something cool? We met a girl from Serbia, who happened to be part of AIESEC and so we spent some time with her talking about traveling and foreign languages.

The Touristy Lake Como.

This place never seems to be missing from the list of places to visit in Northern Italy. Since it seems like luck has never been on our side, we ended up losing two trains to Como, boarding a train that eventually never left Milan, and to finally take one that arrived at our destination ten minutes later than expected. I'm not kidding. We lost the train to Como Nord Lago at 1.10pm and we arrived in Como S. Giovanni at 4pm. What a pain in the ass. Wanna know what's funny? The train to Como was the only one that carried delays. Ha.

We took the Funicolare to Brunate to enjoy the view. It's amazing because you can actually see Milan from the top. The round trip ride costs €5.50, which I thought was reasonable. I would avoid going when the sun is still warm and over the lake because the water reflects all the light and it's not the best.

It has definitely been a trip for the books. I'm glad that we were also a bit unlucky and that our plans got changed because all of that made it even more special. There are things that just ourselves can understand. They won't make sense to other people even if you try to explain them in twenty different ways. I have been able to see a lot of people from my exchange throughout the years, but this was the first time that we were more than two. 

And you? Have you met your exchange buddies? If not, are you planning to soon? And where? Your host country, home country or elsewhere?

- Cris