Milano!

Here’s a recap of my day trip to Milan yesterday. I have a feeling it’s going to be kind of long …

So, walking out of the hotel was weird, because I didn’t bring any luggage, or get in a car or anything, just felt like I was walking out the door … to Milan. Caught the local train to the main station, and then found my regional train and found my seat. Easy peasy. The seats are arranged in groups of four with a little table in the middle. I say by a mom with her two sons (not baby age, thankfully) and their fuzzy tiny Chihuahua!! It was pretty dang cute, and I was amused to watch that thing just look out the window like train riding was no thang.

The train ride was a little over 3.5 hours, and had a few stops. We went through the Alps, which was AWESOME. Cool mountain lakes/towns, and lots of snow in the middle sections (snows all mostly melted in Zurich).

I didn’t know at what point we would cross the border (wasn’t sure how rigorous the passport control would be, etc) since the language outside stitched from mostly German to mostly Italian while we were going through the mountains, but it was definitely noticeable when we did cross the border. Not only did the train station signage change, there was like an instant layer of trash that covered the ground. I guess I hadn’t quite noticed how clean Switerland was until this stark comparison. Lots of random junk everywhere, and lots of clothes on clotheslines and the like - clearly a bit lower on the income scale.

Arrived in the Milan main station, and took the metro down a few stops to the center of town. More stark comparisions with Zurich - apparently there are no poor people in Switzerland. In the metro there were many people selling random things (toys, etc) and just beggars. I admit, it was kind of shocking since I have encountered none of this in Zurich. I did notice that there weren’t any homeless people around when when we were doing our Old Town Zurich tour, but forgot to ask about them .. maybe now I’ll have to bring that up with the locals. Maybe their social services are just that good that there are none??!

The Milan metro experience reminded me a lot of Prague, actually. There were people at a small ticket counter selling individual tickets (no electronic ticket machines) though, with the amount of people in the lines, this probably was faster than having everyone try to use self ticketing machines. The guy behind the window didn’t understand English, so I had to point to the ticket I wanted. Great deal though - 3 Euro for a 24 hour pass to the metro, bus, and trams. Individual rides cost 1.10.

So, getting out of the metro into the Duomo plaza you are immediately accosted by people trying to get your money. People giving you bracelets, etc. These dudes just came up to me and put corn in my hands so the pidgeons flocked to me, and then demanded money for that privilege. All THREE of them. Um, no. I am glad I held my ground about not paying each of them (I did pay the guy who actually took my picture with the damn pidgeons, I wasn’t that naive to think he was doing that out of the kindness of his heart). But it was a little scary because three dudes against one girl != fun times. Glad I passed my assertiveness check. At that point, I left the Duomo plaza area just to go somewhere less intense.

My “I’m being swindled” look:

So, it was Carnival, which, I don’t really understand, but there were kids dressed up in costumes and confetti, balloons, and silly string everywhere! Helen was telling us about the Carnival they saw last weekend, and figured out it was done the weekend before lent (so, like a Mardi Gras type thing?) but this weekends festivities have confused my understandings, maybe should it up, lazy.

So, wandered down a pedestrian street until I found a map, went inside a castle to figure out where I was. Ok, not a real castle, more like a fort, but they called it the castle, ok?

The castle had cats!!

Realized that I’d wandered a lot further than I expected and the the center of Milan was tiny, and totally walkable, so that was good because I wasn’t sure if 8 hours was going to be enough time. (It was!!) After getting my bearings back, I walked to where I had been planing to eat (a veg place I found online) but it was confusing to enter it — there were these two random ladies that were standing in front of what I thought was the door (like, RIGHT in front of it) and when I went past them, there were people seated right in front of what I had assumed was the door .. so I was just confused and didn’t want to stand around awkwardly while those ladies were there, plus ts the place was TINY, so I just wandered back to find a random place.

Found one that had pictures on the menu (win) and a friendly guy standing outside getting people to come in. Feeling welcomed ++. I got some gnocci with eggplant that was delicous, and the house white wine was great, too. Very light and slightly bubbly. I think I remember Hemingway describing such a wine in one of his books .. need to find that, I was def reminded of him when I drank it. The waitstaff had these cool handheld order gizmos that looked like big PDAs, this allowed all of them to get me stuff and just add to my bill immediately.

