A different kind of episode

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain Speaking.

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Welcome aboard Truly Expat Travel, where we're ditching the guidebooks, fastening our seatbelts, and diving into real stories from travellers who have traded the ordinary for the extraordinary, proving the world really is too big to be left upon the table. Cabin crew be seated and ready for takeoff.

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Welcome to the Truly Expat Travel Podcast. I'm your host, Paula, and today is just so different because I'm not going to be talking about a destination. I'm not going to be talking about a way to travel or where to travel to or from or how. It is about a story. This is a story. This is a travel story that you don't want to happen to you, but you need to hear, just in case it does. I'm not plugging anything, however, I am advising quite a lot. I've landed here in Australia after spending six weeks abroad. I spent two weeks in Morocco, a week in Spain, and then the rest of the time in Italy. I had planned a massive trip. It was like supposed to be my dream trip. And that entailed heading down this was a ye three-year planning trip, by the way. It was an intention of meeting our kids in a part of Italy and then travelling together to Calabria. So the background of that is that my dad

Why this trip mattered: my father's Calabria

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was born in Calabria in Italy and he moved to Australia when he was in his twenties. He would have turned he if he hadn't if he had still been with us today, he would have been 100. So this trip was supposed to be a celebration of his life. You know, he had it I mean, I kind of would think of how hard it must have been arriving in Australia by boat, not learning, not knowing a word of of English, coming over, not having a job or a home to go to, not having the internet to research, arriving and just landing in a country that is so foreign and so far away from that little town in Calabria. It's kind of like chalk and cheese. And so I couldn't imagine arriving and not having the the luxury of Google Maps or Google Translate or Tripit to plan your itinerary. You just land and you hope for the best. And he taught himself English. He never went to school for learning the language. I don't know how he did it, because yeah, I I just never knew him any other way growing up, you know. He was a lot older when he had me, obviously. I'm I'm much younger than the rest of the family. My mum used to call me the big miracle and he used to call me the big mistake. But it was kind of like a running joke growing up because I'm so much younger. You know, and this day and age, I guess it's not such a big deal, but back when I was young, everyone else's parents were so much younger. And I never really appreciated how much or what he went through until I moved abroad myself and realized how hard that is, you know. So I guess this story started with me wanting to celebrate his life in the little town in Calabria where he's from. And this isn't just my kids, because my kids have been there before. It was my siblings, it was their partners, it was their kids, their partners, and their grandkids. And it was a real big celebration of life. Four days in Calabria, and then we were going to Sicily for a couple of days to celebrate my brother's 60th. So yeah, big deal. Anyway, let's start with this story, this horror story. I've never had such a disaster story when I've travelled. I've done dun don't get me wrong, I've had air at times where I've been with a friend who broke her foot that wasn't pleasant, and then had to get her get she had to get back to Australia. I've been I've been to the doctors myself in and in a few different countries, and I've been really ill in places as well, like India and stuff like that, but never went to hospital, never been had to call an ambulance, never been so sick or worried about someone in my life in a foreign land in a foreign country that I feel like this is a story that needs to be told. And it's why travel insurance and travel and you know health insurance is so important when you travel that you just never think this will ever happen to you. And

Meeting in Milan and the first signs something was wrong

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does, you know, some I'm I hope to I hope that it never does, but it does happen to people, and I am one of those people. So let's get started. Now you know why I was there. So what happened was that my husband and I were meeting in Milan. We were travelling by train down to Florence to meet the kids, and then we were going to meet then we were staying there a day extra, and we were meeting our children in Sorrento, spending a few days there, and then heading down to Calabria by train all together to meet everybody else. It was supposed to be one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips. And I guess to some extent it was a once-in-a-lifetime. I hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime, because I'd never want it to repeat again to some extent. So let's get started. We get to Milan. I meet my husband. I'd just come from front from where was I in Spain, in Valencia, which is an amazing city by the way, to meet I spent five days there with a friend, and then I got to Milan so excited to see my husband. Hadn't seen him in three weeks, and he was not looking well. Like he was looking awful and he was super tired. And he said, you know, I'm I'm tired because um I hadn't slept. I couldn't sleep for the last two

