When a Girl is Tired of the Metro...

I took the metro last night. Got on at my local station, used up another journey from my “carnet”, travelled a few stops on the red line, changed onto the green line at Cadorna, knowing instinctively which direction to take, and got off at Moscova to go to the cinema.

Somewhere along the line, I realised that getting the metro was no longer exciting for me and perfect, elegiac, Chekhovian notes sounded in my ears. Metaphorically, at least.

(For those of you who didn't devote a portion of your youth to studying Russian literature, I should explain that the beauty of Chekhov's plays lies in the way he so perfectly expresses languid regret for the passage of time and the feeling that nothing ever happens, even when people are going around shooting each other.)

So why was this happening to me, at the age of 26, somewhere under the busy, buzzing metropolis of Milan?

Because for me, sad as it may seem, underground trains should mean excitement. They belong to the great cities of the world. For me, the smell of Paris is not Chanel No 5, it's the scent of the stale air that wafts into your nostrils as you descend into the Metro. When I first went to France in 2002, I took the Eurostar and heaved my suitcases on to the Underground to be whirled across London, passing under boroughs and districts whose names I only normally encountered in the Times. Mastery of the French language was signalled by my ability to pronounce Barbès-Rochechouart without hesitating and experience of France's capital by knowing instinctively that Ligne 4 goes from the Porte de Clignancourt to the Porte d'Orleans. Being a jaded Metro traveller was symbolic of becoming too used to being abroad.

And to some extent, this is true. My first experiences of Italy, although coloured by breathtaking scenery, wonderful, kindly nuns, exquisite cuisine and crazy drivers, were somehow not as novel my first experiences of France. I supposed by then I'd already learned how to be a foreigner. Most of the people I went out last night with were students who were having, had just had or were about to have that “first time abroad” experience and I was a tiny bit jealous. Moving to Milan has been a lot like moving to a new city in the UK, apart from the fact that if I make a special effort, I can go out and speak Italian to some people. Aside from the fact that I now gesture manically when I speak, I don't think this year will change me the way my first year in France will. It's a little bit sad that that rite of passage is, well, past.

Anyway, before I start sounding like a dead, melancholy Russian playwright, I should say that the film (Burn After Reading) was excellent and so was the live comedy duo that took the place of the trailers(!). They were two guys from London taking the piss out of Italians and Brits travelling in Italy. The only joke I can remember that makes sense out of context was “the traffic lights in Milan are only there for decoration” but if I go and see the full live show I'll tell you some more!

A Very Sad Post

Before my nearest and dearest start to get worried, I should say that this post is “sad” in the sense of “totally uncool”. Nothing tragic has happened to me.

While you may all have the impression that I spend my life meeting the rich and famous and enjoying the style culture of Italy's fashion capital, the truth is that I spend many of my evenings sitting at home drinking cups of Sogni d'Oro (“Sweet Dreams”) herbal tea and reading expat blogs on the internet.

(Slight tangent: it's amazing how many expatriates seem to think that that they are “expatriots”. In my experience, living in another country has the exact opposite effect: my national pride swells every time somebody tells me my country is beautiful and tears well up in my eyes whenever I hear “Scotland the Brave” used as a ringtone on somebody's mobile phone).

Anyway, one common topic in these blogs is the frustrations of using local public transport. While these frustrations can be many, so far in Milan I have experienced nothing but joy as I hop on and off buses and trams and no longer have to read the map every time I take the metro. So here's a post in celebration of public transport in Milan.

The first good thing about it is that it's frequent. Trams run past the end of my road every seven minutes at peak times and every 15 minutes on Sundays, and they go from 6am to about 1 in the morning. They even travel the whole route after seven in the evening, unlike buses in my dear home city. Metros come as often as every 2 minutes and, although I live on the less-frequented half of a fork in the line, they always seem to be going in my direction.


The second great thing is that it's cheap. In a city where renting a one bedroom flat costs 900 euros a month, a ticket, valid for 75 minutes on every kind of transport, costs one euro. For the price of a single ticket on the London underground, you can travel for two days in Milan.
So, in a country with a reputation for tax evasion, a poor economy and corrupt politicians, how do they do this?


Well, in my opinion, it may have something to do with the fact that many of the trams look like this:


If the people at ATM need to make a bit of cash, these historic vehicles may be painted to look like this:



The powers -that-were in Milan never removed their tramlines or overhead wires. The money isn't being spent on digging up the roads and putting back tracks that were there to be used a few decades ago. They haven't used their taxpayers' hard-earned cash to replace all the old trams with vehicles that look like bullet trains but still get stuck in traffic jams. Instead, they use older vehicles and run them cheaply and frequently.

Citizens of Edinburgh, read this and weep :-)