16/05/10 @ 9:30 AM – Frecciabianca train 9713 from Milan to Padua

Dear Journal,

                Yesterday was a rather ordinary day.   While Shahram spent the morning at the Mantova book fair, I grabbed our two bags of laundry (stuffed to the brim, of course), and went off in search of a laundromat.  The place around the corner recommended by the hotel was closed on Saturdays—what kind of a laundromat closes on a Saturday?!—and I returned to the clerk at the hotel.

                “Is there anywhere else?” I asked.
                “There is one, but it’s very far,” she replied.
                I pulled out my pocket map of Mantova.  Nothing in that town could be described as “far.”  She took her pen and circled Piazza Gramsci: “A fifteen minute’s walk,” she told me.  

    

                So with the two bags clamped under my arms—the handles on both bags having snapped—I made my way past the piazzas and outdoor cafés of the centre, and down a cobblestoned road, to Piazza Gramsci, a rather large traffic circle with shops all around it, and nice, big, leafy trees all between the traffic circle and the shops, effectively blocking the names of the shops from the view of any passers-by, such as myself.  So I picked a direction and walked around the circle.  By this time, my arms were aching and my woollen pullover was really cooking me in that close, humid air.

                Exasperated, I stood on a corner outside a bakery and begged in my heart for guidance.  Like a gentle morning breeze, I looked to my left and saw someone come out from a shop with a bag of clothes in hand.  Amazed, I rushed to the shop and went inside.  It was a dry cleaners’ ("Sue, the dry cleaners here are just as good as the ones in Europe.").  The lady behind the counter saw the despondence on my face and told me, in Italian, to go to the other side of the square (I could have sworn she said “Tony’s”.)  “Grazie mille!” I professed to her, and walked as quickly as I could manage, dodging the cars swarming the traffic circle, and finally coming nearly the full way around from where I began to find the local coin laundromat (not called “Tony’s” at all!).

                After fumbling with their centralized control system for the few high-speed machines they had (I paid for someone else’s laundry along the way, and he promptly returned the favour), I went out in search of a grocery store where I could get new plastic bags to carry the laundry home with.  I returned to the laundromat, and thankfully the dryers only took 20 minutes to dry our clothes!  I then folded and packed away the clothes, making sure to catch up on some Tolstoy in my downtime.

                Upon returning to the hotel, Shahram and I packed up, ate a quick lunch, checked out, and chilled in the lobby while we waited for our return train to Milan.  After studying the recent Ridvan message from the Universal House of Justice on the train (once a year the supreme governing body of the worldwide Baha’i community sends a message to the Baha’is of the world), we pulled into Milano Centrale, the main train station of Milan.

                I don’t like Milan, I must say.   It represents to me the culmination of an oppressive, all-consuming, economy-driven system that evokes a spirit of lethargy and apathy, combined with an excessive individualism, in those who buy into it.  When you go to “Milan,” you go to the old centre, the Duomo, where all the world’s major designer stores pay enormous rents for massive square footage in elaborate old buildings, massed around the central cathedral (an over-elaborate and gaudy construction, no pun intended).  It really looks as though when Christ threw the merchants out of the Temple they merely went and set up shop on the front steps!  There was even a large set of chairs set up outside the church, their backs to its walls, facing a great big ad for Rolex.

(This image was not taken by me.)

              “In Milan,” I quipped sardonically to Shahram, “it is fashionable to worship not the Church of Rome, but the Church of Rolex, of Gucci, and of Louis Vuitton!”

                I imagine there are people possibly reading this who would love to spend an afternoon—or a week!—in Milan’s Duomo district.  (I would prefer the week where we are travelling right now, beneath some fantastic low mountains with the snow-capped Alps not far off!).  Consider how this Duomo came about: the elaborate domed roof and marble palace with the most exquisite cafés, a Louis Vuitton, and, you guessed it, a posh McDonald’s.  This palace was built in the age of Italy’s unification, no doubt to rival the antiquated grandeur of Rome—how else do you convince the industrious, commercialized, “civilized” (cough cough) wealthy Milanese to unite with the “backwards” (cough cough) peasantry of central and southern Italy?  You make Milan not simply the regional capital, but the cultural and economic capital of the entire Italian peninsula!  (Interestingly, a similar process took place in Canada in the decades following Confederation with the transfer of cultural domination from Montreal to Toronto: and Toronto’s cultural “dominion” spread over the Prairies through the centralizing effects of its radio programs, professional sports teams, and proliferous and assimilating mail-order catalogues.) 

                The Centrale station provides the needed counter-balance to the Milan-centred Duomo—Mussolini’s signature colossal and nationalistic central train station combines the symbols of all Italy’s regions in the hope of presenting the peninsula’s diverse cultural traditions as part of one cohesive whole.  The rooftop bears the signature Roman she-wolf with the infant Romulus and Remus beneath; while the chimera, a flying lion and symbol of the Venetian Republic, decorates its interior, and its pillars bear peasant-like figures: all of which underscores a nationalistic pride that maintains that a great Mediterranean dominion is sustained by the hard labour of the peasantry, the pillars supporting empire. Milano Centrale, although conceptually unsound, is a marvel to look at, and was completed in 1931 at a time when bankrupt New York businessmen were leaping from tall buildings to escape economic ruin.  Like they say, though Mussolini did terrible things, he did  make the trains run on time!

                Sorry for the rant, and the long build-up to that one joke!  After strolling around the Duomo we went back to the Centrale area, near our hotel.  We grabbed dinner at a local self-service (where Shahram, in his constant battle against touching public doorknobs, kicked open a bathroom door like a cowboy might barge into a saloon—he refused to wear my hat while doing it, though).  After, we reserved several train tickets for the next two days, then returned to the hotel.

                I leave you know as the train pulls into the star-crossed city of Verona!  Until next time, a fox on both your houses!

                                Richard