Postcard from Milan, Part II

Secondo Giorno (Second Day)

          Today, John spent his day at the conference center in Milan attending the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) meeting. That’s the whole reason we are visiting Milan. 

          I spent my day with Amy, the wife of a University of Washington-Tacoma professor who was also at the conference. She is a scientist too, but wasn’t attending the conference.

          I walked over to meet her at The Enterprise hotel on the other side of the Piazza Fierenze. Yesterday, she and her husband Joel had gone to the Duomo, but hadn’t gone inside. Last night, I skimmed through the book I bought there, and found out that you can go up on the roof. Amy and I agreed to go back to the Duomo.

          She had ridden the tram yesterday, and knew where to get tickets. I had seen ATM signs, but thought “Automatic Teller Machine,” not “Azienda Transporti Milanesi.” We walked over to a diner, and bought one-way tickets because that’s all they sold.

          When the first tram came along, we hopped on. Fifteen minutes later, the streets didn’t look familiar at all. The tram had veered off west of the Duomo so we jumped off, and consulted our map. It looked like the Duomo was fairly close by.

          In the meantime, there was a big brick church in front of us, and a sign with a picture of Leonardo da Vinci out front, so we headed in. We had accidentally found the Santa Maria delle Grazie, home of The Last Supper and the largest collection of Leonardo’s drawings. We approached a counter decorated with many signs in many different languages, stating that this was an exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, NOT The Last Supper, which was around the corner somewhere. John and I had tried to get an appointment to see The Last Supper, but it didn’t work out.

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy

The drawings were just fine with Amy and me. We happily plunked down 10 euros each. Inside a darkened chapel, we studied each sheet of parchment paper filled to the edges with Leonardo’s drawings of inventions and figures, doodles of people’s heads, and notes. One page had a list of what he packed when he moved to Milan. I’m guessing that paper was a lot harder to come by back then, so he used up all the space he could on each sheet, no margins.

          There were also paintings hanging on the walls behind the drawings. The wall behind the altar and the ceiling were covered with frescoes of angels. I wondered out loud, “who painted those?” On the way out, Amy asked at the front desk. They replied, “Leonardo da Vinci.”

          We u-turned right back inside to admire the paintings and frescoes paying more attention this time. What a precious exhibit to stumble upon!

          Then we were off in the general direction of the Duomo. We cut in back of some buildings on a service road. A guy in a small truck started backing up and almost hit Amy. She dodged and slapped the back of his truck at the same time. He leaned out the window, and spewed irritated Italian. She answered in irritated English. Hands were thrown up in the air—the universal sign of exasperation, followed by exaggerated Chip ‘n Dale motions of “You go first!” “No, you go first!”

          We kept expecting to see the Duomo as we came around each corner. It reminded me of the way Mt. Rainier hides in cloud cover for most of the winter in Washington. Eventually, about a crooked mile later, the Duomo did appear.

          At the entrance, I turned around and Amy was gone! I thought she was right behind me. She’d been waylaid by street vendors hawking 6” pieces of string as “bracelets.” Back at the entrance, I started through, but the “gatekeeper,” told Amy she couldn’t go in because she was wearing shorts.

          We left, and went to eat lunch nearby, planning to shop for a skirt or pants for her afterwards. At a sidewalk café, she had pizza and I ordered lasagna. The waiter got annoyed with Amy for ordering “sparkling water” instead of “acquata gassata.” Extremely slow service followed. We decided to take off the string “bracelets” thinking they could be tourist markers.

Amy sitting behind our bottle of acquata gassata.

          After lunch we went in search of clothes to get her into the Duomo, but we were in the high fashion district. We found a pair of Adidas running pants, but they cost 80 Euros or $114 U.S. Could we tie a scarf around her to look like a skirt? Maybe she could wear my skirt, then come back out and give it back to me to wear in. In the end, she said she’d wait outside for me, and tour the Duomo a few days later. She was staying in Milan longer than I am.

          I went in and looked all over for the elevator up to the roof. No luck. At an exit that I hadn’t noticed before, I pantomimed my quest for the roof to a cathedral guide. He pantomimed back to go around the corner to a separate building to buy a ticket for the elevator.

          I went in the opposite direction to get Amy. Maybe they’d let her on the roof in shorts. At the ticket office, they told us that shorts weren’t allowed up there either.

  I took my 8 euro ticket for the lift to a little area at the back of the Duomo, (Yay! No line!) and walked through a metal detector. Security guards directed me to a ticket scanner. I put the ticket in, and got the red buzzer NO! sound. Turned it around—NO! Then the young soldier who was part of the security force came over, took the ticket out of my hand, flipped it around, and re-inserted it correctly. His sigh and eye-roll was exactly like my kids’ reaction whenever I’m in this kind of situation. Ah, the international language of la gap generazionale. But, he did have to cross the hallway to help me. His mama raised him well.  I thanked him, “Grazie!”

