Losing ourselves in Milan…and losing a wallet

Well, I didn’t intend to write another post until after our first hiking expedition, but it turns out our first day in Milan was more intense (and our stay in Milan a bit longer) than expected, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Let’s cut to the chase — Sarah got pickpocketed.

If you don’t know, Jessica and I met our friend Sarah at JFK in New York and we flew together to Italy. When we arrived Friday, we were pretty groggy from our overnight flight, so we were glad to have a hotel right near Milano Centrale, the station where the train from the airport drops you off. After dumping our stuff and getting cleaned up a bit, we set out to just wander around the city. WIth no real agenda, we ended up walking most of the day and finally took a metro train back to Centrale around 8:00pm. That was the moment.

As we were just about to exit the station, Sarah looked down and realized that her wallet was missing. She had a small purse on, close to her body, zipped, and the thief clearly knew what they were doing–managing to unzip the purse and extract her wallet and passport. (We decided, in retrospect, that this theft was a pretty impressive feat.)

We immediately went to the station police*, where we were promptly told to sit and wait…for over an hour. During that time, we made good use of the new Italian SIM cards Jess and I got, attempting to cancel Sarah’s credit and debit cards. We also had a brief scare when we realized the thief also had a key card for our hotel room, which I ran across the street to get changed…only to come back and find Jess and Sarah had disappeared! It turns out they had been told by the police to leave and make a report elsewhere in the morning (with cops who spoke more English), and they had been unable to call me because Sarah was on Jessica’s phone with the credit card company. Speaking of which, this thief really knew their business–they had taken Sarah’s card to the next station and repeatedly bought $425 worth of metro cards until, by the end of her call with them, there was $13,000 worth of charges. Why their fraud department didn’t stop this, I have no clue. And why they didn’t stop the last $4,000 worth, which happened while Sarah was on the phone with them, I’m even more clueless about. Alas…not our problem.

Ultimately, Sarah is fine. She has people with her to provide cash (us) and we went this morning, Monday, to the U.S. Consulate and got her a new passport. It was actually pretty easy. Hint: if you plan to get pickpocketed while abroad, do it in a city with an embassy…and bring a friend who can spot you some cash until you get back home.

_{* As an aside, I’ve been thinking about the fact that our first move was to find the police. It’s ingrained white middle class behavior, I guess. On the other hand, the credit card companies and embassy seemed to desire that this action be taken, so it’s also reinforced by the system. Ultimately, I don’t think we were actually contributing to intensified policing, but not really doing anything to intervene either…}

Moving on to happier subjects…

Other than that one moment and the subsequent evening where we definitely did not get to bed as early as planned (after midnight, when we’d been aiming for 9ish), we had a nice time in Milan. It was fun just wandering around, eating gelato at every opportunity (ok, just once a day), and admiring the mix of styles and architecture throughout the city. We enjoyed the older, slightly crumbling buildings, the new towering glass ones, the ancient archways, the medieval structures and more.

We have also enjoyed the fact that Italians seem much more sane about COVID than folks back home. While there’s occasional nose-exposure, it’s universally accepted that masks are worn indoors. Then again, universal might be an exaggeration. We did run across an enormous and extremely boisterous crowd demonstrating against the “European Green Pass” — a “vaccine passport” program the EU is setting up — right outside the Duomo. So, there are anti-vaxxers here too…

Anyhow, as I said, moving on…

On Saturday, we spent a fair amount of time at the Duomo (cathedral). While it’s not quite as famous or magnificent as the one in Florence, it is a stunning work. We toured inside the cathedral, in the ancient ruins of the previous church beneath, up to the rooftops, and through the neighboring museum. The views from the roof were gorgeous, with the foreground of the art and architecture of the Duomo and the background of the city and overcast sky behind. In the cathedral itself, besides the great columns and arching ceilings, I loves that there was a list of archbishops of the city dating back to the 1st century. And in the Duomo museum, there were some parts that gave a great sense of the enormous length of time that construction took. For instance, the progression of stained glass from fairly simple to much more elaborate and brightly colored over the centuries.

On Sunday, much of our day was spent at the Castello Sforzesco, where the Sforza family ruled from. The castle has beautiful grounds (and a bunch of sleepy cats guarding the moats), and is home to about 8 or 9 different little museums. We spent a lot of time on the exhibit about the body and spirit in Renaissance sculpture (no photos allowed), and then ran through some old furniture and paintings to see some wacky musical instruments of the past.

Overall, though, the main joy of Milan was just wandering from place to place with no real agenda…really just waiting until Monday rolled around so we could move on to where we sit now, Aosta, about to embark on an 8-day hut-to-hut trek (yes, one day shorter than originally planned). I’ll leave you with a few of the more amusing sightings around Milan…

Oh, and one last oddity from our voyage here. Before making it to Italy, Jessica and I killed time in New York between arriving at JFK at 10:00 and leaving at 5:30. We wandered around Jamaica, Queens and ended up eating in Captain Tilly Park. It turns out this is a park dedicated to the imperialist capture of Cuba and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. But, besides celebrating the “heroism” of the Americans, it also includes a wonderfully snarky historical footnote…

_{PS-Sorry if this isn’t my best post. I’m hurrying to get this out before heading into the mountains and there’s lots to do!}