steps

Milano/Milan was a fun place. I stayed with a couple of Bulgarian exchange students (Nadia and Desi), in their apartment. They also had another Australian (Kurt) couchsurfer who had come to Europe to do some bike training with his ultra fancy carbon fibre $8000 bike. I got the impression that Desi and Nadia's flat mate (who was in Austria for the entire I was there), was blisfully unaware that two Australian boys were occupying her room.

What I saw of Milan was minimal, but Nadia toured me around some of her favourite spots. She showed me around her adopted city and told me about Bulgaria and what it's like to be living in Italy. I met a few of her design friends, visited a design museum and discovered that Milano's version of buffet did not come anywhere near the culinary delights of Torino. There was probably better places to go for Buffet, but I'm going to get all generalist and review the entire city of Milan based on one bad experience. It's a much dirtier city than Torino/Turin, but there's more going on here. Kurt stuck mostly to himself during the days, and for some unknown reason took a side journey to Como, not to check out the gorgeous scenery (where they filmed some of the new Star Wars movies), but to buy a bag for his bike. On the last day, the girls took me to an exhibition a little way out of town that featured work from some of their design buddies. Some interesting stuff with some rather unpleasant surprise sprinklers in the old gardens outside.

I think Kurt's plans got messed up and he overstayed his welcome a little with the girls. There were some tense moments when rather than asking "hey, I'm stuck. Can I stay another night?" he said "I'm leaving tomorrow now". Having been in a similar situation in San Francisco (sorry Roxanna), Kurt's faux par was something I could relate to. When I left, I mad sure Kurt came with me and caught the same train to Zurich. On the fantastically beautiful scenery train ride up we swapped Australian slang.