Canzo in the Snow

Much as I enjoyed my first day in Milan, one day was enough. I had found all the maps I needed to head to the mountains and I was feeling inspired, so I caught the train to Canzo, the friendliest place in Italy, and set off for a hike.

Despite the smog and the rain in Milan, I was still optimistically hoping for stunning views of snow-capped mountains. Unfortunately, it was raining in Canzo too and as I walked up through the village, I stopped to add waterproof layers as often as I tried to take pictures of the rapidly disappearing mountains.

I started off on the path that Mum and I took last summer, following the signs for the 3 Alpi. After the first alp, however, I left that path and headed steeply up hill on the walker's path to the Corni di Canzo. (There are two paths, but one of them involves a via ferrata, and it wasn't the day for experimenting with that.) As well as being over optimistic about the weather, I was hoping to do the 5 hour walk in 4 hours in order to catch the train back to Milan in time for aperitivo with my former colleagues, so I pushed myself hard to get up the mountain in the snow in record time. As a result, I was slightly breathless and this, combined with being surrounded by bare black trees, fog and a thick blanket of snow, contributed to a very other-worldly impression. I did want to arrive “somewhere” before going back down the mountain, however, so I struggled onwards and upwards, stopping every so often to try to figure out how far I had gone and whether I was going to make it or not, which was tricky given the snow underfoot and the total lack of visibility.

I didn't make it right to the Corni themselves, but I reached the rifugio, which made a satisfactory end point to the climb, and let myself rest for an inadequate two and a half minutes before turning round and heading back down the path.



The whole effort became worth it, though, because just at that moment, the mist and clouds began to lift and suddenly gorgeous views of the Lago di Lecco and the Triangolo Lariano began to appear through the trees. In the distance, I could even see the snow-capped mountains.


I caught the train back with minutes to spare after jogging gently down a large section of the track. and arrived at the bar in plenty of time. I peered through the window, but couldn't see anybody I knew inside. Three of my friends were already there, however, and my loud friend Rachel must have said something loudly because just as I was turning to cross the road and check at the other bar, the Chinese bar girl came running out, calling my nickname after me in her very Chinese Italian. And once again, I felt back at home in Milan!

Italia mon amour

Just over a week ago, I got on a train in the Gare de Lyon. We sped across France, the Alps and the plains of northern Italy, and seven hours and fifteen minutes later, I stepped off the train at Milano Centrale and back into my old life.

And for one week, I lived that life again (in fact, it was better than my old life, because I was on holiday and didn't have to go to work) and I remembered how much I loved it. Then, seven days later, I got back on the train, and seven hours later, was back in my French life again.

The trip was amazing. Sad, in some ways, because it reminded me of things that I had left behind, but satisfying too, because it showed me that many of these things are there, no further than a train journey away.

I spent the first day walking around Milan, reminding myself of all the familiar places and discovering the coffee shop in the Mondadori bookshop on the Piazza del Duomo, which has delicious hot chocolate, comfortable chairs and a great view of the square and the cathedral. Then I walked down to the Navigli, caught the metro back to the castle and the Parco Sempione, wandered around some of my favourite shops, and went back for more coffee in Mondadori. Here are some of the more picturesque things that I saw:

FAQ Italia

For a long time, I was fascinated by Italian bookshops. I used to go into them and wander around, dreaming of the time when my Italian would be good enough to read and fully understand the works that lined their shelves.

Many of the books I saw were translations. Italians, like most non-Anglophone Europeans, seem far happier to read foreign books than Brits are. (The same applies to music, films and pretty much everything else, but all of that is another rant for another day.) These were not the books, however, that I wanted to read.

The ones I wanted to read were written by Italians, in Italian, and they were all about Italy. Not tourism and travel books, but books about politics, books about the mafia and books about recent Italian history. The section of the shop devoted to these books always seemed to be disproportionately large. I wanted to understand Italy and I wanted to understand it from an Italian point of view, so eventually, with a long summer holiday and lots of travelling ahead of me, I bought one of these books.

I bought FAQ Italia, by Francesco Merlo. It comes from a series called “FAQ Books: domande che danno risposte” (questions which provide answers). Examples of the “questions” range from “Are we the land of the Mafia?” to “Are Italians mummy's boys?” These were questions to which I wanted not just any answer, but the Italian answer.

