Milano: The Last of the Prose

     I'm sorry. Getting the ball rolling on blogging about Italy has been a long time coming. I had hoped to be much further along by now, instead of still pawing at the gate. As soon as I got home Sunday morning, after an overnight train from Venice to Vienna and then navigating the Vienna Metro before jumping onto a train 5 minutes before it left, I collapsed into bed, and barely left it all day. And then school started, and with it all the work that I hadn't done while I was in Italy on top of all the new stuff I had. And blogging got buried under real life. It's been hard, bringing myself back here to write. Not just because my head is so full that it's exhausting trying to pull it back into the vacation mindset, but because it means I'm not actually on vacation anymore. I'm not in Italy. I'm in Bratislava, living a real life. And as much as I appreciate living a real life, I could definitely have used a little more vacation. But, here goes. Day 1 of Italy: Milan.
     My trip to Italy began with a very early morning in Bratislava. What with needing to be at the airport by 7am after a half hour bus trip, and the necessity of leaving things in reasonably good order at the flat, I got about 5.5 hours of sleep, so I was exhausted. I almost nodded off on the bus several times. Checking in and going through security at the Bratislava airport at 7 in the morning is easily the smoothest, quickest airport experience I've ever had. There were no lines, less waiting, and even less stress. Airports and flying are not my favorite things in the world, so I was very grateful to have this trip start out on a good note. As I watched the sun rise over the mountains surrounding Bratislava I smiled, knowing how lucky I was to be living my life in that exact moment.
     It was a very uneventful flight; I slept the entire way to Bergamo, a town about 45 km outside Milan with an airport that has become increasingly popular with budget airlines like Ryanair. From the airport, I caught a bus into the city center. Now, my first view of Italy had been of the foothills of the mountains (which we Minnesotans would call actual mountains), on which Bergamo perches. I was so caught off guard with eyes blinking blearily in the light, that I actually gasped upon exiting the plane and realizing where I was. That awe lasted for about 5 minutes after getting on the bus. Once we left the vicinity of the airport and were well on our way through the town of Bergamo, Italy deteriorated quickly.
     I always forget that Italy, like most other countries, has modernized relatively quickly over the past 150 years or so, and even more quickly since World War II. And if I can't remember that, how could I be expected to remember that the majority of this industrialization happened in the north? Well, I don't think I'm ever going to forget that again. The bus ride from Bergamo to Milan was one of the least picturesque trips I've ever experienced. The towns were squat little collections of concrete blocks built around factories with smokestacks hundreds of feet tall. The countryside consisted of brownish, greyish grass surrounding ramshackle huts. I was not enchanted.
     We finally got to Milan's central train station and I disembarked from the bus into the relatively balmy air, ready to face 7 hours alone before meeting Abbie's train right back here. I had planned to drop by the hostel first and leave my things there, but I realized on the bus that were I to get anywhere in the vicinity of a bed, I would fall asleep, not see any of Milan at all, and have to make two round trips on the Metro with nothing to show for it. So instead I stored my luggage at the train station and ventured out into the city without a map.
     Here's what I liked about Milan: the people. In the first park I found, there were teenagers hanging out on benches, young parents taking their children on walks or bike rides, people of all ages trailing behind dogs, readers absorbed in books, and shopkeepers selling flowers from newsstands at the corners. They all seemed so happy to be outside, as if this was one of the first nice days of the year (as it very well could have been. It was still February.). So as I sat reading Of Mice and Men, I soaked in the ambiance of the Milanese people who were real enough to spend their Saturdays in the park instead of at stores.
     So here's what I didn't like about Milan: nearly everything else. Although part of the problem may have stemmed from my not having a map, I did not see much to appreciate in Milan. The streets were nondescriptly European, with soaring metal skyscrapers peering above the lovely, but lowly older buildings. The city seemed dirty, unkempt, and not at all inviting. It seemed generic. Nothing about it proclaimed "this is Milan". Instead, it vaguely asserted something along the lines of "Remember me, people visiting Rome and Florence and Venice? I'm here too". It had a kind of desperation, mixed with reluctant resignation to second-class status, at least in terms of beauty.
     Though the city may not be "bristling with the aesthetic impulse", there were some lovely moments. The parks I wandered into were beautiful, and some of the churches were photo-worthy, but very little else really caught my attention. I wasn't really surprised. Milan is not somewhere I ever really wanted to go, and had very few expectations about. The only thing that I'd heard was worth seeing was the Duomo, which I somehow managed not to see, and the stores, which I couldn't afford even if I was the kind of person to spend their vacation shopping. So with my low expectations, I was even a little pleasantly surprised by the places that did make me smile.
     I was not, however, pleasantly surprised enough to want to spend more than one day there. This may have been compounded by the fact that I was tired, hungry, and lonely. I do not do well travelling on my own. My natural reserve becomes full-blown timidity, and I find myself paralyzed. All my thoughts get stuck in my head without someone to share them with, and I start feeling overwhelmed by everything I'm thinking, feeling, and wanting to say out loud. Obviously, the degree to which this interferes with my enjoyment of a place differs on the location, but it was definitely a factor in Milan. The entire time I was walking around, I was counting down the hours until I could reasonably head back to the station to meet Abbie. When I finally did turn myself that direction, I realized I was immersed in the crowd of Saturday shoppers along what seemed to be one of the busiest shopping streets in Milan. I was not amused.
     Then finally, finally her train was pulling up to the platform, and even though I scanned the faces of everyone getting off the train, I was still surprised by her sudden appearance. We shared a massive hug, both of us grateful to see a face from home, a friend we knew so well we didn't have to try anymore. We just had to be. It was such a relief.
     Henry James, in his Italian Hours, a collection of essays about the time he spent in Italy, says this about Milan: "in it's general aspect still lingers a northern reserve which makes the place rather perhaps  the last of the prose capitals than the first of the poetic". I completely agree with him, although I don't fully understand where he's drawing the line between prosaic and poetical capitals. No one in their right mind could call Paris prosaic, so it can't be north to south. But that's not really the point. The point is that the city seemed like very little more than just a city. Some places call out to you, reach out their arms and drag you into them. Paris did that. So did London, and Prague, even, to some extent, Bratislava, once I realized what it really had to offer. Milan did not. Nothing about Milan attracted me to it or made me want to stay there. Abbie felt exactly the same way, so we were grateful our reservations kept us there for only one night.
     We found our hostel after zig-zagging back and forth along the same street for what seemed like forever because the directions from the hostel told us to orient ourselves using the entrance to the subway. There were four entrances to the subway, so that was not so helpful. But we did get there, and immediately collapsed into our beds, getting up only to pay. The next morning, we made it back to the train station, purchased unreasonably expensive train tickets to Florence, and were off on our Italian adventure.