Why Italian business class trains are worth it

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days. He had previously gone to the doctor where he had some some things done and he wasn't feeling well from that. We didn't realise it was from that, but at the time he just thought he hadn't slept very well and he wasn't feeling great. So we made our way from Milan Airport, Malpenza Airport, down by train to Florence. Luckily, we went business class. Now, can I tell you, business class trains in Italy are next level, it's not that more much more expensive than you know, than a normal train. So I would hundred percent guarantee that you should I recommend that you should try to book well in advance. If you book at the last minute, like we did with the next train, it's a it's a huge jump. But if you travel if you do it more than, you know, I think I booked it a couple of months in advance and it was a decent amount, it wasn't that expensive. So it means that you have wider seats, it means that you have they give you a coffee and some biscuits and stuff, they give you so you so you also have less people in the the carriage, so it's not as loud. And we we also chose the silent business class, and in silent business class, we chose the quieter one. We had our little tables, we had connections so you could charge your phone. It was just a pleasant ride, like it really was a pleasant ride if you were feeling okay. I think also because he wasn't feeling great, and you can recline as well. So he he laid back and slept pretty much the whole trip. He said he was feeling okay, but not too great, and he didn't look good. He looked white and he you know he looked pale. So we got to Florence, he said, all I want to do is sleep, I'm tired. So we I put him he went into the into our room, he slept all day, and I met up with the kids

Florence, and a visit to the doctor

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and we didn't think much of it. I just honestly thought maybe he was just tired. I spent the whole day with my kids travelling around Florence, having a look around, having lunch, all that sort of stuff. Get back to the room, they had an at that attain cooking course, so they were going to class, so they were going to that, and I was I went to meet up with my husband thinking we'd go out to dinner and he wasn't feeling great, so he said, Can you just get me something? So I went out, got him some food, came back, and we just sat in the room, ate some dinner, which he felt okay. Not great, but okay, and we watched some we watched a movie. Next morning he woke up and he said, I feel okay, not still not great, but I feel a little bit better than yesterday. So we had planned to meet with the kids and go to this amazing restaurant, which we did. We went there, he just was very slow, like really slow, and he wasn't looking great, but wasn't was looking better than the day before. So we spent the day, and that's all he could do. He wasn't feeling very good. The kids then went, they caught a train to Sorrento, and we went back to the hotel, and he said, Well, why don't we go up to the doctors? Because he got a swab of his leg and it said that he had an infection in his leg before he came. But the results only came back that day. So we went up to the doctors and got some antibiotics that we was that the they recommended, and so we did that. He said he felt a little bit better, but he said he wanted to have a bit of a sleep. So I said, Okay, you go and have a sleep, I'll go and take some photos and you know have a look around the town. I wanted to go to the market, so I did that. And by the time I got back that night, he said he felt much better and we went to dinner. That night was awful, high temperature shivers, like he was awful, like I can't even explain. I've never seen him that sick ever, ever in my life. And we had to get out of that hotel and make our way down to Sorrento, and I hadn't booked business class, I'd booked the next class, which was the biggest mistake. He had to travel there and then on

The train to Sorrento

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an awful, awful train. Not an it was not normally an awful train, but it was so crowded from Naples down to Sorrento that I ended up screaming at people and having a bit of cry because people wouldn't let him sit down. Like you can see, this man is sick, and you young kids are sitting down with your headphones on, not even acknowledging other people. Like I was so angry. And this lovely, lovely English woman and her daughter actually helped me, and this young guy got up. He was lovely. He got up, and his friend asked if I would sit down. I said, No, it's just him. So it was an hour on that train. By the time we arrived, I don't know how much of this story I should be telling, but by the time we arrived to the accommodation, his legs started bleeding and I couldn't stop it. Three full towels later of blood, I could not stop it bleeding. So I am the lovely, lovely lady at the hotel. So we stayed in a place called Piano de Sorrento in a

