For the last fortnight, I’ve run into this truck on my morning dog walks. Pixel and Raster always stare up at the collection of animals quietly, looking a little perplexed. The driver, a fifty something Arab-looking guy, smiles.
Yesterday, Pixel broke form, and barked repeatedly at the big white tiger. I was unsure as to whether it was because he was the closest to the sidewalk, or because it looked familiar, but didn’t smell particularly alive.
The coffee is okay. Perhaps a little too nutty for my taste. It’s probably one of the same discount brands on offer in the deli. However, the piadina sandwiches are pretty good, during the winter it’s always warm inside, and there’s a newsstand with an excellent selection of international newspapers less than twenty feet away.
Located in the tube station underneath our building, I increasingly find myself eschewing above-ground establishments in Piazzale Loreto in favor of this cafe’s womb-like environs. Despite the fact that it’s always busy, there’s something calming about the cheap cappuccinos and availability of familiar news periodicals.
Like the majority of the cafes in our neighborhood, it is also full of foreigners. Eavesdrop on any of the conversations taking place and one will hear everything from Albanian and Arabic to Portugese and Tagalog. If I have any difficulty ordering, there’s oftentimes one or two Peruvians on staff whom I can speak to in Spanish.
If you were to ask me for an example of present day Milan, I’d be hard-pressed to offer something more au courant. No, its not Peck, or one of the hip cafes in Isola or Brera, where the coffee is indeed superior. It’s the fact that this place is both so totally comfortable and contrary, simultaneously, to Italy, as we imagined it to be.
It was so cold inside our apartment today, Jennifer covered our oldest dog, Raster, with a fleece blanket. Already wearing a sweater, the arthritis-ridden six-year-old Schnauzer is so easily impacted by the cold that his first impulse, whenever we take him outside, is to freeze. In his tracks, that is.
It has been a cold winter in Milan, the likes of which I haven’t experienced in years. Though Europe as a whole has been experiencing record low temperatures, we’ve been unfortunate enough to have our building’s heat switched off a total of fourteen days in the last twelve weeks.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? There is something distinctly cruel about it. However, the owners of the roof, who decided to build an entire new floor above us (we live on the top floor) say that there’s no way around it. What’s worse is that they have no inclination to warn anyone. We find out when we get cold.
The heat was turned off last Friday. Eager to warm myself up, I decided to take a walk, and shoot some pictures of falling snow. One block way. I found the dog above, relieving himself in front of these election posters, urging Milanese to vote for the Lega Nord, Italy’s leading anti-immigrant party.
The Italian army assists the police and undocumented foreign workers in rooting out unauthorized Prada imitations from China. Corso Buenos Aires, Milan.
Over the course of the past two weeks, I’ve made a point of taking my digital audio recorder on my daily errands. Turning it on whenever I leave, the goal is to record as much of the city as I can.
Milan is as vibrant an audio experience as it is a visual one. For every image, such as the photo above, of an elderly Roma on the floor of the Duomo subway station, what you hear can be just as moving.
Still a member of the opposition. The door of our neighborhood squat. Milan, early December.
Berlin comparisons are warranted. Visually, the district is on fire. San Lorenzo, Rome, 12/28.
Local curio shop trafficking in kitsch covering everything from Italian colonialism to boys toys and illegal immigration. Milan, 12/09.
Copyright © 2004–2009. All rights reserved.
This blog is proudly powered by Wordpress and uses Modern Clix, a theme by Rodrigo Galindez. Implemented by Mike Lee.
