Commercial Capitals: Milan n Frankfurt

Here comes my next post for all you people who were waiting for this...To be true, this trip wasn't full of many accidents or incidents like the earlier ones but it was special because it was my first international trip out of Italy...

I started off my journey at 8.35 from Camerino, having missed the 7.35 bus, but reached just in time to catch my train at 9. For reaching Milan, I was supposed to take 4 trains and this was the first one...On my 3rd train, I travelled for more than an hour along the sea, and this was the first time that I saw the sea in dark. It looked frightening yet wonderful with many big ships also anchored. Finally I reached Bologna Centrale at 3.30 in the night from where I was to take my last train for Milano which was after two hours. As expected, I slept off.

On this journey, I hadnt taken any blanket with me as its quite hot over here nowadays and the place vaccated by it was occupied by a lot of food items to avoid wasting money on eating out. These ideas were given by the miser king, Sushim Gupta, with whom I would be travelling this weekend.

So I had to sleep on the chairs in waiting room this time...but someone who likes to sleep lying down like me can never sleep so easily on those damned chairs, so I couldnt sleep in the room...

I got out and lied down on one bench on the platform, but it was hardly a few minutes of sleep when I was awakened by the shouts of Metallicaaaaaaaa Metallicaaaaa!!!!

When I asked a guy over there, then I came to know that there was a Metallica concert somewhere nearby, and all those guys n gals wearing black clothes and having interesting hairstyles were going for that concert....For one moment I thought of ditching Mr. Gupta, but I couldn't ditch the money that I had spent in my ticket to Milan. So I reached Milan, the fashion capital, at 8 in the morning. This city is very much unlike Italy, the only city to have skyscrapers in the country and many Italians including my professor don't seem to like the city.

When I reached Milan, I called up Anshuman, who is on internship in Milan from IIIT allahbad and he reached there within a few minutes...so I started off with him from the station. We went to the castle(pic 1) and then left it without wasting anytime to meet a gal, who was doing some fashion diploma in Milan and had met me on Orkut (mind you all she contacted me, not me)....she was supposed to meet me outside Duomo(pic 2), the only place in Milan to see at around 10.30 so I reached duomo at 10.00 and sat there for 2 hours waiting for her but she never came....I WAS DITCHED.

Finally at 12.15, Sushim arrived there with a IITB guy....so here were two friends, who had never met even outside a radius of 10 kms of IITD meeting in Milan and who had never gone together outside delhi will be going to frankfurt(germany).....I was relieved to get some company finally after having spent two hours bird-watching at that place...

After giving some rest to the gupta on d stairs outside duomo and drinking some cheap cola that he had brought, we went inside duomo. The duomo was quite beautiful and grand...Then we checked out jersies of almost all the teams and A C MILAN gear in a shop coseby...Then we went to the top of duomo and it was really marvelous up there with the gothic architecture done to the minutest detail in perfection ...There itself, we had our lunch...some bread and one pack of uncooked maggi...

Then we came down and went to that castle again...but thanks to me we walked for more than a km in the wrong direction. Finally after walkin for about 40 mins we reached the castle again where we slept in a lawn at its back for two hours after eating some bread again. We got up in the evening and started searching for some cheap pizza bcoz my dear gupta wanted to taste italian pizza...we tried a lot of shops and finally bought a pizza for 7 euros which I and gupta shared. Next, we went back to the duomo where they had put up a big screen to telecast Italy vs USA that night. This was the first time that I got the real feel of the football world cup...The crowd was awesome...their excitement was awesome...and as I was wearing a t-shirt with ITALIA(italy) written on it, so we were not treated as outsiders...finally the match started and we really enjoyed it a lot watching with such huge audience. After the match finished at 11, we took a metro for the station (i travelled without ticket) from where we took a shuttle bus for the airport to catch our plane to Frankfurt next morning...

On the airport,again all I had was chairs and on chairs i can't sleep...but luckily I got a chair kept in front of a table,on which i slept till morning (i was quite experienced in sleeping with my head down...thanx to our sweet classes in IIT).....Next morning we were going to frankfurt to experience the world cup more closely.

We reached frankfurt 20 minutes ahead of schedule...Tis was the first time i had seen any journey ending ahead of schedule...this is never possible in india!!! There, we took the shuttle bus to reach the city where we were to meet suninder, our senior from IIT. He reached some other station and after wasting a few euros in calling him, we decided to ditch him and started exploring the city...In this city also there was nothing else to see except so many skyscrapers. We started walking in some random direction where we saw a big cathedral until we reached the Rhine river. In the middle of the river, a giant screen was erected on which we saw Brazil play Australia. Even though the entry was free, I ended up paying 4 euros to watch that match because the security people threw the deodorant I had bought from milan in the dustbin. I even tried looking for the dustbin on my way back, but those people didn't allow me to even go near the bins.

Before this match, we slept in the lawn outside the ECB building for 3 hours. After the match we had our dinner in an Indian restaurant there and went back to the station to catch our bus for the airport to fly back to Rome. It was a wonderful experience flying twice in two days. Till sometime back, I dreamed of flying once in my life!!!