Como and Milan

Como

The hotel we stayed at was run by a bit of a Nazi. Each room contained a list of rules similar in vein I imagine to most prison cells. These included no eating in the room, no washing of clothes, no moving of furniture, no guests, no talking louder than 15 db after 11.30pm and no sword fighting. The last one I made up. The Nazi also gave us a lecture on the rules when we arrived but his bark was worse than his bite because our neighbours came back at 2.30am and didn’t bother being very quiet.

I lay in my bunk screwing my ear plugs in ever tighter expecting at any moment the Nazi to come storming out brandishing a huge bayonet but nothing except that I didn’t sleep much.

Milan

Milan has turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. There are a couple of famous sights. The Il Duomo Cathedral is impressive as is the old castle in the park. The rest of the city has a drab and dusty quality typical of some old European cities. After a while each of the intersections began to look the same. I’m sure there will be many who disagree and it may be the world’s fashion capital but it is not a beautiful city.

There are many beggars. We caught the metro line number two and there was a crippled man walking slowly through the carriage holding out a cup. We got out of the train at the wrong stop and got the next train going the same way and there was another crippled beggar walking the same way in the same direction with cup held out.

African and Asian migrants try out their dubious schemes on tourists. On the Public holiday we were there, there were many at Piazza Duomo giving out free colourful wire ribbons to tie to your wrist to bring good luck. I wondered what the catch was until I saw a boy accept one to the consternation of his father who was ultimately asked for some money after the man had laboriously attached it to the boy’s wrist.

Crowd Photos

Have you ever noticed how when you want to take a picture of a famous building with a crowd of people milling about, just when you press the button, a fat American walks into the shot. I prefer to have a pretty girl walk into the frame for purely aesthetic and artistic reasons of course, but every time you line it up a group of ugly businessmen appear eating their greasy sandwiches.