Milano, Day Two

The honest parts:

This is some scary shit I am doing. Social media culture wants me to make everything look magical and filtered, but I'm going to be honest with you my friends, this is some scary stuff. Every choice you make can be regrettable and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and lost in a world that is completely foreign. Signs in other languages, directions you don't understand and conversations with people that lack the clarity of the communication you enjoy with native English speakers. My stomach has been in knots and I have had a hard time sleeping because my mind is always racing in full survival mode as I try my best to figure out up from down and make as few mistakes with my choices as possible.

The most important thing at your disposal is your mind, and for me on little sleep and little food, my mind has not been functioning as best it can. I threw my contact lenses out without realizing because I was thinking I had to clean out the case, and I feel a bit like a zombie moving through the incredibly hot streets of Italy. This is the olympics of shaking your shit up, but as I said to my host yesterday, we travel to shake ourselves up and make ourselves see outside of the comfortable routine and safety of our day to day lives. If I wasn't shaken up, this wouldn't be travelling.

The what I did with my day parts:

Yesterday I was able to sleep mostly in the morning after taking a melatonin and meditating at 5am because my mind won't stop running. I got up and found a beautiful breakfast laid out for me by my Airbnb host of prosciutto and melon, which was delicious in spite of my stomach being sick. I made the terrible choice to then take my medication and managed to projectile barf my melon into the shower. Good morning Milan!

I got in touch with Coco and found out that her and her friend Alessandro were going to be leaving Milan early because it was so hot and he wanted to go to the mountains. Coco and I made plans to meet at the train station near my Airbnb, and then a long and arduous pursuit of a SIM card ensued that involved me going to the shop 3 times and trying to get things to work, my mind not working very well with planning but finally, with some help from Coco and her Italian, my phone finally has data which will make navigating and contacting people infinitely more easy for me.

Coco and I went down to the Canal and got some Vegan food at Universo Vegano, her favorite restaurant in the world, and the scenery was beautiful. Coco had to leave to head to the mountains, and I wandered up the canal to the Porta (gates that are like a big stone archway that I have no real idea of why it's there, but it looks cool) and then decided to walk back to my Airbnb rather than take transit to see more of the city.

The part to make your parents nervous:

I made plans with a fine Italian gentleman named Raffaele (everything you want in an Italian gentleman name) for that evening and after a cold shower to release my body of the sweat glaze and a chat with my host about the overwhelming, massive-feeling task of how the fuck I get myself to Paris at 6:30am tomorrow, I headed back to the canal to meet Raffaele at the Porta.

Raffaele likes travelling, though mostly in Europe he is going to India next week. He was friendly and nice and spoke great English having lived in Ireland for a few years. We walked along the canal, now filled with patio folk drinking their apperitivo and picked a place to get some ourselves. They do this thing here where you buy a drink and then there's a buffet of food so we did that. I had my first spritz, which was hella tasty and some snacks from the buffet. We talked geopolitics because it's me and that apparently gets the fire started for me.

Walking along the canal Raffaele did a good job on making a move, something that becomes different and accelerated on travel-dates because we both know I'm outta here in a day so there's no time to meet your momma. He held my hand as we walked down the canal and planted a kiss on me while we stood beside the water. After a conversation in which he shook my hand and promised he wouldn't kill me and cut me into pieces, and offered to provide me any identifying information I needed to feel safe, I agreed that going to his apartment sounded nice.

All I will say, because I'm a lady, is that we both did our nations proud in representing the excellence of both people. We fell asleep discussing the Olympics and me laughing at the Canadian snowboarder that got eliminated for having marijuana in his blood and how that's far from performance enhancing.

This morning he took me to the bus stop and helped me get a ticket, and then biked out of my life leaving me a lovely view of his excellent Italian booty. Now I'm showered and fed at my Airbnb, I have sorted out the insanity of my Paris journey tomorrow and I managed to eat breakfast without puking (yay!) so I'm going to get dressed soon and head out to see maybe the castle in Milan, and maybe some museums. I have to go to bed early because of getting up at 2:30am for my taxi at 3am that will take me to the Station Centrale to get a bus that will take me to the airport that will put me on a plane that will take me to Paris. It's a long trek and not very relaxing, but I feel invigorated and I'm starting to get that old feeling again that I had in Singapore of the world laid out at my feet ready for me to take any path I want forward.