Milan Day One

 I woke up and resolved to enjoy a coffee in the local style. When in Rome do as the Romans do. Oddly enough, this phrase is not taught in continental English and seems to confuse even the most fluent locals. I’m normally a tea drinker, adjusting to coffee drinking has been surprisingly easy. What they do in Milan was not at all what I expected. Breakfast is a cappuccino, consumed while standing at a bar and a snack, usually something small and sweet. This is a hell of a change from the French style where you sit and see how long you can stretch one cup for. Order, knock it back, go.

I had some time to kill before getting to today’s to do item so I wandered the local high streets for more clothes. Nothing interesting came my way and so it was lunchtime. A close friend of mine grew up in Milan and recommended a pizza place to me. Thick and fluffy risen crust with a crunchy bottom. Simple tart sauce. Good cheese. Anchovy. Moretti. A perfect lunch.

I meet up with Jackie who I met last night at the Aperitivo event. She’s from Germany and is living in Milan for a short while to finish her thesis. We arranged to meet at the Bagatti Valsecci museum. Milan is made of museums. There must be more per capita here than anywhere else I’ve been. None of them are shitty write offs like you’d see in London or Vegas. Each one is a gorgeous collection of Italian art which could stand on its own for a day of tourism. Bagatti Valsecci is a house museum. Two wealthy brothers with a passion for art and architecture built a shared home in the heart of Milan in a unified style. Their collection of art and furniture blends with the architecture and custom finishing seamlessly. This place was overwhelming. The amount of craftsmanship crammed into such a small space was incredible. The home could easily be considered one incredible work on its own. If the rooms were empty you could stare at them for hours, to appreciate all of it was almost too much for me. I could not bear to pick one photo so I’m dumping everything from that visit.

Courtyard

Library

This is a hallway. Yes actually

I don’t even remember where this was

From a neon exhibit

Same

Details of a bedroom door

Great room

Same room

Still great

Just an entryway

The lighting in the house was bright and harsh. There are countless other photos I tried to take but had to delete before they just weren’t any good. This place is just incredible, anyone who is familiar with Hearst Castle will be familiar and should see this counterpart in Milan.

Jackie and I were hungry after that and found ourselves in a pasta restaurant for dinner. In that place, I introduced her to amaro which is making me think she’s having trouble immersing herself in the culture. Milan is not what she’d hoped for, some issues are personal and some are cultural. She’s very laid back for a German but the dysfunction in Italy is bothering her a lot. Since she’s here to get something done, her thesis, it is a lot harder for her to simply succumb to the culture and embrace the shouting and doing nothing. Milanese manners on the street are very similar to what you’d find in America’s northeast. To a German, this is horrifying.

After dinner I needed one more drink and snack and managed to persuade her to come with. Wine, house amaro, and cheese. The perfect second dinner. There I got to hear an incredible story from her. In the US, we learn that The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and everyone lived happily ever after the end. To her, an East German, the story is different. I’ve learned over time that there still is an east/west divide in income and satisfaction. You can see the old border map today if you look at income or voting habits. People in the east are poorer and less satisfied than their western counterparts. Jackie tells me the East German unification story. One of hope and excitement getting crushed by greed and reality. The soviets brutalized the people in the east, looting their industry and abusing the people. In the early 90s as the DDR was being dissolved a government authority was set up to privatize the state assets. This process was predictable opaque and dirty. Property and capital that could have remained under local control sold to the west for a pittance leaving the people in the dust. The East was looted again. Fast forward thirty years and the East is dissatisfied but has little voice in a predominantly West German democracy. People are fed up and frustrated in a way that feels oddly familiar to me as an American. I need to read more about our post Civil War Reconstruction.

The Mauer is gone. The Mauer is alive and well.