Ciao Milano

How many stories start with me being at the train station at 6 AM? For variety's sake, I'll back this one up to the day before, when I decided to go to Italy for a day and take the slot of a friend who couldn't go. Amid a small flurry of text messages my name was added to the list and hers removed; I and our mutual friend A. were to go to Milan for one day.

Fast forward, 5:30 AM: my phone rings. The person calling me must either be from a different time zone or A. (the latter proved to the be the case; her ringing to say she was feeling poorly and couldn't come). This leaves me alone on a trip to which I was looking forward but without vast quantities of enthusiasm. But I am capable of going places by myself, so instead of also jumping ship I went alone.

Now, here we are, 6 AM at the train station. I have a row of seats to myself. My book and I keep each other company through Switzerland. It was nice to see mountains, rising up above the lakes and plains. I furtively took pictures out of the window, hoping the dirt on the windows and my camera's tendancy to take fuzzy pictures would not collude to spoil my shot. My "experience" of Switzerland includes the highway and two truck stops, but the view was great, the seat reasonably comfortable, and the book above averagely interesting.

The scenery changes noticeably on the other side of the Alps. Sitting in the back I didn't necessarily notice when Switzerland became Italy, and as no one checked our passports I have no proof, either :(.

Milan, 12 PM: We get out at the Castello Sforzesco, a large 14th century castle which is now an art gallery including Michelangelo's last sculpture, the Rondanini Pietà, and Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Trivulzianus manuscript. We trailed on over to the Duomo like kindergarten kids on a field trip. The Duomo is either the 2nd or the 4th largest cathedral in the world, depending on your authority. (To blatantly plagerize wikipedia: "Built from the late 14th well into the 19th century (and in a sense, never completed as work continues), the Duomo di Milano is one of the world's largest churches, being second in size within Italy only to Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and being the second largest Gothic cathedral in the world, after the Cathedral of Seville in Spain." This makes no logical sense; if Sevilla is a larger Gothic church than Milan, shouldn't Sevilla beat Milan in the overall rankings? Or are we just considering the size of the gothic portion of the cathedral?)

So, Cathedral. We went in, did what you do in every church or cathedral (avoid the beggars and, in this case, have your bag and wardrobe checked by the police, circle once respectively, stare at the ceiling, see if there are interesting graves, leave). Slipping through the world's most expensive shopping mile (so we were told) we made our way to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, housing one of the most famous paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, which was neither open nor had tickets for the fresco. Good, okay.

By this point I was tired of following around our group leader, who managed to herd his charges at a snail's pace while remaining 20 yards ahead of us the entire time. I co-opted another group member and we hightailed it for something to eat (it was now 3 PM, and I had had breakfast at 5:30, so I was kinda hungry). Lunch was pizza for her and something else for me, wich turned out to be a mini pie of rucola and zucchini. My companion was an American from D.C. in her second year at FR, taking politics courses and someho still unknown to me.

We spent the remainder of the day cruising through town, slurping our gelatos, babbling in mixed German and English in a café, sipping our cappuccini, searching for some place that sells affordable wine (without avail...all we wanted was a supermarket, none to be found), cannolis (we did succeed here), a sew on patch for her backpack (also successful). We passed several other old churches, a ton of cool stores, cafés très charmés, gaggles of tourists, art dealers, and aggressive men wanting you to feed the pigeons so you can pay them to take your picture.

Footsore and weary we sat awhile in the piazza in front of the Duomo for some of the best people-watching I've had in a long time. Italian people are beautiful, and you can easily sort them out from the tourists. I admired the men, impeccably dressed, with gorgeous shoes and tailored shirts, usually understated, always with the proper sunglasses. The women as well, stylish, in skirts and heels with matching handbags and perfect hair. I envied some of them for their taste and style, and did not envy others for their shoes and fashion sense. Increasingly I saw younger girls, probably around 13 or 14 dressed in a fashion even too daring for me, and already acquiring extra padding around the middle, unfortunately accented by the unhappy combination of tight clothes and an improperly placed belt. Fast food conquers Italy?

Completely beat we made it back to the meeting point about a half hour early, chatting with some fellow group members. I discovered an acquaintence among my fellow travellers and talked a bit with someone I had never met, who proceeded to sit next to me and explain at great length abstract concepts I was too tired to follow until I asked him if I could stretch my legs out. I promptly fell asleep, though I kept waking up with the fear that the bus would crash. Which it didn't.

I dragged my battered feet home, arriving chez moi at quarter past 2 AM, which isn't bad for a return trip to Italy. If only I could have taken a month's supply of gelato with....