After food, I was planning to find this contemporary art museum that was supposed to be right near to the Duomo. I should have written the address, but I figured I would be able to see it pretty easily. Not so much, I asked the guy at the restaurant and he kind of pointed me in the right direction, but I just found signs that this particular museum was under construction. Fail. Well, fine then, I’d go wander some more and find a bookstore with guide books. I was planning to wander about the fashion district if there was time, so I just went ahead and did that, since Milan is tiny as I found out, this wasn’t going to take too much time.

Found the Poko store:

Many more Carnivalers out by this point. KLund, there was a pretty cool unicorn balloon that I would have gotten you if you were there .. or it stayed inflated long enough for me to bring it to you .. or if it wasn’t ridiculous to bring a balloon half way around the world …. Anyway, wandered into a few shops an H&M and the discount ‘fancy labels’ store. Of course many of the people at the discount fancy label place were Russians, I was amused by them. More wandering. Did kind of circle up and around all the fancy fashion label stores, and then back down toward the Duomo.

Fancy store central:

Found a bookstore, and found the ‘Gallery of modern and contemporary art’ which was kind of a ways away. I had the time to make it though, so after procuring a bottle of olive oil, and fighting the (now even bigger) Carnivalers, I made it onto the metro heading back toward the train station where the museum was. The museum was in an old palace (kind of like a mini Hermitage) and had free entrance, which was cool. But upon entering the gallery, I was a mite confused, because there were all these portraits and marble statues. Where was the exciting modern and contemporary art? (Actually the contemporary art section was closed for construction, arg) Anyway, the bottom floors were kind of a disappointment, the art was ‘modern’ in that it was produced at the same time as “Modern” art, but it wasn’t that exciting, in my opinion. Thankfully the second story was better, mostly Italian painters. The very top floor (up a confusingly spiral side stair case that was lined with Buddha statues and Asian art) actually had a large Manet, a couple Gaugains, and a Van Gogh along with other Italian dudes. I was disconcerted by the square of the Manet that was being hit by the direct afternoon light. I am not a painting consrvationist, but I am pretty sure this is NotAGoodThing. Manet is one of my faves, too-le sigh. So, more exciting stuff up there than the floors below, but confusing because it was so tucked away? They still had the random sari (?!) and woven rugs up there, too. All in all, a confusing museum, but a good way to spend an hour or so.

By this point, it was time to think about some dinner and head toward the train station. I stepped into what I thought was a restaurant (marked by the words “Ristorante”) but was more of a bar/snack place, so I just got a water because I was parched from my day of walking. Took the metro to the train station, and found a place near there. I was seated between two pairs of Russian couples (they have ‘two people’ seats all next to each other in the two places I ate). I made the comment that I was ‘In Italy, but there are Russians everywhere’ to the couple next to me (the other was one table away) but they didn’t seem terribly amused :-/ Of course, sitting next to them, and being alone, I couldn’t help but overhear some of their conversations, which confused me slightly because it sounded like they were on an early date .. but they were in Italy! I hope that they were relatives or something, from what they were saying they weren’t even from the same place. The girl was from Riga, and the guy might have been from the Ukraine .. perhaps that’s why they didn’t like my ‘Everywhere the Russians’ comment. Or maybe Russians just aren’t friendly.

Anyway, with dinner done, I had just enough time to walk back to the station. Upon getting there (20 mins before the train was going to leave) they hadn’t even announced the track the train was going to be on. In the morning, I was utterly confused as to why everyone was standing around looking at the track board and not going anywhere, but by evening I understood. I saw that there was a train from Zurich that had just arrived on track 7, so I figured I’d head in that direction — logic, imagine! - and I was right, as soon as I started heading over, the track appeared for our train and a mob of people started heading that way.

Trip back wasn’t very exciting, I read and slept mostly. There was a group of Asian ladies (Japanese? is my guess) that were trying to finagle seats to sit together at the begining, it was pretty amusing because there were 4 of them. But there weren’t many people left on the train after the first Italy stop, so it was kind of for naught all that trouble. There was also an announcement of a ‘technical error’ with the train and then a few mins later the train started again, so that was a little disconcerting, but all in all, just made us 10 mins late. Other people had connecting trains to other parts of Switzerland, so they had to run once the train got in, but I just had to find the first train to Oerlikon, which left about 2 mins after I got on, so no troubles for me. 

All in all, a pretty good tip. Was a little disillusioned at first, but just had to get my bearings and everything ended up well. I would definitely enjoy a trip to the other “more Italian” (according to a coworker) cities, with more time to spend of course. But at least now I can say that I *have* been to Italy :D