Calling an ambulance

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great accommodation, which I will link down because she was so wonderful. She called the ambulance for me. The ambulance took him there and ended up spending the whole night in emergency. And when I say emergency, it was one of those hotel hotels, hospitals that was so busy, and there were people in the sleeping in the hallway, and there was so many people in the room, and the staff were just on edge and yelling at us in Italian and we didn't understand, and they were telling me to get out, and I didn't know what was going on. And can I tell you that 24 hours of not knowing and then kicking us out and then letting me in and then kicking me out, and but it wasn't even just can you please leave, or even in Italian, gently, could you please leave now? There's too many people. They were screaming at me, get out, get out, and I'm like, I don't know

30 hours in a Sorrento emergency room

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what why? I want to know what's going on with my husband. I finally my cousin finally found someone who spoke English and she was able to translate to me what was going on with the doctor. He was explaining to her and then she explained to me. They pretty much wanted to keep him in and they until his leg was a little bit better and then they were going to admit him into the hospital and they just amped up the antibiotics and they said there's an infection in his leg 'cause it was black, the blood that was coming out was black and smelt, and so there was by this time there was an proper infection in there. By the time I came the next morning they had squeezed out so much of the infection. He said it was the most painful thing, but they squeezed out all the infection. They said that he will be going upstairs today. And I don't know what today meant. It was so I just we just sat and I just sat in the waiting room and waited, and he they finally said to me that he couldn't go into this hospital. It was late in the afternoon, and by that time, I don't know, we were there quite a long time. We'd been there maybe 30 hours, 35 hours or something. He said they he needs to go to another hospital that's 30 minutes away. You need to catch a train there. She was so rude. I don't know if people are normal like that, but honestly, in no bedside manner, she was so rude and so awful to me. And I and young, she was young, and I said to her, How do I like why where do I go? And so she gave me the name of it and she said, Catch a train. That's all, right? So I said, Okay, no worries. And so I waited out because I wanted to see him come out as well. I just didn't know what was going on. So I s I waded out in the corridor and a lovely, lovely lady said to me, Come come here, come here. This is the ambulance lady, which come in with me. And so she so I went into the ambulance with her, which was so lovely, because I was in tears in the emergency, not knowing what the the world was going on. So we get there. We go to the uh we get to the a beautiful, beautiful hot uh end up going to a place called Vico Aquenze, which is a hospital there, and they were so lovely. Where there was already a man in his room who spoke English, thank goodness. He was a big shout out to Giovan Giovanni Giovanni Giovanni, sorry, he was amazing. He was our he's

Nine days in hospital in Vico Equense

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very special guy, such a lovely, lovely guy. So he so then my husband spent the la next nine days in that hospital where the staff were just amazing. They tried really hard with their little bit of English and I try with my little bit of Italian and we you know Giovanni was amazing as our translator and they just were so great. I can't even I can't even tell you, you know, you know when sometimes in life where things just go wrong and you feel so alone, because by by the time we got there, we didn't really understand as well how severe it was or how bad it was. No one was really giving us enough information for us to know what was going on. It was more like, you know, surgery tomorrow. And I'm like, what surgery? Like, what are you talking about? Surgery. Yeah, he's having surgery tomorrow. I'm like, no, no, no, I need to know what surgery you're talking about. Anyway, they then it wasn't surgery, it was minor like procedure where they cut his leg and they put a tube in it to get drain. What they found was an abscess under the skin. So they would drain that and they just were so lovely. The one thing you should know about an Italian an Italian hospital is that firstly you can only go and visit one hour in a day between 6 pm and 7pm. Sorrento hospital and the hospital in Vico Equenzi was the same thing, it was one hour a day. I didn't know that, just saw some signs and realized that. There was actually there was a translator. They did have a translator in the mornings in Sorrento, so she was lovely. She was she was able to ex that's how we knew she he needed to leave and stuff because she was the one that told us that that they needed to he needed to be admitted into hospital. So that is one good thing in Sorrento, because there's so many foreigners in that hospital just because of the location that they have a translator there every morning, which is also very good. But not so not so much in Vico Aquenzi. I think maybe we were the only foreigners they've ever had. They were just so lovely. They tried to help him every way they possibly can. They were accommodating, they were lovely. And each day they