At first I quite enjoyed the book. Gradually, however, it wore me down. The “answers” to the questions were too short, too unbalanced and too irrelevant. After a while, I put FAQ Italia down and started on something else. I was staying with Italian friends at the time, and when I showed my friend the book and explained my disappointment, she sighed and said, “Yes, everything in Italy is polemical.”

For a long time I thought that the fact that Italian bookshops were so full of critical works on the country was to do with the fact that all the newspapers and television channels were under the control of Berlusconi and his ilk. Such writing was much less evident in the Mondadori bookshops, owned by the Berlusconi family, than in others. Books, I thought, were perhaps the last remaining outlet for free (or free-er) speech. There were certainly more politically oriented works in the Feltrinelli shop, which was my Mondadori's closest rival.

Recently, however, I discovered from Tobias' Jones' The Dark Heart of Italy (which is an incredibly gripping book in itself) that the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, owner of the aforementioned publishing house, was a communist and the founder of GAP, one of Italy's main terrorist organisations of the anni di piombo.

And so I learned that in Italy, not only does everyone in the media have an axe to grind, but they are heavy and destructive axes indeed.

Say Formaggio

Once upon a time, many moons ago, I promised to write a post about Italian cheese. The other day, after being baffled by the range of delights in my local French cheese shop, where I spent 30 euros on 5 smelly concoctions that I didn't even know the names of (to justify myself, mostly to my mother, I should say that I was going to a dinner party and had offered to bring the cheese course!), I decided that Italian cheese was a slightly more approachable subject than French. So here is the post – Formaggio for Beginners.

The two most famous Italian cheeses must be mozzarella and Parmesan. The best mozzarella is made from buffalo milk. Good mozzarella has a delicate, creamy flavour, but in the bad versions the taste quickly becomes bland. I've often been surprised by how good basic supermarket mozzarella can be, but it varies a lot, so experiment!

Parmesan is the matured version of Grana Padano. The name “Padano” comes from the Pianura padana, or valley of the Po river, where it's made. Interestingly but unrelatedly, the name La Padania was appropriated by the Lega Nord as a possible name for a separate northern Italy and the area sends sports teams to competitions for nations that are not officially recognised. Grana Padano cheese is common in Italy but in the UK, most people have heard more about Parmesan, the real version of which tastes nothing like the dry flakes we used to sprinkle from a tube on to spaghetti bolognese when I was a child in the 80s. Italians do sprinkle it on pasta, soup, risotto and pretty much any primi piatti that aren't made with fish, but you can also eat it in small chunks by itself or, even better, with slices of Parma ham.

Asiago is another one of my favourites. Like mozzarella, it's mild, so when it's good it's very good but when it's bad it can be tasteless, and you find it everywhere. It exists in an aged form, but I never tasted it.

Provolone is also common. It comes in two kinds, dolce and piccante. The texture is quite like Emmental and the dolce version tastes similar. “Piccante” means “spicy”, but it's not hot, it just has more of an aged flavour. I never particularly liked it either, but maybe that's just personal taste.

Mr A and I used to call Scamorza “penis cheese”. On reflection, this is pretty gross, but it was only because the first ones we ever saw did bear a striking resemblance to penises. Actually, it's a smoky cheese that tastes delicious and melts nicely on to pizza.

Toma and Taleggio are two creamy mountain cheeses. Most of the Taleggio I had was stronger than the Toma but the texture is similar. Like all the others, these are cows' milk cheeses. I'm not a huge fan of goats' cheese (caprino) and didn't come across much sheep's cheese (pecorino) but the different regional varieties of both could make up a blog post in themselves. Interestingly enough, when I looked up the origins of all the cheeses I ate regularly, they were all relatively local to Milan – mostly from Lombardy, the Veneto or Piemonte – so the shops and markets in the South might well sell a completely different selection. I plan to go there again eventually, and I promise to do some research!

Why I Pay for Italian TV

With my internet package here in France, I get high definition TV bundled in with the phone line and internet connection that are the reasons the package is actually worth paying for for me. There are 150 TV channels included, but nevertheless, I was more than delighted when I realised that for a bargainous 3 euros per month, I could add the Italian “bouquet”, which gives me access to Rai 1, 3 and 3 and 24 hour news just as if I were in Italy. Given the reputation of Italian TV, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that anybody, least of all somebody born and bred outside of the borders of the Bel Paese, would actually pay to watch it, but there are two reasons why I do.

