The long journey home

Up at 4:45 to travel to Bergamo airport to catch the flight home. A meticulous planner, I had looked up online how to travel from where I was staying in Bovisa to Centrale, where I needed to catch the bus to Bergamo.

5am, and the bus hasn't arrived. A small old lady walks across the snow, and I ask her in Spanish if the bus goes to Centrale. She replies in Italian that it doesn't, nothing from this stop until 6am. After a few quiet moments in which I contemplate the certainty of missing my flight and being stranded in Milan, a thought occurs to her, and she directs me to the night bus which will take me there. "Tutti recti" - straight on.

I walk down the smalls streets, and come across a group of people setting off from their flat. "Centrale?" They point me in the same direction - a good sign.

10 stressful and cold minutes later and I'm at the trolly-bus stop. Alone. But shortly I'm joined by another man. "Centrale?" He nods slowly, not looking at me.

A few minutes later the bus pulls up, full with nightriders, people going to early work, people back from clubs. I'm soon on streets I recognise, and before long the looming stone of Centrale station is before me. A bus is about to leave for the airport - I pay my ?5 and hop on.

An hour later, after a slow journey through thick fog - a monochrome picture of cream snow and cloud - I was in the airport. I had expected quiet, a lazy saunter through security - but it was packed. Apparently every Ryanair flight leaves before 9 and the whole of Milan had come to see. Another 30 minutes an I was sitting with a cappuccino and croissant, the first salmon pink licks of dawn brushing the mountains to the north.