What to know about Italian hospitals

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tried to give us a little bit of information, but it's hardened when you're in a hospital when you don't really speak the language, and as much as I was trying and everyone else was helping, still wasn't it wouldn't have been as easy as it would have been in your own country where you could ask a thousand questions and you could understand the answers. So we got to the stage where we he ended up being there for nine days. There's a few things about Italian hospitals. We were in the public system, didn't know that, but we were in the public system. I think the private system might have even been better. But our ours was great. We had two people in a room. There was a little balcony, so my husband was allowed, was able to go and stand on the balcony every day and get some beautiful sunlight and look at some beautiful views. I mean, where else in the world would you like to be but on the Amalfi Coast? Not in hospital, but in the Amalfi Coast. And so the the views were just amazing from that little veranda that he had every day. He got a little bit of sunlight, he was able to I thank goodness I have my iPad and thank you, Netflix and Disney Plus, because that was we just sat in that they allowed me to sit in that hospital most days for about eight hours and just be with him because there was no one else there. My kids I the kids wanted to stay, but I said to them, at this stage we didn't know he was gonna be there for ten days. We thought he'd be out in time for our trip to Calabria that weekend. So I sent my luggage down with the kids thinking that it that would be easier to just travel with one suitcase rather than two. And we thought we were gonna come out. Long story short, we didn't. We didn't make the trip, which is a shame, but the ki but the family did and they had an amazing time. They were able to celebrate my dad. They met the mayor, the mayor took me to the office and showed them all dad's documents when he was born and the family history and all this sort of stuff, which was amazing. They went and saw his house that he was born in and went and visited my nonna in her, you know, in the cemetery, and just a whole lot of stuff to get to understand where this man started his journey and and allowed us to have a better life, you know. And so they had a beautiful lunch, and in lunch they had a quiz, and so they allowed us to be part of it, and they called us and we did a quiz on my dad, which was fun, and they enjoyed that, and then that night they all went out to dinner in Reggio Calabria, which is a bigger

The family celebration in Calabria, without us

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town, a city in Calabria, as opposed to that little tiny town. It has 500 people, and they went to mass in the morning, and I think five hundred people came out to visit and meet these Australians that were coming to visit and celebrate their father. So they all knew that they were coming. And then the next day they went to a soccer match and watched Reggio Calabria play. So they had a great time. Anyway, they wanted to stay. I didn't want them to. I wanted them to have a great time. We didn't know how serious this was, and I wanted to stay with my husband. So we spent every day watching watching our shows and sitting out on the balcony. The other thing about the hospital, and I don't know if this is every hospital in Italy, but they don't have bathrooms and showers, so that was interesting. So we would use um wet wipes and things to I don't think he would have been able to to have a shower anyway, just due to the circumstances where the leg was infected. But it was really interesting experience. The the the p the hospital food was it wasn't horrible like Australian hospital food, or I've been in hospital in a few places around in Asia and the food there is awful. And it was awful sometimes, but one day he had like big thing of of a mozzarella. I think no, it was buffalo. He had buffalo mozzarella cheese, and he had some no, was it ham? I think it was ham. I can't remember, but he had like this amazing sandwich that he could make. And then there was another time where he had little, you know, pizza. It was just it was just the weirdest food, I guess. Wouldn't have expected that. Well I guess you would expect that. He had risotto and some boiled just normal stuff like boiled what you call it, vegetables and stuff like that. But he'd have a piece of fruit with every single meal, which was very cool. So every day I brought him in an omelette from this amazing, amazing bakery down the road, and he would have the omelet instead of the toast that they were giving him. Just for some protein. And the restaurants around there, the people around there, so Giovanni, big shout out again, he runs a pizzeria down the corner, which can I tell you, is the place where they started the pizza by meter in the around the world. They they they started it. And so he was so amazing on every

