Eurotrip #4: Milan and Turin

Hi again!

After a brief stop for the Christmas holidays, I'm returning to tell you about my trip to Milan that I went on at the end of November to visit a friend from college who is an Erasmus student in this Italian city.

I have to say that I had already visited Milan with my family in 2010, so I didn't need to go back to see all the touristy places and monuments in the city, therefore, I dedicated more of my time to hang out with Ana and her Erasmus friends.

Initially, I didn't know if I would be able to visit my friend, since the direct flights from Bremen to Milan with Ryanair were only running during the summer. However, I found a flight from Hamburg for 50€ (there and back), so 3 days after coming back from Berlin, I got myself to Hamburg in order to go on to Milan. For those that live in Bremen, you should know that despite the train to Hamburg being free with the Smesterticket, you should instead pay 3. 20€ in order to go from the train station to the airport.

So, once landed in Milan Malpensa airport and with a delay of 2 hours, I had to pay 14€ for a return ticket to the central station in Milan (8€ one way). So even though the flight only cost 50€, the actual price to travel to Milan from Bremen was around 70€.

From Milan central station, I took the metro to my friends house, in the area called "Porta Romana". I bought a ticket which allowed 10 metro journeys for 13. 80€, with which you save a little money seeing as each individual ticket costs 1. 50€. After arriving at Ana's house, and after the beautiful reunion and a brilliant plate of pasta, I was ready to see what Milan had to offer me. The first thing were Ana's great flatmates, 2 girls from Rioja in Spain and two Mexican girls who shared the beautiful attic floor flat with Ana in an old Milanese building.

The same night (it was a Friday), the French neighbours had a party in their flat, so a little while after arriving, we were already warming up our engines with a game of beerpong in Ana's flat. As well as the 5 tenants of the flat, two Mexican friends, a girl from Seville and a German joined us. This all resulted in a spectacular night whose details I'd prefer to keep to myself after my mum's lecture about this post. Kisses mum.

The nightlife in Milan is very lively, since it's a big city, you can go out every night during the week (and more being an Erasmus student). Mi friend Ana has very kindly given me this weekly "calendar of nights out":

• Monday: Dirty Monday party in the Navigli district.
• Tuesday: Hollywood party (metro stop Garibaldi).
• Wednesday: Erasmus party in Old Fashion (Parco Sempione) and Rap music in "The Club" (metro stop Moscova), where the Italians go themselves.
• Thursday: Erasmus party in "The Club", although the Italians go to Old Fashion on this night (the opposite of Wednesday).
• Friday: Everyone goes to Alcatraz (Via Valtellina).
• Saturday: Party in "Le Banque" or going out for some beers in the Navigli district, particularly in a bar called "La Fontanella".
• Sunday: Beers in the Navigli district or Uptown party (black music) in Old Fashion.

As it was a Friday, we went to Alcatraz, which costs 10€ with 2 drinks. There was a really good atmosphere and the music was also very good, although a few were commercial, practically the same as any Spanish or German club that plays commercial music. As I said, I had a great time, but I won't go into detail.

The following day, apart from being hungover, eating Italian food and drinking wine, the only thing we did outside the flat was going for an aperitivo of chocolate with Bea (the girl from Seville) and Marisa (one of the Mexicans), in the end we didn't go in because we didn't have free entry as we had previously thought. The aperitivo, despite being called the same thing in Spanish, is a type of very traditional party in Italy which they celebrate during the afternoon-evening. It's held in bars which lay out a food buffet, which is normally free, so you only have to pay for drinks.

As I said before, I had already been to Milan, so Marisa, Ana and I decided to catch the train on Sunday and go to Turin. This city was the second option that I put on my list of preferences when applying for Erasmus, so I quite felt like visiting the city and getting to know the place that could have been my home during my Erasmus year. I had seen tickets for 18€ (there and back) with ItaloTreno, but when we went to buy the ticket on Saturday, we saw that the price had gone up a lot, so in the end we bought our tickets with TrenItalia for 24. 90€. It does seem expensive to spend some 6 hours in Turin, but it was really worth it.

We arrived at Porta Susa station at 1 in the afternoon after an hour and 50 minutes train ride. Although it was a cold weekend, with minimum of 1ºC, there was still the "Mediterranean sun" which I missed a lot in Bremen. We went walking by Via Cernaia until we got to Piazza Solferino, where we found ourselves a German Christmas market, with 200 types of sausage and grilled knuckle waiting for us. Yeah, it might seem absurd, but I went to Italy from Germany in order to not eat German food.

From there, we continued with our trip to Turin through Via Micca until we got to the beautiful Piazza Castello, where we found Palazzo Madama, the Palazzo Reale di Torino and a large quantity of other monumental buildings. The morphology of Palazzo Madama is very strange, as it looks like a palace on its façade facing the Piazza Castello, but its other façades look like a castle. The entire city is made up of cobbled streets which are overlapped with rails where the old, yellow trams run, flanked with majestic buildings with porticoes, all in a very Italian range of earthy colours, browns and greys. Also, the city is a Roman foundation, which makes it very easy to orientate yourself in the perfect grid which brings together the historic centre.

