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Europe on Two Martinis a Day - Part 7 (The Italian Job)
Friday, September 5th, 2008 08:50 pmWhile we felt rather silly spending most of our time in Vienna shopping, this was not the case in Milan. Milan is where you go to shop, whether it be for the latest Versace collection or a key-ring with one of those funny Italian pepper charms. The point is not what you are buying; it is that you are shopping in Milan. Now shopping is not something I am terribly fond of (a study of men out shopping with their wives showed levels of stress hormones equal to riot police facing an angry mob) but the vicarious satisfaction I got from Nalan's shopping delight made it worth visiting Milan.
Of course there are other reasons for visiting Milan, such as the Duomo, which is like a cross between Notre Dame and La Sagrada Familia (and probably bigger than both of them put together). As Mark Twain said, "What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful!"
Milan has been called "the Paris of Italy," which is not a fair comparison because Milan is clean, efficient and does not smell of urine. It's not much like Paris, and not much like the rest of Italy either. The only places it even vaguely reminded me of were Barcelona and Leeds, the latter because in the 1980s, the City Council embarked on an ambitious and not entirely successful project called "the Milanisation of Leeds". This is reminiscent of the way much of the English countryside looks a little like Umbria or Tuscany simply because aristocrats returning from the Grand Tour did their best to make it so, despite the handicap that while you can copy Italian architecture or landscaping, you can't copy the light.
From Milan we travelled the length of Italy to Bari, which is remarkable only as a place Interraillers congregate to get the ferry to Greece. If there is anything worth seeing or doing in Bari, we were prevented from seeing or doing it by our luggage, which had doubled in size over the previous weeks. We were going to leave it in the station as we normally do, but realised after checking it in that we were going to pay €5 per item rather than for the lot. We returned immediately and checked it out, then had an argument about paying. We grabbed our bags and did a runner, Nalan calling over her shoulder "No fuck tourist!" (Her grammar tends to go when she's having fun.) Hampered by our luggage, all we could do was sit in a park until the ferry was due, sleeping in shifts because of the profusion of suspicious characters. Our suspicion was justified. While trying not to doze off, I was jerked back to alertness by some shouting, which at first I assumed to be just another Italian altercation, but turned out to be the classic Italian Job: two kids on a Vespa trying to lift a bag out of a car that had stopped at traffic lights. My first reaction was to sprint across the road and try to knock them off their bike with a side kick, but fortunately I was too tired to react—knocking someone off a bike is easy; doing it without injuring yourself isn't. Fortunately the driver was stronger than the paninari, and they sped off empty-handed.
Touring Europe on anything between a shoestring and a corporate expense account means alternating luxury and discomfort. Our hotel in Milan was sumptious (official price €395; our price €70). The train journey should have been comfortable but was not, largely due to long-legged passengers sitting opposite us, and Bari was the pits. But then we got on the ferry and it was like boarding a five-star floating hotel. I'd only been on modest ferries around Britain and the Greek islands before, and was not expecting a disco, several bars and restaurants, shops, a casino, a games room and a swimming pool. OK, the pool was small and closed most of the time, so we didn't actually swim in it, but it was there. Lots of food, beer and Greek coffee later, we arrived in Patras, relaxed, refreshed and grateful we had shelled out a bit extra for a comfy seat downstairs rather than roughing it on the deck with the other Interrailers. Hard seats and cold sea air aside, in my exhausted state I couldn't have handled the noisy Australians.
Of course there are other reasons for visiting Milan, such as the Duomo, which is like a cross between Notre Dame and La Sagrada Familia (and probably bigger than both of them put together). As Mark Twain said, "What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful!"
Milan has been called "the Paris of Italy," which is not a fair comparison because Milan is clean, efficient and does not smell of urine. It's not much like Paris, and not much like the rest of Italy either. The only places it even vaguely reminded me of were Barcelona and Leeds, the latter because in the 1980s, the City Council embarked on an ambitious and not entirely successful project called "the Milanisation of Leeds". This is reminiscent of the way much of the English countryside looks a little like Umbria or Tuscany simply because aristocrats returning from the Grand Tour did their best to make it so, despite the handicap that while you can copy Italian architecture or landscaping, you can't copy the light.
From Milan we travelled the length of Italy to Bari, which is remarkable only as a place Interraillers congregate to get the ferry to Greece. If there is anything worth seeing or doing in Bari, we were prevented from seeing or doing it by our luggage, which had doubled in size over the previous weeks. We were going to leave it in the station as we normally do, but realised after checking it in that we were going to pay €5 per item rather than for the lot. We returned immediately and checked it out, then had an argument about paying. We grabbed our bags and did a runner, Nalan calling over her shoulder "No fuck tourist!" (Her grammar tends to go when she's having fun.) Hampered by our luggage, all we could do was sit in a park until the ferry was due, sleeping in shifts because of the profusion of suspicious characters. Our suspicion was justified. While trying not to doze off, I was jerked back to alertness by some shouting, which at first I assumed to be just another Italian altercation, but turned out to be the classic Italian Job: two kids on a Vespa trying to lift a bag out of a car that had stopped at traffic lights. My first reaction was to sprint across the road and try to knock them off their bike with a side kick, but fortunately I was too tired to react—knocking someone off a bike is easy; doing it without injuring yourself isn't. Fortunately the driver was stronger than the paninari, and they sped off empty-handed.
Touring Europe on anything between a shoestring and a corporate expense account means alternating luxury and discomfort. Our hotel in Milan was sumptious (official price €395; our price €70). The train journey should have been comfortable but was not, largely due to long-legged passengers sitting opposite us, and Bari was the pits. But then we got on the ferry and it was like boarding a five-star floating hotel. I'd only been on modest ferries around Britain and the Greek islands before, and was not expecting a disco, several bars and restaurants, shops, a casino, a games room and a swimming pool. OK, the pool was small and closed most of the time, so we didn't actually swim in it, but it was there. Lots of food, beer and Greek coffee later, we arrived in Patras, relaxed, refreshed and grateful we had shelled out a bit extra for a comfy seat downstairs rather than roughing it on the deck with the other Interrailers. Hard seats and cold sea air aside, in my exhausted state I couldn't have handled the noisy Australians.
