Day 1 in Milan

Hi everyone! Since I've never been to Milan and I'm going there today, I decided to write here a sort of travelling diary about everything I'm going to do! 

The first thing to say is why I'm going there, and that is for the graduation and birthday of a friend of mine - I've met him while I was on the Erasmus exchange in Bochum, Germany. I'm super excited about going to Milan! Plus, I'll see some of my Erasmus friends again and I sincerely can't wait! 

I'm staying there until Saturday evening, I hope I'll have the time to go sightseeing a little!

Update 1: I've just arrived at Milan Central station. The platforms remind me of the ones in Cologne main station, they look the same! Apart from that, the station is way smaller than I thought it was. Nonetheless, it is crowded with people who are arriving and/ or leaving. I already noticed Christmas-ish decorations and they made me instantly happy. For example this Christmas tree is right in front of the exit gate. 

Beautiful, isn't it?

Update2: since this day has come to an end, I'm writing about everything that happened from the moment I arrived at the station until now.

Keep in mind that I had to wait more than an hour for two of my friends to get there. Let's call them M and Ila. Ila was the first to arrive, then we had to wait for M whose train was delayed. In the meantime, our friend - let's call him F - was giving the final presentation for his master graduation. 

We were supposed to get to F's university around 4 p.m. in order to attend his thesis discussion. As a matter of fact, he called us before M even arrived telling us that he had already finished with the discussion, that he just had to wait for the proclamation of his final mark and that it would take place at 5:30 p.m. 

So as soon as M got to the Milan central station we rushed to take the green line underground. One thing that we had not considered was that since Ila was on a wheelchair we needed to take the elevators in order to get to the underground platform. And that's how we got lost going back and forth in the Milan central station. After almost half an hour of wandering around we finally got to the green line underground floor. We bought the tickets and passed through the gates, but Ila couldn't do that because the gate appositely designed for disabled people was not working. So we had to get out of the gates again and look for a way to get in all together. After some more wanderings, we made it to the right platform. We knew that we had to get off the metro after three stops, so that's what we did. More precisely, we got off at "Piola".  Once there the elevators were not working, so we took the escalators. We found ourselves at a certain point where the only way to go up was climbing normal plain staircases. So we had to help Ila go up, then take our suitcases and climb the stairs. After that we had to walk for about 10 minutes in order to get to the university. We didn't even get lost! 

So we had finally made it to the university, when we saw F. We went downstairs - where the proclamations were made - and waited for his turn. We met his family and friends, who were waiting just like us. After a few minutes we and all the people who were there were told to go inside a giant room. The moment had come. F's turn eventually came, and he got the highest possible mark : 110 out of 110. Not that anyone had any doubt about that. We all got out of the building and F opened a bottle of sparkling white wine. We drank and toasted to his new degree. 

Then it was time for us to go to F's house. The thing is, he doesn't live exactly in Milan. He lives in Verbania, which is one hour and a half away from Milan - if there's no traffic. We were not so lucky though, it took us almost two hours and a half to arrive. When we finally got there, I noticed there was snow!

This view instantly cheered me up, especially because F promised us that the day after we would go in a snowpark. 

We went inside his house and we found a lot of people who were waiting to celebrate F's birthday - and graduation. That was really sweet. We had dinner all together, ate the cake and drank the sparkling wine - again.

When there was not much left of the cake F took a picture of what was left and posted it on instagram writing "Graduation day ...or birthday?" 

In the end we had a nice time. Then everybody left, and we realised we were too tired to do anything, so we talked for a bit - until 1 a.m. more or less - and then we went to bed. 

This was my first day in Milan. Two more to come!

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