Milan Elevator Trauma

Elevator Trauma


Let me explain about how the Italians number the floors of a building. There is the ground floor, then the first floor and then the second floor, etc. In some buildings there is the lower ground floor, the ground floor, the upper ground floor, and then the first floor, the second floor and so on and so on. I am telling you this so you can picture it and realize that when your room is on the second floor, you have to climb a lot of stairs to get there. Also, in our B&B, the second floor is on, what we consider to be the third floor. When you're tired, it's a difficult journey. LOL

The second afternoon we were in Milan, the four of us had gone out to see The Last Supper. Upon our return, we were exhausted from all the walking and a very long bus ride (we got on going the long way) so we decided to take the elevator up to our room. The elevator was approximately 3 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet deep. Tiny! The four of us got in and closed the door. We were shoulder to shoulder and face to face. I pressed the 2nd floor button. We felt the elevator move and then stop suddenly. I pressed the button again and NOTHING. The elevator would not budge. Of course, this elevator was probably installed in long ago because there is no phone to call for help. There are no buttons to push to open the doors. After trying the buttons again, we realized we were stuck. This baby wasn't going anywhere.

Cari and I started laughing. I'm sure it was to release some tension. My sister started to panic because she has claustrophobia and my Mom was trying to keep order by telling us not to worry. "Press the emergency button!" my sister suggested. We pressed the button and could hear a loud buzzer go off. Ah, hah! Someone in the building would surely hear it and come to our rescue. Well, five minutes passed and no one showed up to help so we pressed it again.................and again..................and again. No response.

"I can see the headlines now." I laughed. "Four American women found dead in tiny elevator."

My sister didn't think that was funny at all. My assertive daughter said, "I've had enough of this."
She moved to the front of the elevator and with my help, we pried open the doors. We didn't know if we were stuck between floors or what but we couldn't wait for rescue any longer. We pried open the doors and luckily, we could open the outside door which lead to freedom. We had to step down about 2" from the elevator to the floor. When we got outside, we realized that we were still on the ground floor. The elevator had only risen 2" before it shut down.

We started laughing so hard that we could hardly get up the stairs. We had been panic stricken by a 2" rise in elevation. How embarrassing would it have been if the fire department rescue unit had shown up and we were only 2" off the ground?

We found out later that we had exceeded the weight limit and the elevator went into overload. It automatically shuts down if there is too much weight so that it doesn't get stuck between floors or plummet to the ground when it tries to lift that much weight up several floors.

Phew! We were lucky. This is also on our list of Top 10 Embarrassing Moments.