          “Prego.” (You’re welcome.)

All roads lead to Il Duomo.

Looking down on a lower level of the Duomo roof.

   The view from up on the roof was worth the hassle of getting up there. I could see the street spokes of Milan leading toward the Duomo. The maze of sloping walkways and terraces above the city made the spires, statues, and gargoyles seem within reach. It was not clear enough for me to see the Alps, but I trusted that they were out there.

It’s mind boggling to think that the all the architectural engineering, heavy marble, and intricate carving that went into creating this magnificent cathedral happened centuries ago, without today’s technology. How could that be possible? Yet my feet were standing on it.

To inspect the outside of the Duomo, two construction workers rode a coffee table-sized platform raised on a hydraulic lift. They pointed to me and waved. They were totally comfortable, but it’s not a job I’d want.  Being from Washington, and therefore, being used to doing everything in the rain, I imagined being up on the Duomo’s roof sliding around on rain-slick marble, or worse snow!  I was extremely grateful for the sunny weather.

Back down on earth, I met Amy and showed her around the fashion district. We darted into a fancy bakery. She ordered a cappuccino while at another counter, I got a chocolate gelato cone. Then we made the mistake of trying to sit down. After being denied three times, a waiter finally gave up, and seated us at a booth. Apparently, you’re supposed to stand at the counter with your cup and saucer to drink cappuccino. We were doing the American Starbucks thing--if it’s not in a disposable cup, you get to sit down.

We’d had a busy day. Time to buy a return ticket for the tram. Amy spotted a little convenience store that she thought would sell tickets. When she asked the man at the counter in English, he was short and to the point, “No.” When she followed up by asking if he knew where we could buy tickets, he gave another terse “No,” and waved us off.

We wandered around some more until I saw a place with lottery ticket signs. Inside, people were gathered around a TV, waiting for them to pull the winning numbers. I stepped up to the man behind the counter, said, “Bon Giorno,” then pulled my old tram ticket out, and gave him a questioning look.

He answered, “Si. Quanto?”

“Due.” I paid for two tickets, and out we went. Amy was impressed. 

I don't speak Italian other than a few phrases I learned from a "Learn to Speak Italian" CD that stopped working about 10 minutes into the lessons. I did take Spanish through junior high school and high school, then a couple of semesters of college French. Ultimately though, I'm pretty sure that I got away with a lot in Milan because I think the Italians thought I was Italian until I had to have a real conversation. But by then, they’d already opened up to me.

We looked for a tram stop. I reasoned that we needed to cross the street, so that we could catch a tram going toward the Piazza Fierenze. Amy knew that we had to catch the #1 tram. We scrambled aboard one.

Then Amy’s ticket wouldn’t work in the scanner. I took it from her, and turned it around every possible way. A man took it from me, just like the soldier at the Duomo, and tried. He told me in Italian that it had expired. I told him in English that that was impossible, we’d just bought it. He told me in English, “OK, just sit down.” So we did.

We sat down anticipating a 20-minute ride. We got more than an hour’s ride. My bright idea of crossing the street to catch the tram was a mistake. We made room for elderly ladies carrying shopping bags with designer names on them so they could sit down. Office workers rode standing holding onto the bars above us. We sat with mothers and their elementary school children riding home from school. We saw the city center, nice neighborhoods, the Asian section, and areas where there were lots of massage parlors.

We waited, with only one other passenger, for fifteen minutes through the changing of drivers. We watched the new driver ring the bell, and tell a car to get off the tracks. We eyeballed the signs at each stop and made sure that “Corso Sempione” was listed on the sign. I looked in my purse for the address of the hotel, so we could catch a cab home if this went on much longer. And then, we saw the castle. The streets looked familiar again. It was 6:30 when we got off a block away from Amy’s hotel, exhausted and relieved.

               I planned to take a shower and put my feet up when I got back to my room, done for the day. Amy had the same plan. However, when I got back to the room, I found out that only part of my plan was going to happen. The shower part.

Dinner at La Bufala restaurant with scientists from the SETAC meeting.

          John told me the real plan included more walking to meet about 50 other scientists and graduate students, from around the world, for dinner. At the restaurant I sat beside a student from Finland. Across the table were a professor from Poland, a student from China, and a professor from England. On the other side of John, that professor was from Germany. There was one other American there. The discussions were lively, and thankfully not political, and for the most part in English, so I didn’t have to use my pantomiming skills too much. I was finally meeting people that John had worked with, and told me about for years.

          It was a long day filled with adventures in Milan. I slept well my third night in Italy.

Ciao,

Laura

The next “Postcard from Milan” will be from The Lakes of Northern Italy. Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.