More Questions

As I mentioned last time, people have asked me/us a lot of questions about living in Italy. Usually these questions are about the food and about our classes and we occasionally answer them. But living here is making us come up with questions of our own, and I'd like to share with you a few of them. Partly because they're interesting thoughts, partly because they contain a little more information about what it's like to live here in Milano.

1) What's going on with the opening hours of businesses?

Several businesses - usually consumer-industry things like restaurants and small grocery stores - are known to close for an hour or two in the afternoon. It makes perfect sense with restaurants, as very few people will come in and do a meal between 3:00 and 5:00, but it seems a little stranger with markets to me. But there's more to this: There is a cafe around the corner from my house that is seemingly open all the time. It has been opened at 6:00 a.m. Saturday when we've left for trains and it has been open until at least midnight when we've come home late-ish.

And yet, when a friend of mine left a bag there and went to get it at 8:00 on a Monday morning, it was closed. Furthermore, I've never seen more than two people inside it between 3:00 and 7:00 p.m. and usually only a handful after seven, but twice this week I've seen upwards of 20 people inside around 1:00 p.m. I understand that this means it's a good lunch place, but it is a dead zone the rest of the day, so why stay open? Curiously, they seem to be one of the few that stays open all day long.

2) Why do so many streets smell like dog pee?

A valid question with an answer that creates another question. Dog pee is a less prominent smell in cities like Chicago because there are trees and miniature front-yards between the roads and front-doors of homes. In Milan, the apartment buildings are square-shaped with a courtyard in the middle, meaning that it goes from paved road to paved sidewalk to stone/brick/concrete wall. There is nowhere for the pee to go except on the sidewalk. So the better question is why are all the buildings square with courtyards.

3) Why are all the buildings square with courtyards?

I don't know, but it makes things smell like dog piss like all the time.

4) How did Milan end up #1 on the New York Times travel list for 2015?

Jesus Christ. I have no idea. They paid a lot of money? That's definitely it. Milano has something called Expo 2015 this year, and it's basically a world's fair. It's a big deal and I really can't imagine that their construction projects will be done on time - it's got an air of the Russian Olympics, if you ask me. Millions and millions of visitors are expected for this event, and if all of the improvements are made to the city, it might actually work out great. However, if the transit workers continue to strike on Friday afternoons, the streets all smell like urine, the spray paint continues to be literally everywhere, and the people carry on as being allergic to selflessness, this is going to blow up in the faces of the planners. 

I like Italy. I really like it. Milan, however, is very OK. The people as individuals are great, but as a group they just manage to...I don't know, ignore other humans? And they really like to paint squiggles on walls, benches, maps, information boards, garbage cans, buses, trains, windows, dumpsters, sidewalks, and literally anything that is mostly stationary. Bringing millions of people into this city is going to leave very few of them with a great impression. That's why Milan is not what you think of when you think of Italy - you think Venice and Rome, maybe Florence, maybe the lakes, maybe the coast, but you probably do not think of a city that's....just a city, for the most part.

Really though, it was named #1 on the 52 places to go in 2015 list and I can confidently say to you that you can look at my Tripadvisor profile and find 52 cities I've been to that I would suggest before Milan. Save your money.

And if you don't believe me that that being #1 on their list comes at a price/from a bribe, note that last year's #1 was Cape Town, South Africa, which was coincidentally named the World Design Capital for 2014 and had year-long events planned as a means to boost tourism by the millions. The year before that was the country that was poised to host the World Cup (and 2016 olympics), Brazil. There's a connection here.