Strike-Out in Milan

Well, I’ve had to give up on locating my relatives here in the Milan area, unfortunately. I headed over to Centrale station this morning to see if I could figure out how to get out to the Lonate Pozzolo/Cassano Magnago area, where everyone lives. I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll tell you, the railway stations here are much less user-friendly than those in Paris. In Paris there are maps everywhere, ticket counters everywhere; in Italy, they’re very few and far between. So I took the Metro down to Cadorna, where the major train hubs are, because it looked like the first leg of the trip would be on the Malpensa Express, the same train I took from the airport to here and will take back tomorrow.

Anyway, it turned out that the Malpensa Express makes a stop at a town called Busto Arsizio. That station has bus lines that go out to Lonate Pozzolo, where my great-grandfather was born, Ferno, where my great-grandmother was born, and Cassano Magnago, where all the relatives presently live – but it turns out that the train only stops at Busto Arsizio every few runs, and then the last train back is at 3:00 in the afternoon. Considering it was 10:00 a.m. already, it’s most of an hour’s ride, that would have left me a four-hour window to once again wander through cryptic stations trying to find the right bus lines, then trying to wind through towns I don’t know looking for addresses… Nope. Especially if I’d be out of luck getting back if I missed that 3:00 train.

So, that takes care of the relative hunting, at least for this trip. I’ve still never been able to get through to anybody at the phone number I have for one cousin and I’ve still never received a reply to my two e-mails to the others. Bummer.

Being back down in the area of the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio (the Cadorna station, where the Malpensa train depots), I figured I might as well take in one more sight, so I walked over to the National Museum of Science/Leonardo da Vinci and took that in. It’s actually an interesting museum, and it does have a great hall full of large models of Leonardo’s inventions, blow-ups of his many notebook drawings, etc. It was a great reminder of what a true “Renaissance man” Leonardo was: He did everything!

After that, it was back to Cadorna station, a hop on the Metro back to Centrale, and then back to the hotel room. It’s been raining ever since, so I’ve just been sitting in my hotel room doing my editing work – which I’ve now completely caught up! So, kind of a boring, but I guess productive, last day here in Milan. Tomorrow I leave Milan Malpensa at about 12:30 p.m. and head back to Paris. Actually, I can’t wait.