November6, 2005
ITALY - Managia la miseria in Milan.
Related pic galleries: Milan. I was tried of carrying my camera
As I flick through channels on the television, I always tend to stop the repetitious button pressing when I see some sort of flesh flash across the screen. My blank face is locked to the illuminated glass when I see nearly naked models sashay across catwalks during fashion programs. I wait patiently for a glimpse of naughty bits through shear fabric or things that might have fallen out of loose-fitting cloth. The city of Milan is always presented as the fashion capital of the world, so I presumed it was going to be a fabulous and exotic city filled with beautiful streets, beautiful people, and pony-tailed old men carrying poodles and wearing sunglasses indoors. Nah, it was dirty, defiled with graffiti, frustrating, and not impressive in the least.
When I reached the Milan Train station (which I have to say, was impressive), I realized I had forgotten the name of the hotel I had booked over the internet, and spent the next couple of hours in an exhausting frenzy trying to get to it. I squandered my last Euro on Paprika Pringles while cruising in the train, and had to replenish my pockets to pay for the online services needed to get the information. I tried to extract funds from two bank machines in the station, but each ATM just spit my card back at me. After muttering fuck this and fuck that, I realized the Italian words flashing across the screens meant 'out of service'. I walked around outside for miles looking for something that resembled a ATM, and of course when I exited the station, I walked in the opposite direction of every money machine in the city.
Once the extraction was successful, I re-entered the massive station and strutted through the doors of the internet cafe to find out that all the online services were out of order. My shoulders and thighs were thick with pulsating muscle from carrying the dreaded backpack back and forth searching once again, this time for an operating computer hooked to the web.
After a successful information extraction, I was off to the subway to take a train to my hotel. Every one of the six ticket machines was mysteriously out of order. At this point I'm sure the lovely word "fuck" was getting progressively louder after the coins I put in dropped right through to the tray at the bottom of each useless machine. With the absence of any transit personnel whatsoever, there was no way for me to get a subway ticket. So up the stairs I went, all frustrated and sweaty, to hail a cab. When I reached my fucking hotel, it was two hours later, I was two pounds of evaporated sweat lighter, and Twenty-two Euro poorer.
Sandra came the next day from Switzerland to put a smile on my face. I was very excited about photographing the incredibly beautiful Duomo, so Sandra and I boarded a tram early in the morning. It was perfect weather - all sunny and warm - I kept saying to Sandra how amazing this cathedral was and about how this was the only place I wanted to photograph in this city. We walked and talked until the Piazza del Duomo (square of the cathedral) was visible at the end of an alley we were strolling through. I plunked my camera bag down and tugged the zip open to assemble my equipment for the unbelievable photos I was about to take.
We happily continued down the alley into the open square to ultimately see the cathedral - surely bright and spectacular with the morning sun beaming down on it. It finally came into view and the building was enormous in size... and so was the tarp covering the entire front of it. This was the absolute wrong year for traveling - how many times have my incredible photography skills been thwarted by scaffolding and tarpaulins? Sandra ripped into a bout of laughter when she saw the largest blanket in the world warming the carved stone. I stood there in horror lowering the now useless camera. "Let's go shopping", I said to Sandra, and we packed the equipment back into its cozy bag, and went shopping.
We thought we'd try our luck again. We decided to visit a beautiful river and stone bridge highlighted in a tourist magazine which we had stolen from the hotel counter. We traveled the badly posted subway system, getting lost many times, but finally arrived at the station we'd set out for. We ascended the subway steps and followed the map to the street. There in front of us sat the bridge. We slowly walked towards the river and stone bridge, lifting the book up repeatedly comparing the beautiful image to the ugliness we had just wasted an hour getting to. It was the same bridge, but the river beneath it was dry and filled with construction debris. Everything was trashed and crappy. Sandra and I looked at each other, then to the book, then to the bridge, and then turned back to the subway entrance we'd just come from. Managia la miseria.
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