Milan: A City of Spectacles, Empty Inside

Ah, Milan. We were here for two days. It had quite a few interesting bits (below) but overall felt dead and empty. Heather tells me that apparently there was a men's fashion show the week before and after these in particular people tend to flee the city in the summer for Lake Como (where we are now... and it's amazing) so it clears out big time on the weekends. We were there Saturday/Sunday and we definitely noticed. We felt some major bad juju there when walking around.

Generally the city also felt like it, as Heather put it, "lost a former glory." Graffiti was everywhere. Buildings looked old and sad in a way. Apparently it's quite rich and the GDP is huge but I was, from that, expecting some seriously ritzy-looking buildings (in particular as much of it was bombed during WWII), but it was a lot of rusticated (which means the bottom floor looks like a fortress, with small windows and uninviting "gates" of doors) stuff with bare upper floors. All in all, kindof depressing and made us feel desperate for life.

The other weird thing about the city was how awfully touristy it was. In all our walking we didn't find a spot that didn't feel touristy. To be fair, we were mostly in city center, but no part of Paris or any other city I've been to felt as touristy as this, and it never stopped in Milan. Strange street acts (from bizarre meditators to clowns), people pushing stupid rubber-band-gliding-light-things, fake designer bags in the street--it was everywhere, all the time. 

Anyway, enough depressing. Time for the good stuff.

Watch this video, seriously. Amazing, short clip of a Japanese Rastafarian guy with serious business skills on this kindof bell drum something-or-rather. He said it was from "America" and I'm not entirely sure what that means. If anyone has any ideas... leave 'em in comments.

He also played a pretty sweet didgeridoo, too.

Other unrecorded spectacles included a pretty talented (but odd) beat-boxer, a guy in a really sad, beat-up/dirty looking Mickey Mouse knock-off costume, a clown, some sort of Eastern cult full of white people marching about mostly naked and singing, a mime whose major trick was sitting on an invisible chair (his right foot was clearly stuck by being nailed/etc into a wood board below his carpet), a saw-player, and others. The most spectacular, as it were, was this pair of meditators (below). One guy, "balanced" on a pole of bamboo, and another guy holding up the pole (no supports under his wrist). They just sat there for god-knows-how-long, meditating. Looks like a pretty impressive feat of mind of matter, no?

From the completely-unmoving nature of the bottom guy's arm, the suspicious covering of most of his hand by his robe, by the somewhat-elevated shag carpet, etc, I am fairly certain they had some sort of steel structure supporting the pole that traveled along bottom guy's right arm. Top guy was clearly on a flat platform that met at the pole, but it was tucked through by his robe. Very impressive work and clearly still required some fortitude to maintain. 

More mundane... An old Banco Popular had a statue that looked suspiciously like the globe statue outside the UN building in NYC.

We passed by the Pride Parade being set up in the northern part of the city. Looked like a good time but we were gone all day.

 Heather spied out what-looked-like someone's old and very impressive house with a number of Italians, likely scholars of some sort, that we could not recognize.

An arcade of expensive, touristy stuff, with nice architecture.

This is where things got actually lively. By this time we were pretty desperate for some human life and found it here. Folks from all over the continent and likely elsewhere were along this canal, packed with cafes, restaurants, and bars. Heather is below enjoying a Spriz (an Italian pre-dinner cocktail).

 Here's the view from one end of the canal. Despite itself being a smidge touristy, it had more than enough real people and real liveliness to get the job done. We were happy enough here.

But overall, we were more than happy to move on to Lake Como, rivaling Vancouver and Tahoe as most beautiful place I've ever been. More on that later.