My program (IES) sponsored a ton of events for the first week for the 88 students studying abroad in Milano.
NIGHT ONE
On the first night, they took us to a dinner right in the piazza that surrounds Il Duomo. You expect to have to travel to get to spectacular sights like this, but no – we got off the metro, looked up, and HELLO DUOMO! standing tall peering down at us in all of its hundreds of feet of glory. The buildings around us were all draped in Christmas lights strung hanging down10 stories, along with an alarmingly tall Christmas tree in the piazza. Also, of course, were a Ray Ban and a McDonald’s. As a marketing major, I get it. As a tourist, I hate it.
The dinner was meant for us to mingle and meet one another in the program, but the wine and delicious food served at the buffet was definitely a bonus. But, SURPRISE! I took one bite of what seemed to be a lemon-butter cream pie and chewed one bite only to feel an unexpected crunch. There were nuts in the pie. Luckily, they were only pine nuts so I didn’t die. Note to self: figure out how to say “nuts” in Italian. And carry and Epi-Pen. And oh yeah- don’t die. (Wouldn’t want to deny the good people in CyberSpace of the gift that is my blog writing.)
Also a funny moment at the dinner: we all ate TONS of yummy food and at the end, they informed us that we would need our bathing suits for the next night’s activity because they reserved an extremely exclusive spa for our use. The faces of every girl in the room slipped from an excited smile to a frightened jaw drop as they internally panicked about wearing a bikini in front of people they’d just met and were trying to impress after both the inevitable holiday weight gain and the huge meal they just ate. Hilarious.
NIGHT TWO
The spa was incredible. It was this HUGE Italian style building in the middle of the city, right off the metro, surrounded by concrete walls. We walked in, got robes, flip-flops, towels, and a pack of expensive looking shower products, then went to the women’s locker room to change and I quickly learned that in Italian culture, nudity is not an issue and they go about their business without shame or apologies. This may sound odd, but I respect this about their culture: why put time and energy into being embarrassed about things like this? There are far more things that we can and should concern ourselves with; this should not be one of them.
The spa itself was 3 levels with tons of rooms, all with various types of pools and saunas. They had hot tubs with bubbles that float up to massage you from the walls, from the chairs, from the floors, from all three; hot tubs with waterfalls that pour over you from above to massage your head and back; and my favorite: there was a room with stone beds that you lie on with a bar above it that was like a showerhead spread 5 ft. long-ways that massages your entire body like tiny, strong jets. There were also 3 large hot tubs outdoors, each with individual chairs that massage you with jets. It was very cool sitting in a hot tub outside in middle of January, making conversation in my broken Italian with the two older Italian men sitting next to me, enclosed within the spa’s confines with Italian architecture peaking in at you from over the walls. Then there was a huge room – almost like a ballroom – with a piano player, food, and champagne. (I didn’t get to eat any of the food because I didn’t know what was in any of it and was not in the mood to go to the hospital because I went into anaphylactic shock after eating nuts, but I imagine it was divine.) That night at the spa may be the fanciest thing I’ll ever do.
NIGHT THREE
Aperitivo is a part of Italian culture that should most definitely be adopted by American restaurants. I think I would describe aperitivo as being similar to Spanish “Tapas” or American “Cocktail Hour.” At most places, you pay 7 euro for a drink and endless appetizers. (Italian cocktail = 2 American cocktails; Italian appetizers = 5 star American restaurant. For 7 euro.) IES took us to a place called Noon, which is apparently a hotspot in Milano. Case in point: the striker for the AC Milan soccer team was there with the Prime Minister’s daughter. My CA (community assistant – the Italian version of an RA), Monica, came up to me and made the funniest comment, exclaiming: “They came to this bar thinking they were all cool, then found themselves surrounded by 100 random Americans!”
After aperitivo, I went to a club called Old Fashion with my friend Kim, her Italian boyfriend Ricky, and his friends Musta (short for Mustafa), Amir (or Almir… we weren’t quite sure. He’s about 6’5 and I’m 5’2 – I couldn’t hear him very well), and Elisa. Kim also attends Providence College and studied in Milan for a full year last year and is staying in my apartment this week because, purely coincidentally, she happened to live in the same apartment with the same CA and is back visiting. Old Fashion, apparently like many clubs in the city, have “international student night” every week which offers us “random Americans” a deal: pay a 10 euro cover, then get 2 free drinks inside. Not a bad deal, especially considering most drinks are about 9 euro alone and most clubs have additional entry fees.
The club was like something you see out of a movie. There were two huge dance floors, each with bars, each booming with different music (which was ALL American, might I add), and each with rave lights that would have sent even the slightest epileptic into a seizure. There was a VIP section (which I didn’t realize was VIP at the time and was confused when I went to explore the club and was literally pushed away from this area by two men wearing black suits) and a few lounge areas around the perimeter (which we somehow managed to acquire), as well as a very pretty and very large outdoor patio with more lounge sections. At PC, our clubs are dirty, windowless holes in the wall; in Milano, their standard is our celebrity status.
Good thing I’m outgoing and not embarrassed easily, because trying to talk with Ricky, Musta, A(l)mir, and Elisa was a circus. I was trying to use my sparse, broken italiano and they were trying to use their heavily accented, broken inglese to string together sentences and communicate with one another. At first, it was rough. Kim the Italian major acted as our translator and later commented how awkward we all were to watch. An hour of struggling to convey the most basic of sentences and a round of drinks later, I think we all said “screw it” and ceased the failed attempts at stringing together grammatically proper sentences and adopted a form of ital-inglese that consisted mostly of vocabulary words, charade-like motions, and incorrect uses of verbs, prepositions, and pronunciation. This abandonment of inhibition was for the better because we ended up having a great time and were able to learn the basic facts about one another; for example, the boys are both from Italy but are Egyptian in heritage, live with their parents, and work together at the ATM (Italian ATM = American Metro system). Minus the whole Egyptian thing, this is the standard for young Italians: after high school, they work rather than attending Universita immediately, and they live with their parents until their mid-to-late 20’s. (Meaning that Kerry- no need to get bummed about being in Ridgefield, you just must be more cultured than we thought, living Italian-like and all. This would go under the category of “stupid things that Italians don’t waste their time worrying about while Americans flail to live according to social norms.”)
One last note about night three: everyone that has attended college and look back and reminisce fondly about the late-night truck parked right outside the campus gates that sold greasy sandwiches to students coming back from the bar at night. Evidently, Italy has this as well, except their “greasy food” in this case was a veal sandwich with some unknown delicious sauce, fresh lettuce and tomatoes on pita-like bread. YUM.
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