My upper-middle-class life in Milan

In Milan I had the luxury of living a very privileged life, staying with an Italian friend and her family in a spacious apartment quite close to the city centre. Thanks to a very good bike sharing system, I also got to see several parts of the city with my friend as a guide. I even went on the back of her scooter - but the Italian traffic was a little intense for me to feel absolute trust, even though she was a good driver...

Milan is not known to be the most "beautiful" of Italian cities - it is not classical and well-preserved the same way you see in Rome, Florence or Venice. But it is a truly fun and active city, and despite its top position at finance & fashion, putting its inhabitants in a somewhat superior position to the rest of the country, it struck me as a surprisingly calm and stressless city. I suppose it still bears the stamp of the Italian happily-enjoying-life mentality.




My friend invited me to come see a ballet performance at Teatro alla Scala, and that's an opportunity you just can't turn down. She had an old teacher with connections who had managed to get us good priced tickets. At La Scala, when it is not sold out, you can in the break of a show switch your cheap ticket for more expensive, presumably better, places for no cost. This was a one act show, though, but I got to learn that Italian women are good at getting what they want... My friend's mother went early and persuaded the super serious-looking theatre staff to switch our tickets. We ended up sitting in the front row. And after the show, this impressive woman on her own initiative negotiated with a very strict young man to let me into the gallery, to see the splendours of the theatre a little from above! I don't understand Italian completely, but it definitely sounded like she used my being Swedish as a reason to get in there...

However, Milan does not only have classical opera to offer - there's also display of more modern forms of art, for instance a gallery showing pictures painted with fluorescent colour and therefore glowing in the dark. And just like in Spain, graffiti and street art is quite popular and well done - this motive I found just next to the church at Colonne.

When it comes to architecture, I guess Il Duomo and the piazza in front of it should be called the city's hallmark. Even though I certainly don't have a weak spot for Gothic churches, I of course wanted to climb the stairs to the roof and look at the view. Doing so you actually walk around on parts of the pitched roof. But, since the city is a mishmash of ages and architectural styles, crammed in side by side, the view is not nearly as breathtaking as some of the other views I have collected earlier on my journey.

Staying with a friend and her family under more than comfortable circumstances for five days, sparked my productivity and I spent large parts of my days working.

Early on the Sunday morning I got up and took the train to the small town Desenzano del Garda, just by the Garda lake on the way to Venice, that would be my next stay. But I wanted to spend a few hours by the lake - unfortunately the weather was not at its best, and most of the day it was cloudy grey and raining just a little bit. I managed to sit by the lake for a while anyway, after the very nice staff in the café at the otherwise closed railway station had offered me to keep my heavy backpack in their storage room. I also walked up and down the quiet streets of the little town, through small parks and piazzas, and was a little bit stared at since I was obviously more or less the only tourist this time of year.

 

In the afternoon, after having a nice cappuccino and picking up my backpack at the railway café, I headed on towards the promised land of Venice. Can something so widely praised actually live up to its reputation?

I'll soon let you know.