Milan Part 2

“The wheels on the Bus go round and round, round and round, round and round…The wheels on the Bus go round and round all through the town.”
This is such a passively, pastoral song. It almost sounds relaxing, like being out to see on a huge yacht or in a dinghy on the glassy waters of a lake. Well, that was not our experience.
As we wound away from the airport we started coming to another curious problem, which stop was ours. I would later find out I was under the misconception that this was a bus which made regular stops like most busses do. So while everyone “In the know” was gleefully ignoring the stops along the highway I was making a mad search through our maps to figure out where in the hell I was trying to go. I asked the bus driver. He spoke no English and only assured me that he was in fact driving the bus, a fact that must have escaped me in his estimation. With that, I took my seat and hoped for the best.
All around the town we drove, we pulled off the local highway onto the autostrada… the freeway… we drove the autostrada until we found our exit which happened to be a series of very sharp, hairpin turns which were very clearly not made for busses our size. For that matter I’m not sure they were made for many cars in manufacture today. Amazingly enough our driver managed to steer us clear of any danger; inches separated us from the unforgiving concrete (the only thing between us and a 30 foot fall) to the right and oncoming traffic to the left, which seemed unconcerned of the decreased space for driving.
With an awe inspiring bit of driving behind us, I tried to relax at least a little knowing that at this point if we didn’t know where we were going we were never going to know and eventually end up wherever this Bus turned around. Never in my life have I seen such a beautiful metropolis disgraced by such ignominious graffiti. When I say it was everywhere, I am not in any way exaggerating. It was on every single first floor wall within sight. Some walls had it worse than others, but all the walls were tagged -- silver, red, blue, yellow, green, black, gray… they were covered in color un-native to its original architecture. Italian vulgarities, signs, fascist propaganda, gang tags, and any number of designs that looked like they were the crayon drawings of a three year old on a wall covered the walls block by block by block.
As we approached what appeared to be the Train Station, I was confronted with an entirely new problem… large groups of people who looked to be vagrants, thieves, robbers, and any other frightening apparitions I could think of at the time. There were trash can fires and gobs of trash and empty bottles littering the cobblestone sidewalks. The whole city looked like it was straight out of “Escape from LA” I was just waiting for Kurt Russel to walk out with his eye patch and long pony tail.
We stepped off the bus into the scene and I held onto Misti’s hand tightly, wanting to keep her close just in case someone tried something.
As quickly as we could, we walked into the station and to our dismay saw no trains leaving for Venice. Had we managed to catch the first bus (the one I thought was a tourist bus) we would have caught the last train across the country to Venice with no time to spare.
“Now what… now what do you do Shea… think. Think. Think… Do you sleep in the train station? How will that work? Are you going to let Mist sleep while you keep guard? Do you find a hotel? What are you going to do… It’s time to make a decision.”
At that moment, I remembered the sign above the hotel just across the street – The Star Hotel. Mist and I discerned that we had two options… wait for the first train @ 6am in the station, or check into a hotel and get some sleep. After nearly 48 hours of not sleeping I was not in any condition to stay awake to make sure no lunatics got the jump on us, and I wasn’t about to make misti our watchdog. So without any further adieu we decided to check into a hotel for the night and treat ourselves to a nice shower and bed.
The increasingly frightening scene outside made me surer of my decision. Even as we walked up to the automatic sliding glass doors that entered into the swanky lobby covered in cherry paneling and wainscoting, my normal reaction would have been one of, “out of our price range my dear (which it was)… and let’s keep on looking.” But considering the hour, the ratty walls of this city of graffiti, and what seemed like gobs and gobs of degenerate marauders waiting to do us in. I chose to override my normal cheapness in lieu of safety.
The star hotel was an amazing place that I would recommend to any tourist unfortunate enough to get stuck in Milan. Close to the station, but a world all its own. The star hotel was an Italian 4 star hotel and worth every star. We would find out as we walked into the hotel that mass hysteria and “marauders” filling the streets was due to the fact that AC Milan was at that very moment playing (and winning) a match against Liverpool in the European Cup.
I don’t know if it was exhaustion from the journey or elation at finding an oasis in the middle of such slop but whatever it was it was welcomed and necessary. Our very modern and swanky room was amazing, and as we lay down on our Tempurpedic bed and covered ourselves in the luxurious sheets. Misti rest her head on my chest and her hair fell on my skin. I watched her doze off within minutes and found myself falling, blissfully into a faraway sleep, void of the world outside our hotel door. Tomorrow would hold its own worries and troubles that was for sure, but as for tonight my only concern was sleep… at least until the alarm goes off.