From Piazza Castello, we went towards Piazza San Giovanni, where the cathedral with the same name is found and the ruins of the Roman wall, with the Palantine towergate as a testament to the origins of the city. After walking towards the River Po through Via Giuseppe Verdi and Via Po, we stopped to look at the Mole Antonelliana, a giant tower measuring 168 metres in hight that dominates the city and hosts the National Museum of Cinema.

At the end of Via Po there is Piazza Vittorio Veneto, which leads to a bridge over the river, after which the Chisea Della Gran Madre di Dio stands - it's a small church inspired by the Roman Pantheon which rounds off the perspective of Via Po. From there, we started to go up the hill of Santa María del Monte church, situated next to the river and from which you can find the most beautiful views that I have ever seen.

The city of Turin isn't too far from the Alps, so this beautiful mountain range is a beautiful backdrop to the views of the city from the hill top. Despite it still being November, the alpine peaks were already covered in snow, which for every southerner, like me, produces a certain special feeling. Furthermore, the view of the brown roofs of Turin with the River Po a few steps away was simply spectacular. Last year, in Cartagena, I had a project professor (José Laborda) who one day took us up to the top of the Carthaginian "Castillo de la Concepción" to see the "fifth façade" of the city, that is to say, the sight of the tiled roofs and the flat roofs. According to him, cities show their actual fifth façade on the roofs of their houses, because people tend to put things that they don't want people on the streets to see on their roofs instead, thus showing the true face of the city. This is exactly why he said to us that as architecture students, we should always try to go up to the highest points of cities that we visit, something that since then, I always try to do.

After taking a nice, small break to admire this magical place, we went back down the hill, went back over the river and we went to Parco del Valentino, a park that sits on the banks of the Po and was full of people strolling around and doing sports. It's in this same park that the polytechnic School of Architecture of Turin is found, the school which I would have studied at if instead of Bremen, I had done my Erasmus year in Turin - it's located in a beautiful palace from the 17th century. It's incredible to see the installations and the positioning that European architectural schools have, and yet more incredible to compare that with my school in Cartagena. To worst thing is not that my university (UPCT) doesn't have pretty, quality buildings, (it has the Hospital de Marina, the Spanish Navy Marines or the Cuartel de Antigones), but the building where we are is really hideous.

Finally, we went back to the area of Piazza San Carlo, where there was a chocolate Christmas market. All of this area is made up of pedestrian streets with loads of shops (and on a level, it has all the luxury labels) and it's full of people with an enviable atmosphere of street-life. After this, we took the train back to Porta Nova station in Milan.

I have to say that Turin surprised me a lot, since I did not expect it to be so pretty nor so full of life and street atmosphere. Also, I met some people a little while ago who did their Erasmus in Turin, and they told me that it's an incredible city, with lots of things to do and a big musical atmosphere. The truth is that this trip made me curious as to how I would have done my Erasmus year in that city, but if something good comes from your course being longer than others, it's that you have the opportunity to complete more scholarships abroad. Maybe I'll do another Erasmus year in the future in Turin...? You never know...

On returning back to Milan, we decided to go out that night and go to a black music party in a club called Old Fashion. After starting to drink in Ana's flat, we went to take the tram to get to the club, which was quite far away and we had to make a transfer. The entrance fee cost 1€ before midnight, but when we went to transfer, we missed the bus, so we arrived a little late. After the nice Cuban bouncer wanted to charge me 15€ to get in and Ana and Marisa 10€ (I hate that they have different entry fees for guys and girls), we refused to pay so much for entry and we went to find something else to do. As it was a Sunday and there was barely anyone in the streets, we ended up making fools of ourselves in "Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II" and "Piazza del Duomo".

On Monday, my last day of the trip, we went back to the area where the Duomo is found, this time during the day, and after we decided to visit the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, since we had already seen everything else there was to see. Nevertheless, when we got to the cemetery, we discovered that it was closed, so I recommend checking the opening times on the Internet. From there, we went wandering towards Chinatown, on Via Paolo Sarpi, where we went into a supermarket and bought some Chinese stuff (Asian noodles, watermelon drinks, strawberry Oreos, wasabi peanuts and cheese... ). After that we went back to the flat, because I had to do some work on a presentation that I had to do the same week in Bremen and I had to get up soooo early the next morning to catch my flight back to Germany.

As I said at the start, it wasn't really meant to be a touristy trip, so I didn't walk all over the city and discover as many places as possible (except for in Turin); so the objective of this trip was to see my friend Ana, to spend time with her and find out how her Erasmus year was going, also the fact that I had recently gone on two intense trips (France and Berlin). It's true that Milan is a very pretty city, but there's something about it that doesn't fully convince me (sometimes that happens to me with places and I don't know how to explain why), but it's also true that I had such a good time, I became good friends with Ana's friends and it was a weekend full of memorable moments.

As always, I hope that you have enjoyed this article and thanks a lot to all those that are following this blog.

Arrivederci!

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