Hospital food and the kindness of strangers

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Sunday at this pizzeria, which I will link in the show notes. They have a woman come and make homemade lasagna just on the Sunday. So when he was when he left the hospital, he sent someone over to bring us a homemade lasagna on the Sunday with a dessert, and oh, he was just so lovely. So big shout out to him. But the people around the town, which I didn't expect, it was amazing. I'd go the same fruit guy every morning, and he would we would have a chat and he'd give me big bottles of water and some fruit. And when then when my husband got out of hospital, he met my husband, and when we left he hugged us and kissed us, and same with the pharmacy that we you know, the pharmaceu the pet lady in the pharmacy And the same with the people in the restaurants that got to know us and the real estate agent, you know, because we had to look at property because we were there and we just wanted to do that. And just the people, the grocery store guy down the road, and just everyone was so lovely. I don't think I ever I met one person that wasn't kind in that town. There was, you know, Sorrento was different, but that town, Vico Iquenze, you are so beautiful. The one thing that we got out of this disaster was that this town is so special. And you know, it's so special that next month I'm going to do a whole episode on everything you can do around this area and in stay but need to stay in Vico Iquenzi just to get the feel of this beautiful community. There is 20,000, I think. 20 or 21,000. I think it's 20,000 people in the community, but it just feels so wholesome and lovely. Yeah, digressing and that's next m next month's episode. But these uh so that say we ended up spending 10 days. So the things that you should know is that the the hospital staff there are lovely. I don't know if everyone gets to experience that, but if if they if you ever get to a hospital in Italy, some of the staff there are just was just so amazing. The we have reciprocal rights in Australia, so we did not get a bill. Not get a bill. Why we the one thing we do always have is travel or i international health insurance because it's so important.

Reciprocal rights and why insurance matters

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And this is a perfect example because if we didn't have reciprocal rights, I would hate to think what this bill was because it was ten days in hospital, two ambulances, and then ten days after that of of daily daily appointments at the hospital. So yeah, his leg was pretty bad. After it healed, he was able to take all the tubes and stuff out, and we were able to spend ten days in and around that area and come back every day, like I said, four appointments to get it dressed and fixed and looked at. And he had then had by that stage had oral antibiotics rather than the tube, deriv IV. And so travel insurance is so important, and I tell you why. We had to change our flights twice because we were told one day things didn't happen, so we had to go another date. We ended up having to leave from a different airport. We were supposed to leave from Milan, we left from Naples. There was there was hotels that we had to change or extend, and then there was hotels that we had to cancel, and then there was also flights that we had to cancel. One thing, Ryanair, they don't they don't accept any any reasons whatsoever. So that we changed that flight twice, cost us 200 euros to change it, and then I think the flight, anyway, we ended up not using that flight at all because we didn't go to Sicily, but we lost all that money, which we we're not gonna be able to get him travel travel insurance, but everything else you can, right? So that means that we also had to get my luggage back. I my son was gonna come and chop it off, but it was gonna cost 2,000 euros to change everything. So we ended up sending it by courier, which took four days because it was a weekend, and it cost 20 euros. So yeah, that's good to know if you ever if you're ever travelling. I think if you're ever travelling and you're gonna be staying one side of Italy and then staying in another side of Italy, and you don't want to travel with your suitcase and just take a thing and you're happy to 20 euros? Like, wow. So that's also great to know. That's probably cheaper than going Ryanair and having to pay for luggage. So what what I found out in Italian hospitals is one, is that you cannot you can't have more than one person at a time. That's that's what they were screaming about quite often, but we didn't know that because no one was explaining it. So that's why they say only six to seven, because I don't want big families there. And we were we that's why quite often they allowed me to stay there at the eight hours because there was no one else in the room. I was just chatting

