Milano: The Drive Down

My brother Austin is currently on his gap year and making his way across Europe with a rucksack. He’s doing it on his own and in order to see how he was doing, and because I wanted to see him, and because I wanted to go to Milan, we decided to meet up in Milan. I then spent the next few days frantically trying to organise lifts to Milan and back.

The weekend itself was an adventure from start to finish. I met my Mitfahrgelegenheit no problem, which I had thought was going to be the hard bit. Mitfahren is where someone who is driving to somewhere and has spare space in his car gives lifts to other people wanting to go to the same place. I think it is a brilliant system, a pleasant way to travel, environmentally friendly, and much cheaper than anything else. I got to Milan and back for 60 euros. My driver was a trainee teacher who immediately took offence at me working in PR, however, after 5 hours of the ol’ charm offensive, he succumbed and by the end we were chatting away like old pals as we drove through the Swiss mountains. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The journey started well when, two hours into the drive he commented on a crack in the windscreen, which hadn’t been there before, great, I thought! Then, half way through Austria our sat nav broke. We didn’t have detailed map. I then had to navigate down through Austria and Switzerland with a vague map of Europe. However, this was actually fairly straightforward as long as we knew vaguely which towns to head for. The mountains were pretty, all still covered in snow, tinted pink by the sunset. I think I’m going to have to go back to Lugarno and some of the other mountain towns by day as both ways I only saw them at night and even then they drew me.

We set off at 4pm and got in at around 11. On the way Austin had rung me to tell me that the hotel I had booked had no hot water and that we were being moved. Great. He rang me a little later on to tell me that we had in fact been upgraded to a 3 star hotel. Better. Milan is not a fun place to drive around and the Italians really are crazy drivers but we got there in the end. It was a lovely balmy evening but we were both pretty tired, me from work, and him from 2 weeks of travelling and camping in the rain, and hit the deck pretty fast.

Milan, baby!

I’m off to Milan tomorrow, woohoo!

It’s only for the weekend but as I have never been to Italy before, let alone Milan I’m pretty excited. My brother is currently doing the gap year thing of travelling around Europe. He’s doing it on his own and is basically undertaking a trip around the Med. He started in Nice and wants to end up in Istanbul by the summer, via Marseille, Milan, Zagreb and Split among other locations. As Milano is only a short (haha) drive away, a mere 5-6 hours (or so…) from Munich I’m heading down to meet him for the weekend. I’m looking forward to hanging out with him for a bit and to seeing Milan!! I don’t really know anything about the city but I’m sure Tourist Information will be more than helpful.

This week has been pretty packed. On Monday I moved into my lovely new WG. The move itself was pretty painless; we only needed 2 trips and my flatmate Alex carried the fridge all by himself!  We ordered in pizza to celebrate my arrival. I now have everything just about in order

Tuesday, I had to hand back the keys to my room to Kolpinghaus and make sure that I got my deposit back.

Wednesday was an excellent day, I found out that we won the pitch I’d been working on the previous week which put me in a really good mood and I arranged my trip to Milan this weekend. In the evening my flatmate Aleks and I cooked Lentil curry, a very simple but effective recipe that I have never got round to trying before.

Today, 2nd April I sat outside at lunchtime. This means that (at last) spring is officially here. It was lovely and warm, balmy almost. I went for a walk this evening to the Englischer Garten (15 mins amble from my new flat) in just a strappy top and it was lovely to feel the warm breeze.

I’m really glad to be living near the Englisher Garten. It’s practically Munich’s lung and it does me good to go there and smell what I miss from home. Tonight it smelt of cooling grass, rising dew and sweet soil. Early spring smells.

Now I just need to pack my rucksack…

Ciao bella!