An American Abroad

What happens when you’re half way across the world and suddenly you find yourself stranded in the middle of a foreign country? Well…let me tell you.

1. Overview
2. The Saga
   1. Context
   2. Arrival
   3. Vicenza
   4. Trapped
   5. As Luck Would Have It
   6. Back-up Plans
3. Reflections
4. Summary

Overview

Who:    Myself + 2 friends
What:   Trapped in the middle of Italy for 7 hours
When:   June 2025
Where:  Vicenza, Italy
How:    That...is a great question

The Saga

Context

I am a huge Imagine Dragons fan and I have always wanted to go to one of their concerts. Conveniently, Imagine Dragons toured in North America the second I moved to the UK.

Perfect timing.

Fortunately, I now live in the UK!! So when Imagine Dragons announced a European tour that included a few locations in England, I immediately jumped at the opportunity and bought tickets…for Italy. Padua, to be specific. Oh and in case you are wondering, that is a 4 hour flight from London.

Two of my friends and I decided to fly across the continent to go see a concert that was definitely coming to our country of residence. We decided to make it into a week-long girls trip primarily based out of Verona. How romantic 🙂

Arrival

Here was the situation. My 2 friends and I decided to meet up in Venice. The plan was to spend a few hours there before using the very reliable public transportation of mainland Europe to travel to Verona. This was about a 1hr 30 minute train with a transfer midway in Padua.

It sounded like a good plan to us, as we would be in Padua later in the week for the Imagine Dragons concert and would be able to familiarize ourselves with the train station ahead of time.

The girlies and I arrived in Venice and we had a lovely little lunch by the Grand Canal. It was sunny, beautiful, and perfect day for a relaxed chat by the water. We caught a train to Verona about mid-afternoon to make sure there was enough time to casually arrive to our accommodation and unpack before heading out to dinner that evening.

We left from Venezia Santa Lucia – the primary train station of Venice and therefore a major hub of transportation. The journey had several stops: Venezia Mestre (mainland Venice), Padua (the transfer), Vicenza, San Bonifacio, Verona Porta Vescovo, and finally Verona Porta Nuova.

We never made it.

Vicenza

There we were on the train. We transferred in Padua and settled in for the hour long journey westward to Verona.

Deep in conversation, it took a few minutes to realize that it had begun to rain. Moments later the rain turned into a full-on thunderstorm. Water droplets pelted the windows, great big streaks of lightning arced across the sky. It was truly impressive!

Thankfully, the sudden and intense weather didn’t last very long. The train simply continued on as normal, calmly pulling into the next station – Vicenza – where the weather was beautiful again! No worries here.

15 minutes later an announcement is made informing all passengers that this train was now heading back to Venice, and to get off of the train immediately should we want to catch another train continuing on to our destination. No context, no reason why, nothing. Weird, but it happens. We followed directions and wow was that a mistake.

Trapped

As someone who only takes public transportation, I know a lot about how it works and what the various options are. My travelling companions are also well-versed in this practice, so 3 competent adults should have no issues with solving the problem of a train being cancelled. We could not have been more wrong.

Over the next seven hours (yes, seven hours), we consistently worked to figure out a way to get to Verona.

Here is a list of our attempts:

