Milano, Day Three

Hello friends and loved ones! I am writing this from the bus to Bergamo, the airport outside of Milan that is cheaper (think Billy Bishop on Toronto Island) and it is the ungodly hour of 3:30am. My flight to Paris is at 6:30am, and this journey is the cost of a $40 ticket to Paris.

I’m feeling waaaay better than I was and I can tell you about what I got up to since I last left you all, in my Airbnb getting ready for my day after my Victory March home from Rafaelle’s house. I decided to go see the castle because that seemed like a good place to see, and it was. It’s in park area and then there’s this giant castle with a moat around it with no water and you go in and there are a bunch of different museums that house art and artifacts. They have a sculpture by Michelangelo and something by Da Vinci which I really wanted to see, but it’s being restored. I may have an unpopular opinion here, but the thing by Michelangelo didn’t really light my fire. It was one of his last works, so maybe he didn’t put in the full effort. Or maybe I’m not a sculpture person. Either way, underwhelmed.

After the castle I had an appetite for the first time in a while, so I took advantage and returned to the canal area to sit on one of the patios and enjoy a delicious lunch. Nicky had been messaging me on her way to work and said that the signature dish in Milan is saffron risotto so I found a patio where they served it and it included a glass of wine so I had  peaceful, solitary meal watching the water flow past in the canal and feeling my belly fill up for the first time since my first night and the pizza.

Warm, contented and just the right kind of tipsy on wine, I walked to the MUDEC which is Milan’s modern art museum (or, I think it is?). A man on a dating app had told me that it was free after 4 and he was right, which is good because I don’t know if I missed something, but it was just one exhibit and it was all artifacts taken from other countries from around the world that were collected by colonists. Now, those of you who have been closely following my education recently know that the most recent course I completed at OISE for my Master’s was “Decolonization and Anti-Blackness” and I’ve had a pretty big grrrr on since then for colonialism. So, I was somewhat nonplussed by the encased objects of sacred significance from Africa and Asia and the bracelets that were used to trade for slaves. It’s important, and part of our history and I had to grapple a bit with the pull between preservation of cultures and robbery of peoples, but it made me think so I guess in that way it was art.

The Klimt exhibit that is there I found out was just a movie, and having experienced that jazz at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore when I thought I was going to see Van Gogh paintings and I instead stood in a room while JPEGs of his work were projected on the walls, I was not going to lay down 12e for that.

By that time, the incredible amount of walking I have done in the past days coupled with the lack of sleep or food, and the blood all rushing to my stomach to deal with the carbo load I had just foisted upon it, I felt the need to get home and get to bed. Which was perfect and part of my plan, because of having to get up early this morning.

So I headed back to my Airbnb and organized my luggage and packed everything away and took a big old melatonin and settled in to sleep at about 7pm, which was perfect. And for the first time this trip, I fell into a deep, relaxed sleep.

Figuring out my way to do this Paris trip has been one of the most stressful parts of my planning. With the buses to the airports and the timing and the Airbnb on the 6^th floor with no lift I have been scared and freaked out and concerned and upset about whether I’d be able to make this work for the past few days. But I took the great advice of a crisis counsellor I met with once, and I sat back for a moment in meditation and asked myself what I would tell my friend to do in this circumstance. And I thought about it and remembered that this was all just a puzzle game I was playing and I had to let go of the emotion and fear and get to work on solving the puzzle. Once I made that shift in thinking, it became easy to sort through the buses and planes and cabs and printing my boarding pass to the bus quandary and come up with answers. I asked for the help I needed and I got it, and I took it step by step, just like every other problem or challenge anyone has ever overcome.

Now, as I sit on this bus in the darkness of Milan, I feel the excited pleasure of travel. By 10am today, I’ll be standing in one of the world’s greatest cities, and that’s fucking awesome.