Milan – Italy

I wrote a blistering four-part series about how much I largely hated my time in Italy back in 2022, I stand by those blogs. The following two blogs, however, is nothing but a tribute to all the locals that made the following such a wonderful weekend in a country that is still, in my opinion, annoying for many – oh so many – reasons. In fact, everyone I met across the four days in Milan and Monza were fantastic people, and it all began with a flat tyre.

I find flying within Europe far more stressful than flying long-haul. Packing for starters, I mean, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve checked baggage sizes, restrictions and permissions for budget airlines. It’s not even budget airlines; it’s most airlines offering short-haul flights. Then there are the liquids to worry about; can’t shove them in the boot because I could only afford carry-on, plus 20 kilograms of luggage is admittedly a bit excessive for four nights. Still, now I need to worry about the size of my liquids and whether they are in a clear bag, but actually, at most UK airports I’ve flown from recently they now have the new scanners which means you don’t need to show everyone that Lynx Africa was the only mini can of deodorant you could find last minute for £10. However, get the booking process right on the overly complicated website and one can stroll straight through security and to the bar. This I admit is wonderful, especially when there are no queues at security, such was the case this time at Gatwick. This all means I can give myself two hours at the airport instead of three, right? Not a chance in hell, I will always give myself at least three hours if possible, especially if it involves a two-hour drive across the country, and sure enough that became over two and a half hours thanks to the M25 closing down again. 

So, there I am, sat in the departure lounge with my partner in crime, supping on a single beer before being called to our gate, a gate so confusing that I accidentally started queuing for a different flight. You see, because I had paid for the privilege to stick a larger bag over my head in the locker, instead of a smaller bag under the seat, I was given speedy boarding, and a sign at the boarding gate showed I could go spend time in a different line to all the common folk. But from what I could tell, people from both lines were basically being checked into a holding pen. We chose to stay out the way and hung back a while to then find out that the flight would be delayed 20 minutes in order to change a flat tyre on the aircraft. Ninety minutes later, the flight was called for departure, I entered the holding pen and consequently a scrum for the plane since any appearance of order was thrown out. Contrast this with when we departed Milan four days later and one thing we can be sure of is that the Italians know how to board an EasyJet plane well.

On arrival to Milan, we entered the mainstream presses’ story of the year. Forget Nepal, Iran, Palestine, Ukraine, Venezuela, Sudan; how big will the queue be for all of us wanting to get into Europe, and do we have to do fingerprints and face scans and urine tests or what? As with Rome a few months ago, the automated registration machines went home at 7pm apparently, and so we queued to be seen by one of two immigration officials; a queue that moved pleasantly swiftly as the official took the passport, found a blank page, stamped it, handed the passport back and waved the person on – no scanning, didn’t even look at the identity page, I kid you not. I could have had Mr Blobby as my picture and name with a passport from 1756 and they wouldn’t have cared. 

Getting to our apartment was relatively easy enough but as it was getting late and food was in desperate need, panic started to set in. Thankfully, a little pizza place was still open, ran by a couple of helpful South Asians that cooked up some great pizza and provided beer and a table outside to sit. By now it was 11pm, and the streets were alive with the sounds of binmen and a guy with a power washer attached to a cleaning truck. Walking to the apartment there was a random pattern of wet left by the power washer as it appeared he was just randomly firing at any part of the pavement he wished, it seemed mighty pointless but maybe I missed something – for those of you who have watched How to Train Your Dragon (and really you should have) try and recall the scene with Toothless dancing around making patterns in the ground with a stick in his mouth. 

