Advertisement
Published: April 19th 2007
…and back to Milan. It is hard not to feel an immediate hatred (or at least apathy) for Milan after being in one of the world’s most beautiful Old World centers, Florence, for a weekend. The two are impossible to compare. Fortunately, the immediate gut reaction can eventually be overcome when the city is explored with a more accepting eye. The metaphor has been totally overdone, but Milan is sort of like an onion: you have to peel back layer after stinking layer until you find something you like… and sometimes it leaves you crying (Easter dinner… yuck!).
Luckily, just below the rough exterior is the heart of the city: the Duomo. While Florence’s Duomo is a colorful red-roofed spectacle, Milan’s is a grand, white marble behemoth. One of the largest cathedrals in the world, it is covered with over 135 spires and 3,400 statues. The front of the Duomo is flanked with an immense pigeon-infested piazza filled with a large cast of unsavory characters. The contrast between the fashion-conscious Milan elite and the scruffy pickpockets shilling handfuls of birdseed is striking.
I was lucky enough to enter the Duomo interiors on Easter Sunday, perhaps the most majestic time of year for any Catholic Church. A day of celebration and pomp, Easter Mass in the Duomo was overwhelming to all the senses: the intense scent of incense, the flickering of rows upon rows of prayer candles in the darkness of the Gothic hall, the chanting of the priest and the responses of the parishioners, the thick haze of smoke penetrated by rays of sunlight. It made me think, “Hey, maybe I could get back into this whole religion thing if my church in Tampa didn’t look like a giant royal blue aquarium.”
Immediately outside of the Duomo is an area known as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a covered arcade named after the first king of united Italy. It is considered by many to be one of the first, and perhaps most luxurious, shopping malls in the world. Unfortunately, the name “mall” does the structure no justice, since it suggests some blocky, rationalist architecture. The Galleria could not be further from that. Topped with an elegant glass and steel roof, the area is full of the top Italian and French designers, not to mention the nicest McDonald’s I have ever seen.
The floor is an intricate mosaic patchwork of rope-like designs and what appeared to be the coats of arms of other Italian cities. In the center of the giant space is a mosaic of a bull on the ground. Legend holds that stepping on the bull’s testicles is good luck, so eager tourists line up with cameras at the ready to do the deed. Later practices stated that you must spin around on your heel for the full good-luck effect. What this has amounted to over time is a giant, circular, heel-sized crater where the bull’s nether regions used to be!
I have to admit that the Galleria may have been the turning point for me between a disgust for the city’s pigeon-encrusted shadiness and a love for its less than obvious charm and beauty. The giant gates of the shopping area were, in effect, an entrance into a previously uncharted part of Milan that was, luckily, beautiful and full of life.
Immediately on the other side of the Galleria is a square dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci. After the obligatory picture of Mr. Mona Lisa, I walked past the Teatro alla Scala, a neoclassical marvel that played home to Giuseppe Verdi, Arturo Toscanini, and other masters of the opera world. Supposedly, the theater is one of the most important spaces for the history of opera and music in general.
Down the street is a landmark that should be so much more famous than it actually is, the immense Castello Sforzesco, a giant red brick fortress that now houses museums. Behind the fortress is a Central-Park like space which attracts homeless people, soccer fans, skaters, and families of all races. The park is one of the first spaces in Europe where I saw people of different races interacting, and the experience was really refreshing. While America might still have a long way to go, it is in many ways light years ahead of other nations in terms of racial and ethnic relations.
This is not to say that Europe is racist. On the contrary, it appears that a general lack of diversity in areas like the Czech Republic has caused the issue to go almost completely unnoticed. As such, seeing black and white children playing games in the grass, hearing African immigrant drummers pound on tribal drums for a racially-diverse audience, watching soccer games between Italians and all different groups… it was all a little “I Have A Dream,” “We Are The World,” but it made me develop a real, almost immediate, affinity for Milan and its people.
Perhaps more than anything else, it was these people in the Parco Sempione, regular families out to relax and enjoy the sunlight on Easter, that made me appreciate what Milan had to offer. I think Milan has a reputation for being kind of stuck up, fashionable, and elitist - Donatella Versace as a city. Instead, the Milanese seemed playful. What a relief.
After strolling through the park alone for what must have been hours, I decided to eat dinner, the one thing I had been dreading since I realized I would be in a different city all alone on Easter Sunday. Won’t I get stares if I’m eating alone on Easter? Should I stop in one of these small restaurants on the outskirts even though they are completely empty because everyone is home with the family? How can I justify paying fifty Euro for a meal to eat in the glitzy tourist areas, like the Galleria?
With all this in mind, I headed for the center, choosing to pay more money instead of being the lone customer in one of the less expensive restaurants. I worked my way from the Duomo outwards onto the surrounding streets, looking for something, anything, that was not exorbitantly expensive.
I ended up settling for a place with a menu full of pictures, probably never a good sign. For my first course, I ate risotto alla Milanese, the regional dish. While other areas of Italy focus on pasta and olive oil, the extreme North loves rice and butter. True Milanese risotto is made of rice, butter, and saffron, giving it a rich golden color and a creamy texture. It was certainly not the best Italian food I have ever eaten, but it was far from the worst. Unfortunately, the worst came one course later when the waitress brought me my margherita pizza, a ghastly concoction of cardboard-tough microwaveable crust, raw cherry tomatoes, and thick un-melted slabs of plasticky mozzarella cheese. I yearned for the days of elementary school rectangle pizza, which would have honestly been a step up. Hence, my worst Easter dinner ever.
Things started looking up the next day, when my friends returned from Venice. Deciding we had seen enough of Milan within the first few hours, we boarded a train and went to Lake Como. Now perhaps more famous for being the home of George Clooney, the area is a favorite amongst Europeans who flock to the gorgeous shores to marvel at the beauty and live “the glamorous life.”
Close to the border with Switzerland, the lake is probably more closely associated with everyone’s mental image of the Swiss landscape rather than the Italian. Giant Alpine mountains flank the calm waters of the lake, and cute towns with incredible villas cling to the sides of the hills. Sailboats glide across the waters, and fancy Italian cars (and scooters) zoom past on land. There is little need to do anything along the lake, and in the city of Como on the southern shore, save strolling and admiring the scenery. This alone takes hours.
When we could no longer digest the majesty of the mountain vistas, we headed into the town, a charming village with an obvious eye toward the tourist industry. The central church was an unexpected treat for someone who loves churches in all their forms. A perfect way to top off a day in a land of unparalleled beauty.
Leaving Italy for the second time in a few weeks filled me with the same emotions that I felt when departing from Rome: am I prepared to leave the West and go back to Central Europe? It is not hard to understand why Italy stayed disunited for so long - its regions are like totally different countries. Milan is no Florence is no Rome is no Como, and that is what makes the place so attractive. I am ready to move there…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0566s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dad
non-member comment
Guess what we are building in Tampa
They have decided to erect a new church in New Tampa. St. Marks will finally have a church. Any chance it could be 1/100th the size of some of the magnificant structers we saw in Rome.