An Update from Milano



The enemy

I was looking through past blog posts and found one from November, 2012 when I was here on my own. It was entitled "I hate Italy...Maybe." I go on to describe the frustration of trying to figure out the latches on the doors in the public bathrooms at Malpensa (the knobs are round but they do not turn.) On that trip the lack of signage on the Malpensa-Milano train resulted in my ending up at the wrong station to meet Costanza. When I tried to remedy the situation by buying a metro ticket to get to the correct station with my credit card, I discovered that Italian vending machines needed a chip that all three of my credit cards lacked. Finally, I griped about being hounded by mosquitoes—in November!! 

So here's an update: Having seen the bathroom door latches before I'm no longer puzzled by them. The Malpensa-Milan train is now clearly marked with LED signs so you can get on the right one, and those many Duolingo lessons have paid off; I'm confident that I can find the right track for any trains that I take. My American-issued credit cards now have chips so I can buy a metro ticket with them...but I don't need to. Now I can just tap my card on a reader atop the turnstile and it opens. Hurrah! 

One issue remains: MOSQUITOES. They have hounded me in both Milano and Cernusco. It is October. It is hot here. Costanza's place has windows that open, but they have no screens so the mosquitoes come in and feast. If I close the windows I sweat like a pig. Eduardo's place left me puzzled. He has screens on the windows that I could see, and as far as I could tell none of his windows were open anyway. There must have been an opening someplace because the mosquitoes still found me. And you could see from the way he was dressed, the man likes it warm. His apartment was 76° at night. Even covered with only a sheet, I was roasting. Any part of me that was not covered with linens was covered with bites: I left there with about five on my face and several more on my hands. 

So I don't hate Italy...but I do hate Milano's mosquitoes. BTW the word for mosquitoes in Italian is delightfully onomatopoeic: zanzare.

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