Changed flights, cancelled hotels and a 20-euro luggage courier

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to Troy and Giovanni, and then when Giovanni left, we had a really great 25-year-old, 27-year-old I think it was, a really lovely young kid named Antonio, who had had an accident, so he'd broken his ribs and a whole lot of stuff. So he was lovely, could speak English as well, so he was our translator for most of it. But what I would say is that that's probably the main reason they were screaming at us, but we didn't know at the time and there was a few of us in there. Also, it was operation day, so they operate, I think it was on a Monday or Tuesday. So that's why I couldn't stay in the hospital for all those periods of time, because they would bring people in to just sit in the room, not even in the bed, just sit on a chair waiting for their operation to happen. So that might have been must have been minor surgery. So I have learnt quite a few medical words in Italian. So the the thing you should always remember is that you should always have your insurance information on hand, because this has happened not to this extent, but in other countries, and so we've needed to have insurance information on hand. If you can have a contact number, also amazing, that's the best scenario. If your insurance company, uh you should check with them before you go, because they may ask you to fill out a form while you all the doctors need to fill out a form. So then you need to do that before you leave. So that's another thing you should know before you go. Just have all that information on hand. Your insurance company, your card that you've got, and also you always have to have your passport anyway, for all your information. Quite often words get lost in translation, I've discovered, you know. So you need to be patient, you need to maybe learn a few words in that language, especially things like the word hospital or emergency or things like surgery, stuff like that. Or if you need particular medication, or if you're on medication, you should have them listed. You should actually, if you're traveling some, or even if you have medical history, or even if you have medical issues like all the medication, or even if you're allergic to things, you should have it all written down on

What to have on hand before you travel

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a piece of paper, and that is so that if forever whatever reason you can't have that information, you can't verbally tell them because for what a you know, someone can read it and see it themselves. So I would definitely have that next time. The other thing I did was I ended up ha leaving the place that I was staying in, Piano de Sorrento. It didn't take me very long, took me 15 minutes from door to door, so it's not far. I ended up staying closer and I ended up getting a little apartment so it felt better than a hotel. It was also easier. I could stay at the hospital longer of a night, we could watch a whole movie together and I'd go home and have a shower and go to bed. Whereas before I would leave a bit earlier because I had to get myself all the way there and it was night, and I didn't I went down dark alleys, and even though it's so safe, like I felt so safe that whole time I was in there, I would walk around at nine o'clock, ten o'clock at night on my own and I'd be fine. So yeah, be just be mindful of that. So travel insurance and international health insurance and also the other thing is is writing everything down. So I guess they're the things that I wanted to I wanted to tell you my story because it was just an absolute nightmare. There was days where I was just crying because I didn't know, out of frustration, I think also because I didn't know what was wrong with him. But can I thank those people at that hospital because they were just amazing? Big shout out out to Joseph or Giovanni, who was the nurse. He was so great. He was so great. This is a different Giovanni, obviously. The doctors there, the just the nurses, the staff, they were just so lovely. The people in the city and the towns, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But I guess especially at my age, or it doesn't matter what age you are, just be prepared, be ready, just have all that information. And as much as I travel as I travel all the time, I wasn't prepared because I didn't have all that information written down or you know, I thought I'm invincible, I've travelled so much that I never never needed it. But you do. You absolutely do. The other thing is when we were in Florence trying to find a hospital or doctor, we didn't want to go to the hospital, they kept trying to send us to the hospital, but I just wanted a doctor and a shout out to the doctors there in Florence opposite the train station. They were so lovely. They could see how sick he was, and they were so lovely. They really were. So big shout out to

Staying close to the hospital

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medical staff in some of those places that were just incredible. Anyway, that's such a dark, gloomy kind of episode, but I wanted to get through it and tell you because not very often do we talk about the other side of travel if things go wrong, and this was one of those incidences. I can always go back to collaborate and celebrate my dad in another way. So I as much as I missed out and I was very, very upset at the time, my husband's health was more important, definitely more important. I'm so glad I stayed and was with him because you know, he I didn't want him to do it on his own. Wasn't great. But he's doing good now, so yeah, I'm here to t here to tell you that just giving you some advice. So anyway, save travels. Still travel, but you know, save travels and until next week bye.