Getting into the apartment was the next issue, and this is classic Italy. Usually finding the damn place is hard enough, hidden behind large wooden doors with nothing put a question mark over an entry keypad to the building you think it may be. Building identified, we then had to follow a video that had been sent showing us the way in. By the time we had worked out that there was an interactive button below the video on the phone that had to be pressed once we had made a call on the physical keypad, two lovely locals had appeared, let us in, and had provided instructions to where the apartment was. Note, the lovely locals, this was new to me in Italy. We then got to the door of the apartment, recovered the key from the safety box and stuck it in the door which refused to open. Five-minutes later, when it felt ready, it just popped open upon touching the doorknob, after I’m sure you can imagine, much toil and swearing. We were finally into our two-bedroom apartment, ready to collapse and go to sleep but no, it was one bedroom and a sofa bed in the living room that needed to be made up. Nonetheless, this was at least one better than asking for a twin room back in Rome and having to spend the weekend in a double bed with the bro-in-law. 

The next day we were up bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to carry out our sole purpose for being in Milan; the Monza Formula 1Grand Prix. Step 1, grab a coffee from what appeared to be a very welcoming café next-door. Step 2, work out how the hell to get to the circuit. The racetrack is just north of a small town called Monza, Monza is no more than 15 kilometres from Milan, they were expecting over 400,000 people to attend the race across the weekend. Were there any signs or extra staff to help manage getting people from Milan to Monza, nope, this is Italy. There was always a station member to ask, and so I assume the plan was to get their money’s worth from them, but even on speaking to them and getting the tickets from an actual booth with people didn’t really leave us any clearer on what was happening. On arrival to Monza station, it was then time to queue for a shuttle bus that would take us to the track. To pay, if you hadn’t already worked it out through online research, one could scan one of the three QR codes that had been deployed on an A4 piece of laminated paper throughout the sizable queue – anywhere else on the planet and there would be QR codes all over the place. Turns out, if you missed all three codes, you could simply pay at the end of the queue where they checked your pre-purchased tickets anyway. So, it had been thought through but no one felt the need to tell anyone. 

Upon arrival to the circuit, things were looking up and despite some odd rules about the size of a water bottle, getting into the circuit was effortless and everything looked pretty damn good and organised; and it was, except for one thing. The giant maps of the circuit and all the fan zones and such were positioned so north was pointing left and up was east. Now this does sound trivial, but I think most of us are used to seeing maps where up is north. This was no mistake in the positioning of the maps, ‘north’ and an arrow had been clearly painted pointing to the left with the track aligned correctly to that. The only other Italian quirk was the option to buy a reusable cup. We all love a reusable cup because they hold beer, make a good piece of nostalgic memorabilia, and are indestructible to visiting children back home; oh, and reduce the amount of single use plastic contaminating the planet. We therefore believed they would refill the cup when required or swop it out for another as with many large events. Not in Italy, no no, can’t reuse it because of hygiene rules, no jokes. We were therefore left carrying around two reusable cups that couldn’t be reused unless we refilled them from the two single-use plastic cups that our drinks came in. Other than this, everything at the racetrack was rather bloody good. Sorry, no, I forgot. They did have free water stations knocking about which is a win in 34^oC heat, but no way near enough to keep up with demand. Although small bottles of water were on €1.50 which isn’t a barbaric price considering the event. 

Being a Friday, the racetrack wasn’t too busy and more will be discussed about the actual racing next time. With the final practice session over we headed off to the nearby train station conveniently located near to the track and thankfully it was pretty quiet. What we hadn’t realised is that only one train an hour passed by and no one had thought a few more might be necessary at an event with 400,000 people over the coming days. Still, as mentioned, Friday is a quiet day at the racetrack, and apparently a quiet day on the rail track also, as we found ourselves lounging on the train platform for nearly two hours bickering about all the important things in life such as mail-order brides. When we did finally make it back to Milan we were desperate to find an Aperol Spritz, a whole other topic we will pick up on next time as we need to end here; and what better way to end then once again being locked out of the apartment due to our misunderstanding of the check-in process. At 11pm yet again, we found ourselves slumped against the door hoping the owner, or a resident would let us in. The owner replied 12 hours later. It was another quite wonderful resident that let us in after a 15-minute wait, but she wasn’t dismissive of us as I was expecting, quite the opposite, like the others the previous night she was talkative and lovely. Italy was beginning to soften my opinion of it.