A day in Milan

March 4, 2011

This morning we had to be at the train station at 6:40 because today was our school field trip to Milan. Honestly, I wasn’t really that excited to go to Milan because the city doesn’t really intrigue me a whole lot. We were being taken to Milan to visit the headquarters of Corriere Della Sera, the newspaper that the guy who visited my Comparative Media class on Monday worked for. I didn’t really find that man that exciting, so I didn’t really expect much from today’s field trip, but I was willing to go into it with a positive attitude. I napped the entire way to Milan which was only about an 1 hour and 45 minute train ride thanks to the fast train. Once off the train we were given metro tickets which were good for all day long so when we had free time after the meeting at the newspaper company we could take the metro wherever we wanted around the city.

We hopped on the metro to get near to the Corriere Della Sera office, and as we were walking down the street Marzio Fatucchi (the guy who was the guest speaker in our class on Monday was accompanying us on our field trip today) stopped into this little café. We had no clue that we would be stopping for coffee or breakfast, but Marzio told us to all come in and get a little something for breakfast and a drink and it was his treat! What a nice man! I ordered a latte and a croissant, but both of those things ended up not being what I thought they were going to be. Apparently in Italy a latte means hot milk, not a type of coffee like what we order at Starbucks. The guy at the bar asked me if I wanted chocolate in it, so I said yes, hoping it would make it taste a little like hot chocolate or something, and it ended up actually being pretty good despite the fact I haven’t really had real milk by itself for quite a while now. And then the croissant…I told the lady what I had ordered at the bar and she asked me if I wanted chocolate or marmalade. I expected to just have a plain croissant, but I didn’t really want chocolate (a very very rare mood apparently because I ALWAYS want chocolate), so I asked for the marmalade one and it was surprisingly super tasty! I have never had marmalade before and I don’t really like jelly nor do I like oranges, but I really really liked it. Thanks Marzio!

After everyone had breakfast and used the bathroom there we headed to the Corriere Della Sera office. Once there we were taken up to this grand room and as we were walking up the stairs we were told to be extremely quiet…this was an elite building! As I walked inside the room I realized it was this long room that has this huge grand wooden table/desk taking up practically the entire room with chairs placed all the way around it. This was the meeting room for the board in the morning where they would review yesterday’s newspaper as well as their competitors’ newspapers to discuss flaws and what they could improve upon. We were sitting in the seats of the big guys, and we were also sitting in the original chairs of the building which was established in the 19^th century…Corriere Della Sera has an old and elite history. Inside this room we met a woman who seemed to be the secretary of the building or something because she knew a little bit about everything dealing with the newspaper and the company. The woman cracked me up because her hair was like thrown up into one of those big claw clips, but her hair was falling out all over and she had this plastic clips all over holding it in, and then she had this black t-shirt on with a black spaghetti strap dress on overtop of the t-shirt with tall grey socks that stuck out of her tall brown boots….hot mess! Her style made me giggle especially with her standing next to Marzio who was in a really nice full suit.

Her and Marzio gave us some more background of the company and answered a couple of our questions until a journalist popped into the room saying he was ready to talk to us. We were then taken down into a smaller room where there was a big projector screen and chairs for us to sit in. The journalist told us his position at the newspaper and was open to any questions we might have. One of the questions was “how many people work here?” And his response was the thing that I think I found most interesting about Corriere Della Sera. He told us that there are tons of people who work for the newspaper, and that some of the employees may only work one or two days out of the entire year, because some people are more just like connections for news stories. Say if they normally don’t do news stories in Egypt, but some big event happened in Egypt, they might have a person employed in their company who could speak the language and have contact numbers to the people necessary to make the connection in Egypt and gather the information they needed to write a story. And maybe that person who had the connection was only contacted by Corriere Della Sera just that once for that year. Basically they have tons of positions stretching all the way from A to Z.

The journalist answered quite a few of our questions before he had to run off for a meeting. And once he left the secretary lady played a video showing the process of the newspaper for us, which was all in Italian, so we didn’t really get much out of it. Once the video was over we were given goodie bags consisting of the newspaper of the day, as well as their sports newspaper, a book on a city in Italy, a keychain, and a pen. Everyone loves free stuff! Goodie bag in hand, we were then dismissed and given the rest of the day as free time, but we had to meet at the Mucca Rossa (red cow) at the train station at 4 o’clock.

Danielle, Marissa, and I didn’t really have anything planned in Milan that we really wanted to see besides the Duomo, so that’s exactly what we started walking towards. On our way we walked through this like covered shopping plaza which contained some of the greatest designer stores; Milan of course is known as the fashion capital of Italy. One of the most hilarious and ironic things though, was that inside the plaza McDonald’s was placed directly across from Louis Vuitton! But here in Italy they do view McDonald’s a little better than we view it in the U.S. because as we looked into the window of the McDonald’s worthy enough to be across from Louis Vuitton we saw people drinking coffee out of real coffee mugs. Once we took our pictures and admired things that we would never be able to buy unless we hit the lottery, we continued on towards the Duomo.

