Carnival Saturday

In most places, Carnival happens in the week running up to Ash Wednesday. In Milan, though, it's different. Because Sant Ambrogio is the patron saint of Milan, the city follows the Calendario Ambrosiano, which means that Lent begins on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday. My first thought was that this was a cunning trick of the Milanesi to make Lent shorter and therefore easier for themselves, but according to Wikipedia, it's actually because in the Calendario Ambrosiano, Sundays are counted as days of penitence, whereas in the Calendario Romano, they're not.

Carnevale in Milan seemed to be mostly about children dressing up and throwing confetti and silly string at each other, although there was a parade and a concert later on in the day. Yesterday, after a trip to the market to buy my first strawberries of the year and stock up on cheese, I went into town to meet a friend, and the Piazza del Duomo was full of them. After dodging the silly string for a while, we went to the cinema to see The Reader. I'm going to write a separate post about the film, so for now I'll just say that it was the first time I'd seen a film in Italian at the cinema here and I was quite proud that I understood everything, although it was quite weird watching an English language film of a book that I read in German dubbed into Italian.

After the cinema, I went back to the Duomo and met Mr A and we wandered around for a while enjoying the fact that most of the people in costume were either under ten or grown men before going to the Irish pub to watch the rugby. Only one fo my Scottish friends dared to be very vocal about the fact that Scotland won, but it made a nice change, even if it was just against Italy. After the second game, we went out for pizza to celebrate another friend's birthday, then for a drink in one of the bars on the Navigli.

It had been a long day, so I was pleased when my apparently eternal good luck with Milanese public transport continued and the tram home pulled up to the stop just as we got there. Being in Italy, I should apparently touch metal instead of wood to make sure that this continues.