• simply catch the next train to Verona
  • every train for the next 2 hours was cancelled mere minutes before arriving, so we spent that time walking back and forth between platforms just to be let down each time
• get a bus to Verona
  • there were zero normal busses to Verona from Vicenza at any point
• get a Flixbus to Verona
  • there were only a few Flixbus time slots for this journey and they were completely full due to the amount of people stuck in Vicenza from the cancellations
• take a taxi
  • not one single taxi was available for the next 6 hours (yes, we continued checking)
• take an uber
  • there was exactly 1 uber driver in Vicenza and he kept declining our request (I can only assume because of the distance)
• take any other train going anywhere west of Vicenza to do a little round-a-about route
  • not one train left Vicenza going westward at any point
  • every single one kept getting cancelled
• walk?
  • the walk from Vicenza to Verona was 11 hours
• try taxi/uber again…and again…and again…
  • nothing…and nothing…and still nothing…
• okay fine – let’s just stay in Vicenza for tonight and we’ll get a train in the morning
  • zero hostels in Vicenza
  • managed to book a little apartment for the night on booking.com but when we showed up to the address we could not find the place
  • called/email/left messages via the contact info and could not get ahold of them
  • got locked in a courtyard while trying to find the accommodation – thankfully someone came through the door and we were able to slip out
• attempted to walk into any of the several hotels that were labelled on Apple Maps
  • had to ask for help finding it just to be informed that at 8pm, it was closed and unavailable to us
• asked for advice on where to stay
  • closest place was a 45 minute walk out of town and wasn’t guaranteed to have room

Cue slight panic because now it’s 8:30pm and we cannot get out of this city nor find a place in it to stay.

As Luck Would Have It

Now I wouldn’t call myself a ‘lucky person’. Luck and I don’t usually get on well, but this might have been an exception.

It just so happened that one of my friends had family who had just so happened to be staying nearby Padua that same week in an accommodation that just so happened to have three extra beds. And they just so happened to be renting a car that had just enough space to squeeze all of us and our bags in to it.

Truly, what are the odds of that.

8 hours after arriving in Vicenza, my friend’s family very kindly came to pick us up and allowed us to stay with them for the night. Needless to say, we were incredibly grateful. Thankfully, the following day the trains were all sorted out and we successfully arrived in Verona about midday, thus ending the Vicenza saga.

Back-up Plans

As I said before, ‘Luck’ and I are not exactly friends, so I always need to have several back-up plans should something go wrong. For example, what would have happened if my friend’s family wasn’t staying in Italy that week?

Here’s what I would have done:

1. Trains were going eastward through Vicenza, so I would’ve taken one back to Padua and gotten a hotel there. Padua is a bigger city and has dozens of hotels to choose from. I would have been able to find something somewhere in the city.
2. Taken the train all the way back to Venice. The first two nights I had stayed in a hostel that I knew had 24/7 reception and plenty of open beds that week. They definitely would have had something available, but I would have arrived very, very late.

Reflections

This was the most difficulty I have ever had with transportation while on a trip. Truly, I was shocked by just how problematic it was. As solution after solution fell through, it was easy to get caught up in panic, but panic doesn’t help the situation. At the end of the day, you’re still stuck whether or not you freak out about it.

Maybe some of you are asking why we didn’t call the police for help. Well, funny story there. As we were sitting at the train station waiting for my friend’s family to arrive, two police officers approached us and asked to see our papers. Now, this has genuinely never happened to me before, but it is a normal and legal thing to do. While they were scanning our passports, they asked us why we were in Vicenza. I told them we were desperately trying to get to Verona but were genuinely trapped in Vicenza for 8 hours and could not get out nor find a place to stay. I assumed they would offer some advice, but they looked right at us, said, “Enjoy your stay,” and simply walked away.

Safe to say I am happy to never go back to Vicenza. To be fair, it’s not the city’s fault, but after everything that day…not sure I want to relive that.

Summary

An inevitable truth:

Travelling always comes with an element of risk

Travellers quickly have to learn to rely on problem-solving skills to succeed safely. Navigating the world in your native country can be difficult enough, but navigating everything in a foreign language is much more challenging – even with translation apps. It is undoubtedly a skill that takes practice.

In my experience, having the confidence to travel means putting in time to be as prepared as possible (you can never be prepared for everything), practicing assessing your surroundings, always creating back-up plans should something fall through, and doing your research!

In reality, no amount of preparation could have gotten me through the Vicenza incident, but the confidence in knowing that I would figure something out (having the back-up plans in place) is what helped me stay calm instead of giving into panic.