And once we were through the covered plaza, ta-da! There was the Duomo! It was absolutely gorgeous! It had a ton of tall towers which reminded me a ton of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona! We started walking closer to take pictures and got BOMBARDED by these creeps trying to give us free bracelets and bird seed to feed the pigeons. We tried to just keep walking past them, but this one guy would not leave us alone and laid a bracelet on my arm and I tried to ignore it and just keep moving letting the bracelet fall the ground. We finally thought we were in the clear and started to take pictures when this guy came over and wanted us to hold our hands out so he could dump some bird seed into our hands to make the pigeons eat out of our hands. We continuously kept saying no and tried walking way when he like shoved bird seed in my face and these pigeons fluttered around my head…I could have screamed and kicked this man so hard. Our experience of seeing a beautiful building was being completely ruined and we wanted nothing more than to get as far away from the Duomo as possible!

We realized we were getting pretty hungry, so we might as well go and try to find something to eat. We passed up a Burger King, which sounded FABULOUS, but we thought maybe we should try and find something not so American since this was our one and only time in Milan. We walked down a street and discovered this sandwich shop that had two lines formed outside of it going down both direction of the street and there were around a good 30 people in each line. Clearly this place was popular with the locals, so it had to be pretty good! We just weren’t sure if we wanted to wait in line that long because we were starving, so we thought we would walk down the street a little further and see what else we could find. As we were walking along all we really discovered were high end clothing stores, and barely any food places…no wonder people in Milan are so skinny and fashionable! We tried getting back to where we were before to get a sandwich at that place and on our way back we ended up walking on this street that had some of the biggest names…I thought I would faint, especially when we walked along Alexander McQueen…priceless! It basically made me feel like Louis Vuitton and Chanel were Walmarts or something.

Eventually we ended up back near the Duomo in an area where I felt like I could breathe a little better. And we found our way back to the sandwich shop where the lines were even longer down both directions of the street, but we knew it was worth it and we were willing to wait as long as it took to get some good food in our stomachs. Once we got a little closer we discovered the shop was called Luini Panzerotti and they were famous for this sandwich that was almost like a calzone where the ingredients were baked inside of this dough. Once we finally got inside of the shop to order I saw a guy bring out a huge pan of the sandwiches and dump them on top of others on the counter…these suckers were fresh! I ordered one with mozzarella and prosciutto, a coke, and these crispy fried dough things sprinkled with powdered sugar that I have seen everywhere and have always wanted to try. My total ended up being only like 4 or 5 bucks…that is a steal deal! We sat down on the curb to dig in and we all were in heaven; basically the warmest, freshest, most delicious sandwich of my life! And washed down with a coke and accompanied with the best dessert I was in heaven! As we were eating this car tried getting through the street which was super narrow and was filled with people waiting for the greatest sandwich of their life…I couldn’t believe they even attempted to get through, but everyone annoyingly moved and I squeezed my legs and feet as close to the curb as possible hopping I wouldn’t get run over.

After we had our fill we were more than happy and felt like we could now happily leave Milan, so we made our way back to the Duomo, through the shopping plaza to have our last gaze at the stores, and made our way back to the metro to go back to the train station. We had about two hours to waste in the train station, but the train station was like three levels and packed with stores, so we knew it would be no problem wasting time in there. We shopped around for a while and eventually sat down to wait for the rest of our group. When we were sitting we noticed this stand that was for toilet paper and there were benches and a podium of toilet paper! We went over there to check it out and sit on one of the toilet paper benches, and the promoter lady standing at the podium gave us a free roll of toilet paper in this cute little plastic container with a string attached to it! How cute! And when the rest of our group met back up with us they were all jealous of our toilet paper and went to get a roll for themselves.

Once everyone had their toilet paper we met up with our chaperones at the mucca rossa and headed onto our train home. I was hoping to sleep the whole way home, but I honestly couldn’t really get to sleep because it wasn’t that late and I was sitting beside a stranger and didn’t want to like drool on him or anything. So I decided to read my Italian newspaper which was a lot harder than I thought, but really challenged my Italian skills and made me think. Maybe I should pick up Italian literature more often. I discovered the Sudoku puzzle in the paper, which is no different in Italian than in English, and the puzzle was a difficult one, so that kept me pretty busy. And before I knew it we were back in Florence!

I told Marissa that after Thursday I was willing to catch up on all of our t.v. shows, so we headed back to our apartment and I pulled up my computer and we started to catch up on our one episode of Pretty Little Liars, two episodes of Gossip Girl, and then I watched America’s Next Top Model in my bed before passing out from exhaustion! 

The Piazza we crossed through to get to the Duomo.

We discovered the one and only Leonardo.

A grand entrance into a grand plaza of grand stores!

I think there's something wrong with this picture...Louis Vuitton across from McDonald's!?

Just a little Prada.

Out on the other side of the shopping plaza, into the Piazza of the Duomo.

The gorgeous Duomo!

Marissa claimed all morning that she looked like a nun with her dress sticking out
of her long black coat, and what a coincidence that we would find her sisters in front of the Duomo!

The other side of the Piazza of the Duomo.

The side of the Duomo which is just as gorgeous as the front.

The fanciest Burger King I have ever seen!

The lines extending both ways down the street to get into Luini (the yellow signs on the left)

My warm, fresh, flaky sandwich/panini!

Gooey mozzarella and yummy ham filled the inside!

My crispy fried pastry covered in powdered sugar, which ended up flaking and covering my scarf!

The toilet paper booth in the train station.

Danielle and Marissa with their toilet paper

The comfiest bench I have ever sat on, which Tessa claimed she could just sit on
and go to the bathroom without anybody knowing because it would soak right up!

Testing out the toilet paper benches with my free toilet paper.

Milan Train Station