Six Months in Milan
Sometimes you just have to laugh. ✈️ TRAVEL MEMOIR
A saxophone echoes mournfully up the cavernous dark spiral of the stairwell from five floors below. The acoustics are perfect, the lonely sound is captivating — or it would be, if it weren’t three o’clock in the morning. Apparently, the musician can’t sleep. So, me neither.
It is a cold January. I have won a six-month Fulbright position in Milan, Italy, and have finally found a place to live in this miasmatic city. It’s a very small space on the fifth floor, with a sliding glass door onto a tiny balcony. If I bend out over the railing and look left, I can see two trees and the passing bright orange trams. This one-room studio in a “residence” building costs more than half of my salary, which people tell me is a hell of a good deal in Milan.
Milan is the fashion capital of Italy, of course, and of the seventy apartments in this building, sixty-nine are occupied by very tall, ultra-thin models and would-be models, male and female and others indeterminate. They seem to be aged 15 to 20, and are both giggly and feral, yelling up and down the hallways at all hours — thus the box of 100 foam ear plugs I purchased yesterday.
The women I meet in the elevator every day wear size 4 – intimidating for someone like me who wears size ... well ... not size 4. And I am not 5’ 10” tall and I haven’t weighed 110 pounds since I was in middle school. Up close in the elevator, they all seem to have a BMI of 10, have long, narrow feet and wear cool clothing. Whereas I, in comparison, have square, wide Norwegian feet in sensible oxfords, and my clothing looks as if I’ve found it on the Goodwill reject pile. In short, amidst this group, I am a different species altogether — sort of like a bug.
This sparsely furnished room does have everything I need: a place to cook, sleep, do laundry ( by hand in the bathtub ), study, and store my things. There is even a clothes line on the balcony. By either bus or tram or on foot it is only 20 minutes from where I work. The neighborhood has a little market, a bakery ( oh dear ), a cocktail bar ( uh oh ), a dry cleaner, a fruit stand and a pharmacy. Anything I need is close by and all for only 150% more than I would pay in California!
Surprisingly, I find I can easily live without a tv, a washer, an ironing board, a toaster, a stereo, a microwave! And, in fact, I am learning to save and reuse stuff now – incidental pieces of string, rubber bands, plastic liner bags from inside cereal boxes. On my desk, a styrofoam tray that held ripe tomatoes in the market now holds a stapler and paper clips. A glass applesauce jar is a vase, and an empty apricot can with a bright label is a repository for pens and pencils. Even my cardboard shipping box with a colorful cloth thrown over it, has morphed into a bedside table. It is amazing how much you don’t need to buy.
To my dismay, the floors in all the apartments are ceramic tile with no carpeting, so every footstep overhead sounds like Tock! Tock! Tock! .... Tock! Tock! Tock! Tock! Apparently they are wearing wooden shoes up there and trying to get their steps in for the day. Sometimes they seem to be arguing and clog dancing at the same time. Then there is the marathon bed squeaking that goes on several times a day in the apartment next door. Well, this world can certainly use a little more love! I do find myself wondering, though, if all this bed-squeaking and headboard banging activity is done in shifts by different couples or if it is one couple trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Pace yourselves, kids!
In the evening I listen to the radio – the Voice of America for news and a local classical radio station, which begins beautifully at the dinner hour with Vivaldi, Verdi, Puccini, and then degenerates in the later hours to some bizarre, atonal, avant garde stuff that affects me like fingernails scraping a chalk board. This genre is possibly called “tortura uditiva” as it seems a form of auditory torture.
I walked to work in the light snow this morning, snow like gentle, soft white bees buzzing lightly in all directions. The air was very brown and the temperature was 30˚F . I chose to walk today because the trams seem so crowded right now, what with everyone wearing five layers of puffy clothing to keep warm.
The office in which I am housed is on via Montenapoleone, an upmarket boulevard rife with fashion outlets that read like the pages of Vogue magazine – Ungaro, Valentino, Benneton, Hermes, Rolex, Ferragamo, Balenciaga, Prada, Fendi, Dolce e Gabbana — all rubbing shoulders. I stopped to look in one of the windows, and I realized that if my mom would send me $600, I could totally buy her a small silk neck scarf. From the bargain table.
Okay, I admit it, I don’t like living in this noxious, frenetic city. The polluted air is scarcely breathable, the pace is mad, and any wine less than $25 a bottle may be adulterated, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Certain weeks, the air is so poisonous, that all private cars are ordered to stay off the streets for an entire day. No cars can come into the city. Everyone switches to public transportation. Some weeks, owners of private cars are allowed to drive only on alternate days, according to an odd or even number on their license plates.
I have been in the throes of culture shock for a couple of weeks now, and I am so disappointed in myself! I am a well-experienced traveler, and presumed I was more sophisticated than this. But Milan is tough; it started getting to me with the first blast of foul air. However, I am hopeful! I think I am recovering. For the last three days, at least, I have actually gone out, walked through the boulevards and parks. I have stopped thinking about the pollution and the traffic so much, I have stopped comparing US and Italian prices, and, best of all, I have stopped muttering! A primary symptom of culture shock is constant sarcastic muttering to oneself. For example, I have heard myself grumbling under my breath such invectives as:
“Sure, just throw your litter on the sidewalk. After all it’s your world too!”
“Absolutely! Just park there on the sidewalk with the other nine cars. Pedestrians don’t mind walking in the gutter.”
“No, no! It’s fine. Just sit there and let your car idle for 15 minutes. I can just move my lunch to an indoor table.”
So yes, I have been a terrible grouch as I learn to adapt to life in a big city. A big Italian city. But I’m muttering a lot less now! I am finding my balance.
When you stay for a while in a large foreign city, a life tends to build up around you. In the heart of this mega-metropolis, my neighborhood has become a cozy little village. I see the same people every day and I may not know their names, but I recognize them, smile, nod, say good morning – the woman at the vegetable stand, the postman at the office, the man who sits in the covered entry way each morning, the woman who feeds breadcrumbs to the piccioni in the square near the metro stop. In the Baby Bar on the corner, I am now on a first-name basis with the barista, “Ciao, Fernando! Come stai, bello?” All feels sort of normal.
Walking out today the air was cold and crisp, and carried the sweet smell of new snow and equilibrium. I will end up loving it here. As my best friend suggested, “Just breath out, do not breathe in, and buy yourself a large bouquet of flowers every week. You’ll be fine.”
If you liked this view of Milan, here is another one that will make you laugh. It is short but to the point . Click A Sunday in Milan
**The USIA, where Fulbrighters were hosted in Italy, was disbanded in 2000, though the Fulbright program still forges on. This piece describes my experiences from that era. It seems as vivid as yesterday to me.
Long term in Milan sounds like college dorm. Five bucks a week for whatever food is not provided by the dorm, so everything was very expensive. I ate the desserts the other kids didn't want and spent the money on colored tissue paper. Milan reads like New York, smog, crowds, COST, skinny models in high heels. NEw mass volume: two models, three models.... I'm six feet tall, two models mass. I wonder why the grant didn't include lodging and you had to pay so much rent yourself. Even/odd driving days by even/odd license )))) I do believe in flowers. All the time, everywhere, no dirt between. Masses of whites, then yellows then blues, then pinks, then whites again, reds, then silvers. And pots inside. )))
Reading your Milan stories was truly like a mini-vacation. I even let a call I was waiting for go to voicemail. A reminder that our sense of humor can save us in annoying circumstances.