The first reason is that French TV is pretty bad. It doesn't have the same number of high-quality programmes that you get in the UK, but, unlike Italian TV, it doesn't give you much opportunity to laugh at it rather than with it either. Imagine Italian TV made boring. That's French TV.

The second reason is just one programme: L'Eredità. L'Eredità alone is worth 3 euros a month. It's a quiz show, on at 7 o'clock every weekday evening, where contestants answer questions in a range of formats, being eliminated as the show progresses until only two participants are left. These two then answer questions to “inherit” each other's money until eventually the winner takes it all.

The quality of the questions varies. Some are pretty stupid but some are amusing and quite a few are really interesting. One of the rounds is a guessing game that is actually really difficult, and overall, the questions are interesting enough to keep you watching and not make you despise the contestants too much for their stupidity when they get it wrong.

L'Eredità is also good for language learning because, as well as involving a wide range of vocabulary, the questions appear on the screen as you watch, helping you to understand the basics of what's going on. After the contestants response, there is a longer explanation of the answer that is a bit more complicated to follow.

As Italian TV programmes go, L'Eredità is surprisingly inoffensive. There are fewer flashing lights than in your average quiz show (and possibly even your average nature programme in Italy) and the host's skin is not too ridiculously orange. The contestants look like normal people and do not seem to have decided to appear purely in the hope of nabbing an evening gig at Berlusconi's villa. Just to add that hint of Italy, however, there is this incongruous moment where the glamorous female assistants have to dance before going on to report on relatively well-researched answers to the questions. It's bizarre.


The way that things worked out, I haven't found myself back in Italy as often as I expected to over the past few months and I feel like a bit of a fraud for carrying on this blog when I don't live there any more. I'm not ready to give it up just yet though, so let's just hope that La Rai and a few trips in the next wee while will give me enough to keep writing about.

Ritorno a Milano

I went back to Milan last weekend for the first time since I moved away in August, what seems like seven very long weeks ago. As I was expecting, it was an emotional weekend. Mr A and I broke up when he was here in the summer and visiting Milan really brought home to me the reality of what had happened. Needless to say, that hurt.

At the same time, though, the visit was a very positive experience. I was worried that I would have grown apart from my friends since last year and that without working together we would have nothing to talk about any more, but in fact that wasn't the case at all. On Friday night I slept at my friend S's house and we stayed up until 3 in the morning catching up, then on Saturday night a big group of us from my old work went out for pizza and drinks (which turned into pizza, profiteroles, ice cream... and drinks) and had a great time.

On Saturday, I stayed with two other friends and we spent most of Sunday making ravioli from scratch:




The whole process took about 4 hours, so I ended up scarfing my bowl in about 20 minutes and running off to the airport, but it was worth it just for the fun of the cooking!

The weekend was tiring and all too short, but I was glad that I went. Lots of the good things about Italy are good in France too, but Italy has this kind of exuberance that makes you smile and makes you cry in a way that no other country I know of does. Like when I was in the supermarket and the woman in front of me paid with a handful of small coins. “Della moneta – che bello!” rejoiced the checkout assistant. Or when after all those hours in the kitchen, we finally sat down to eat and realised that the pasta was delicious and we had made it all ourselves. Or when my my plane took off from Malpensa as night was falling and I caught a glimpse of the mountains rising out of the clouds into the darkness and realised that despite everything that had happened recently, Italy, that other love of my life, was still going to be there for me.

Muse on Italian TV

I have been cracking up tonight over this clip of one of my favourite bands taking the mickey on Italian TV. Aside from the obvious joke of the guys switching places, the fact that the presenter manages to get so excited about a band that clearly knows nothing about (unless she's doing an excellent cover-up job) is hysterical. I was also laughing at her for going on about how having an English language band was "so international" ("international" is cooler than a mint granita in Italy right now, but you don't have to do much to achieve the cachet), but it turns out that Matt Bellamy has an Italian girlfriend (boo!) and the album was recorded between Milan and Como. Why did I ever leave?