Failure in Florence

        For the first time, I was alone. 

     Truly on my own. 

     But that was the point, wasn’t it? To get away. Away from the comfortable, from the complications of family and routine of old friends and from the messiness of the United States. You could say I fled to Europe, and you’d be right in a way. It felt more like I was chasing something. If it was history down every cobblestone street, the green and rolling hills or the soothing melody of a British accent, I couldn’t tell you. But when I studied abroad in England, I was alone. 

    Only, mostly, there were other people around. There always is. I made friends with some Danes at Bath Spa University, which is where I really studied, I swear, and soon the uncertainty of another country faded. Soon England alone wasn’t enough. While I was that close to the rest of the continent, I had to travel. I had to see as many places as possible, so I planned a trip. I hit six countries in ten days, starting with Venice. I traveled alone. I didn’t want to wait for my new friends to plan something so vital to my time aboard.  

     Hours before I left, I learned that the city of canals was flooded. I heard nothing about a canceled flight so I went at three in the morning to the airport and after an hour or so in the air, I was in Italy as the sun was rising over the water. Venice was gorgeous and the green waters had receded to their rightful pathways by the time I arrived. If it weren’t for a puddle in the very center of a large stone square, I would not have known. My trouble didn’t start until Rome when the rain came. 

    I spent two days in my second stop and heavy rains sputtered on and off throughout both. I got drenched seeing what could have been the Pope or a muppet in the far off window at the Vatican and I nearly fell on the slippery stones more than once. But those things didn’t matter, because I was in Rome, the place where all roads led, the center of a once-great empire. A thousand some years of history laid below my feet. With a grand fountain around every corner, how could a little rain get to me? What was a little water compared to the Colosseum? It couldn’t hurt anything or so I thought. 

     On the third day of my trip my phone, after some fumbling, ended up in water. In a heart-stopping moment, I thought I was doomed, but the screen turned on and everything seemed fine. My phone was where I had my bus tickets, my Airbnb information. It was my map and my camera. It was how I let my family know that I was safe.  I sent my thanks to whatever Roman gods were around me and continued on my way, heading to Florence that evening, wherein an Airbnb I had to lay out the contents of my oversized backpack to dry and select my class for my sixth semester of college. 

     It wasn’t until I was standing before the David trying to get a good photo of the beautifully carved marble when I noticed. The David was fuzzy.  It was blurry because water was inside the lens of my camera. Evidence that I hadn’t been spared from the water’s wrath. 

     But so far it was only the camera. 

     The screen was still holding on. After snapping a few more hazy photos I hoped would pass as a fancy filter, I pulled up Google Maps and headed out again. I tried to see as much of Florence as I could before my bus to Vienna. It was when I reached the river with the sloping mountains in the distance on one of the spanning bridges when the first black line appeared down the screen. I swallowed hard and carried on. A line or two I could deal with as I dealt with cracking glass each time I shattered the phone screen. Line multiplied. 

As I reached the other side of the bridge, it was worse. Opening the screen made the apps enter the matrix. Or how I imagine the matrix. The squares of the apps duplicated themselves, reaching back like a green infinity mirror. I could see the pixels. Green, red, and white tiny specs bright and dying. 

    I turned around. I had feared and anticipated this moment the night before and had marked on Google Maps an Apple Store. By the time I got there, the sky was darkening. The glitching hadn’t stopped, if anything it was worse. The bright white and dusty gray of the Apple store was a haven. When I got there, the first employee started speaking to me in Italian. I had to wait for an English speaker and then was told it’d be an hour wait. I walked as far as I dared without a map. I wandered through some stands of leatherwork, hiding from the rain and trying to compose myself. It had been my fault. I had to deal with that. 

Eventually, I just sat and waited in the Apple store. I panicked when I realized my phone wasn’t backed up. I didn’t have the space on the Cloud, not with all the photos I took. So as quickly as I could I emailed as many as I could to myself, despite the hazing screen. I tapped at the slowly dying brick in my hand and tried to keep from crying in a store full of people. I failed. 

     A burly bearded man with a blue shirt and tablet came to help me as much as he could, but the water damage was clear. The store didn’t have a replacement. He gave me a choice. Buy a brand new phone for about €700 in a pity discount, try an Apple store in Vienna to see if they have a replacement for about €300, buy a cheaper phone and SIM card somewhere else or hope for the best. I didn’t know what to do. I had seven days of traveling left. I couldn’t afford a brand new phone. I could barely cover a replacement if they’d had one. There was no clear decision and it was my fault. 

Uncertainty overwhelmed me. 

Indecision closed my throat.

 Hot tears flooded my eyes. 

I had no idea what to do. 

There was no right choice. 

No good choice. 

And I kept coming back to one thing. 

It was my fault. 

I did this.

 I am Chidi from The Good Place. 

And I had to choose. 

I was alone. 

I failed. 

I couldn’t afford to fail again and I had to make a choice. 

Now I could go on to tell you what this taught me about disconnecting & engaging with the world wondrous world or taking modern technology for granted when in days passed families sent their children out with hopes of receiving a letter in a month's time or the importance of keeping spare rice on hand just in case. All of those have a place in this story, but what I really want you to take away from this is that if you’re pathetic enough the Apple employees will let you use their employee restroom.