So three weekends ago Matt Warner rolled into town on his way to Avignon to visit our friend Sarah Idrissi. We had been facebook messaging back and forth several weeks prior trying to figure out which airport he needed to fly into and what time and all that little nitpicky but really kind of important stuff that you have to straighten out when flying, especially into a foreign country. (Early on in the negotiations, I made it clear to Matt that he had a place to stay only if he met my demands:
1)Giant bag of peanut M&M's (Really, really expensive over here. I can drop 2 euro on something only slightly bigger than a fun size bag. Cripes!)
2)A jar of salsa (B/c I hate eating eggs without salsa, and they're one of the cheaper ways to get protein over here and so I've been forced to eat a lot of non-salsa-ed eggs. sad face)
Luckily he quickly gave in to my demands as he realized had no hope of winning the negotiations. So finally I told him that I would meet him on Friday at Cadorna station next to the giant sewing needle (Yeah, for some reason Milan has this giant public sculpture of a needle. No idea where it comes from. Check it out)
after my class got out at 12. As Murphy would have it, I got out 15 minutes late that Friday. "Cripes," I thought "Matt's going to have gotten impatient and wandered off and I'm going to have to go around asking people if they've seen an American wandering around with several suitcases and a large black fro." Luckily when I turned the corner and the needle came into view, Matt was standing beneath it thereby saving me lots of awkward Italian conversations (Also I don't know if there is a different word for afro). I was really glad to see someone from back home, though it was incredibly weird at the same time. As I would find out later, walking around with someone from home makes my brain feel like everything should be in English, but it was of course all in Italian so my head was kind of muddled for a while. Anyways, moving on with the story, I took Matt back to our place so he could dump off his stuff before taking him on the Milan-in-a-day tour. I took him up around the Piazza del Duomo where we went inside the Duomo (speaking of which, I don't think I've given you all a picture of the Duomo yet. I'm not sure how I haven't done that yet. Huh, well here you go. This isn't taken when Matt and I were there, it's from a night long ago at about 5 in the morning) and afterwards grabbed some Gelato from one of my favorite places, Grom. After our finishing our gelati, we decided to drop 5 euro to take he stairs up onto the roof of the Duomo. This might seem steep, but upon arriving on the roof it was clear that it had been money well spent. You could see all of Milan and the Alps off in the distance. We spent a probably an hour and a half up there, just enjoying the view and chatting about stuff home. I also took a video, which you may find below for your viewing pleasure : (Or not. I can't really guarantee that you'll enjoy it, but at least I tried)
While on the roof we ran into my friend Johannes and his girlfriend. He said they might be trying to set up an aperitivo later that day and we were welcome to come along if we liked. Since aperitivo is an important part of the Milan experience, I told him that would be cool and to just let us know where and when once they had it figured out. As it turned out we never ended meeting up with them and instead just took some beer out near the columns with my flatmate Luka. Good enough for a slow night out on the town. We took the rest of Matt's visit kind of slow, with the exception of an aperitivo at Costanza's house which was pretty cool. Matt got to meet some of my Italian and international friends and at the very least he seemed to enjoy himself. And a day later he was off to Avignon, where he would spend the week and come back and spend a night back here in Milan before heading back to the states.
My weeks was then spent with general schoolwork, I had a critique in photography to prepare for, so I had plenty of things to keep me occupied before the arrival of my second set of guests. Jenna Thorp and Brett Jacobsen had chosen to spend their spring break bumming around Firenze, and had asked if they could swing through Milan on their way back. (I was really happy to have the chance to see two groups of people. I was entirely ready to go and entire semester without seeing anything more than a skype image of anyone, so this was an awesome surprise. Without thinking about the fact they would be coming in on a train from Firenze and not the airport, I told them to meet me by the needle, since that had worked out so well last time.
So when I got out of class Friday, I had a text message from Brett telling me they were up at Stazione Centrale (Of course they were Sam you doofus, real trains go into Centrale not Cadorna). After mentally beating my head against a wall for being stupid, I told them that I would meet them up there so just hang tight. Twenty minutes later, I was wandering around trying to find them in the cavernous building that is Centrale. Finally I found them out by the "center" of Milan
(Here's the deal. Mussolini was all about Centrale reflecting the glory of the Fascist regime. It is a very austere, imperial, and beautiful building. Outside you can see the circle which is (According to Mussolini) the exact center of Milan. However if you look at a map, I have no idea how he came to that conclusion. Maybe if you stripped away all the growth since the end of WWII...anyways that is where they were). After I found them I immediately went about removing any sense of competency by not paying attention and getting on the metro that continues north instead of getting on the southbound metro which is the one we needed. (Good job there smart guy, way to demonstrate some competency there :/ But nevetherless despite of my stupidity I did manage to find my way home so that they could deposit their bags and...yes thats right...go to the Duomo. Here I could type another paragraph about what we did, or I could refer you to three paragraphs previously. We went inside, ate gelato, went on the roof. It was a lot of fun though, and in contrast to when Matt was there we got to art nerd out on the Duomo itself and we did spend a good deal more time there than when I was there with Matt. Then we started the walk home and I took them through the Castello and around to Cadorna where they could see the meeting place that never happened. As we walked home, I threw out a few ideas as to what the next days activities could include. Museums, walking around, shopping (I mean if that's what you're into), but then a bolt of genius darted through my mind. "Hey," I said "what do you think about going to Como tomorrow?" That was a big hit so we decided that the next day I would return to and they would explore... Como.
The next day we were a little late getting out the door...again. (We just can't be punctual when trying to get to Como apparently) but eventually we got to Cadorna and jumped on a train. As it pulled out of the station, I could feel the relaxing influence of Como seeping into my body, and I knew we were in for a good day.
*Here the author needed to go buy some food for dinner. This part of the blog could be omitted but this is real in-the-now information from Milan. Just letting you know.*
So okay, now I that have some sauce simmering so on with the story. Arseniy and I advocated that going a different direction than last time. (We went right last time, so we thought going left might be exciting) Once again we wandered for about a kilometer or so before we found a nice park area to chill around in. We sat and enjoyed the sun, talking and watching a couple swans and pondering why they are one water fowl that has somehow escaped making its way onto humankind's tables. It was another gorgeous day, and no surprise that we all napped at some point. Later in the afternoon we ventured back into the actual city of Como, which was also really quite calm. It actually felt like Venice to tell the truth, which was kind of weird (I started to ave this paranoia that I would soon be forced to freeze in a train station somewhere). But soon enough we decided that it was about time to head back, b/c we were supposed to meet Costanza around 8 for aperitivo in the vicinity of the columns.
I'd tell you some entertaining stories about the train ride back, but truth is we were all asleep until we rolled into Cadorna station at about 6. We decided to run home before meeting up for aperitivo. Aperitivo was good, filled with tasty food and chilly weather. Afterwards we spent the rest of our night hanging out at this streetfront bar called the Paladin. By the time we left, it was waaay past the time when the trams stop running so I got to show Jenna and Brett one of the more frequent parts of life in Milan, walking an hour through the deserted streets all the way home. By the time we got home it was probably 3 or so in the morning, and I don't know about the two girls, but I was wiped out. Unfortunately they needed to get into Cadorna to catch the train to the airport by 5, and the metro doesn't open until 6. So I had to exercise my extremely tired mind and call a taxi to the house, which luckily wasn't all that difficult. (To be honest, I was insufferably pleased with myself at how smoothly it had gone) and they were off into the Italian night just a short while later.
Well, I finally managed to document my visitors. Hopefully sometime tomorrow I'll have finished my post about me trip to Ireland. Until then, peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment