While this trip started with lots of excitement and anticipation, it quickly transformed into a travel nightmare. It’s as if we entered a very long, dark tunnel. At the end of this three-day nightmare we “popped out” to a blue sky and sunlight – in Venice.
So what happened to Milan? Without going into lots of detail, the causal culprit was a powerful, electrical storm that shut down New York’s JFK airport for several hours. Our itinerary called for us to fly to New York, then on to Milan. As we approached JFK, we were diverted to a holding pattern for almost two hours. No weather relief in sight! All incoming flights were redirected – no flights leaving JFK. We’d entered the tunnel:
Fuel was running low
Flight crew was running out of legal flying time
The alternative, Syracuse (Boston had no room), is not a Delta hub, which meant that a fresh air crew would not be available.
The crew decided to fly to Detroit, a Delta hub, to await the end of the JFK storm, refuel, and switch crews.
Once in Detroit, no one was allowed to change travel plans. The decision was that everyone had to fly back to New York. It took Delta three hours to assemble the new crew.
After landing at JFK at 2:00 AM, we were treated to a third-world experience in New York – but I don’ wanna talk about it!
No food for 24 hours – a new life record for Roselie
We decided to recover and get back on plan, bypassing Milan and heading directly to Venice the following night- to catch up with Bill, Kelly, Alex, and Erin.
I’m very disappointed about missing Milan. The city was my first introduction to Italy, more than 30 years ago.
Milan is Italy’s business and transportation hub – the economic powerhouse. About the size of San Diego, CA, it is the most populous city in Italy. Following heavy destruction in WWII, it was rebuilt as a modern city and hence doesn’t resemble the typical Italian city we would expect. The big news recently was the completion and opening of the rail-only Gotthart Base Tunnel through the Alps, connecting Zurich to Milan. It is the longest tunnel (35 miles) in the world. While it reaffirms Milan’s position as a business hub, it distracts from its historical venues. History does not dominate and is largely transparent in the daily life of Milan. Having said that, the historical sites are jewels, sprinkled throughout the city. It is unfortunate that we had to miss them since I never had occasion to see them on earlier visits. But, it does bring back memories of my first visit.
I experienced Milan as our first stop in a Hewlett-Packard new product introduction tour. We were training the Southern European sales force of about 50 people on the benefits and competitive positioning of our new computer. As was customary, we brought a sample set of manuals to pass around for a closer look at what each would receive a week later. We also brought tchotchkes, such as buttons, pens, cups, etc., highlighting the new product, and invited each attendee to help himself to one – and HELP themselves, they did. We quickly learned we had made a mistake! The bag contained our whole cache of tchotchkes for our four-city tour – we hadn’t considered just pulling out about 50 of each… instead, we passed around the whole bag. At the end of my presentation, someone towards the back of the room raised his hand and asked ‘whether we had any more, since the bag was empty and he didn’t get any!’ We spent the rest of the time begging the trainees to give them back to us. We managed to get a few back – just enough for our next tour stop in Munich. Packing up our material, we couldn’t find the sample manuals we had passed around! No one knew what happened to them. ‘Not me!’, ‘What manuals?’ were the mantras. As a last resort, our product manager ran around the building checking every office. He discovered them nicely placed in one of the salesperson’s bookcase.
After the customary dinner with the sales team, three of us grabbed a taxi back to our hotel. This driver only had two modes – accelerator all the way down, or the brake all the way down. He insisted on taking us back via a road – no extra charge – lined with women of the night on display, while giving us a running commentary of which ones were really great, and asking which ones we wanted? I forgot to mention, he was driving down this one-way road in the wrong direction. Cars had to get out of his way, honking their horns, avoiding us by driving on the sidewalk, yelling at our driver. What does he do? He yells back and pumps his fist as if THEY screwed up. Of course… we’re in Italy.
Today, Milan is also interesting in the context of our presidential election, and the comparison of Trump to Mussolini and his fascist movement. In 1919, Benito Mussolini‘s and his paramilitary organization, the Blackshirts, rallied for the first time in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolcro. The founders of this group were nationalist intellectuals, former army officers and young landowners opposing peasants’ and country laborers’ unions. Their objective was to rule Italy. To that end, in 1922, a Fascist brigade of 30,000 men left Milan on their historically important March on Rome. It was mostly a show of power and intimidation. The transfer of power was generally peaceful and within the framework of their constitution. On October 29, 1922, the King of Italy appointed Mussolini as Premier and asked him to form a cabinet. Mussolini led the country constitutionally, until 1924, when he removed all pretense of a democracy and established the Il Duce dictatorship.
During WWII, Milan suffered extensive damage from Allied bombings. When Italy surrendered in 1943, German forces occupied most of Northern Italy until 1945. As we learned on our stay in Lugano, Switzerland last year, in March 1944 a high-level meeting was held between German and Allied officials, with a Swiss official serving as a mediator in what was called “Operation Sunrise.” This operation was the foundation for the surrender signed in April 1945. It not only saved Northern Italy from a “scorched earth” policy, as the retreating Nazi army had done in Norway, but also saved a large cache of Italian art in Milan. The German general at this meeting did not want to see this art destroyed. The city still experienced heavy damage from Allied bombings. Towards the end of the war, the American force advanced on Milan – but before they arrived, the Italian resistance had seized control of the city and executed Mussolini along with several members of his band. On 29 April 1945, the corpses of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci and other Fascist leaders were hung in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto.
This time around, Milan was to be an important stop for us. What would have been, could have been, should have been… wasn’t! To nurse my way through this ‘tunnel,’ I take refuge in reading Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo, by Stephanie Storey. On the first page of the book, we find Leonardo standing in front of his wall painting, The Last Supper, in the dining hall of the Dominican convent Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. You know, the one I’m NOT going to see! It depicts the moment in time, at the Last Supper, just after Jesus announced that one of the disciples at the table would betray him before the morning. Leonardo is swearing (remember this is a novel) that his experiment of applying pigments on top of plaster, rather than mixing them into the plaster, resulted in the paint flaking off his masterpiece. This is reality. The painting would and could not have endured without constant repair. Even Da Vinci himself repaired it several times. Somehow it has survived all the deterioration, the bombings, and even vandalism. So I hunker down with Storey’s tale about Da Vinci and his Mona Lisa, Michalangelo’s David, and a sprinkle of Micheaveli.
‘Porca cacca!’
Regroup! Enjoy the delights of Venice.
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