...you might be in Italy.

We just returned from a delightful trip to Milan. It was a really fun little trip and extremely easy to get to (nice, new, comfortable, clean (except for the WC's) modern, fast train direct from Lausanne in less than 3-1/2 hours). I think this trip will spawn a few posts, but to start with, we were struck by the very diametrically opposed cultures of Switzerland and Italy. Switzerland is efficient and the people are friendly, but not warm (it's hard to explain, but I may try sometime). Italy is full of warm, effusive, emotional people, with not a lot of regard for efficiency (although our trains did run on time....).

So, with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy and his redneck jokes (you remember: If you've ever been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog...you might be a redneck. If you think "loading the dishwasher" means getting your wife drunk...you might be a redneck. Etc.), here are our initial thoughts of what it's like to be in Italy.

1. If the first thing your waiter does before greeting you or bringing a menu is creep up behind your child, reach around the chair and tickle him on the ears...you might be in Italy!

2. If every room is maintained at a minimum temperature of 85 degrees....you might be in Italy!

3. If every street is lined with barricades to keep people from parking their cars on the sidewalk...you might be in Italy!

The barricades in the neighborhood near our hotel

They don't stop the motorcycles....

4. If when your child knocks over a wine glass, breaking it into pieces and drenching the table in wine, three waiters materialize out of nowhere to strip the table down to bare wood and build it up again, all the while apologizing themselves and repeating "no problem, no problem, this can easily happen, please relax, don't do anything"...you might be in Italy!

5. If all of the waiters and shopkeepers want to hear your life story, know where you're from, what you're doing in Italy, all the while oblivious to the new tables/line of customers filling up behind them...you might be in Italy!

6. If your metro stop brings you up out of the ground one block from Milan Castle (or the National Museum of Science and Technology or any other landmark aside from the Duomo) without even one single sign, arrow, diagram, map or wayfinding solution to tell you which way to go to get to the extremely large and important tourist site one block away...you might be in Italy!

Is it too hard to put up one sign to direct you here from
the metro stop one block away?

7. If the first train you enter in the metro is occupied by a band of scruffy characters with a strange set of instruments playing a particularly...artful? interestingly tuned?... representation of what you can just make out was once Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for stray change...you might be in Italy!

Milanese "musicians" on the Metro.

8. When the shoe saleswoman keeps pinching your son's cheeks and telling him she want's to eat him up (yes, it happened again!)...you might be in Italy!

9. When you're woken up at four o'clock in the morning by a drunken man in the room below you with his window open belting out opera at the top of his lungs, and he's quite good...you might be in Italy!

And, my personal favorite,

10. If the interactive exhibits at the National Museum of Science and Technology don't interact...you might be in Italy!

The National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo DiVinci was a real mystery. So much promise and potential unrealized. It was a fun visit, and occupied the kids for a half day, but it could have been so much more! 

• As mentioned above, the interactive exhibit on telecommunications had long since given up the ghost (interesting because it was supposed to demonstrate the better reliability of new modes of communication, but when your answer to the questions posed there was that the call didn't go through, just like the earlier more complicated forms.... hmm). But, there were lots of other things, too. 
• For some reason, they have a third of the exhibits roped off and closed. Why? 
• A huge exhibit building filled with old trains and train cars. But, you can't go in the train cars, and there aren't platforms to allow you to see inside the windows! So, you can see what the outside of the trains look like, but not the inside. 
• Ditto the closed submarine. (Granted, we weren't there during tourist season.) 
• Models of Leonardo DaVinci diagrams that are promoted loudly in advertising and tour books, but they don't mention they're miniature models. 
• A fresco that's billed as a reproduction of Leonardo's Last Supper which is in Milan but nearly impossible to get tickets to, but it's a fresco by another artist inspired by Leonardo's masterpiece, with the same size and format, but completely different artistic style and interpretation of characters. 
• Beautiful, clean exhibits, but missing something big. And a building that's nearly impossible to navigate. Forget about trying to find an exhibit, just try to cover the whole building.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. We had fun and it was a good stop for the kids. But, diamond in the rough, man, diamond in the rough!

NEXT ENTRY: Inside Milan Castle and the famous Milan Duomo!