Final lessons

Milan

It begins to become a little tradition : after every foreign trip we briefly summarize what we have learned, so that you can benefit from it too. Here we go.

Two words

That's all you need to get quite far in an Italian conversation. Namely: allora and spettacolo. Everything is always very spettaaaaacolo, and every sentence starts with allora. Very handy for me because I don't speak a word of Italian, unlike May who speaks Italian almost fluently, and this brings me to the next word.

In English

Because no matter how well you speak Italian, you almost always get a babbling response in broken English back. May lived in Rome for half a year and can hold her own quite well in Italian (with full sentences and whole conversations and so on) but even she gets an English response back 9 out of 10 times. Which is very inconvenient because the average Italian speaks quite decent English, but it doesn't flow smoothly.

Alcoholic

That's what they think we are. We are really here for work reasons and at every terrace we immediately open our laptop to work, but we do like to order a glass of wine with it. Even if we don't necessarily want something to eat. And that, they don't quite understand here. Italians don't just drink for the sake of drinking. Ha, but then they don't know us yet.

Tip

You usually can't round off the amount of your bill with a tip and then pay the whole amount with your card. So you pay for what you have eaten with credit or debit, and the tip has to be cash. Handy to know because if you have zero euros cash, then you can't give a tip either. This system is in place because the hospitality industry has to comply with strict controls and they must be able to account for every euro. Something to do with a lot of corruption and money laundering and Berlusconi.

Taxi mystery

There are ten thousand taxis driving around everywhere, but you can only actually get in at a few places. Our hotel is near the Central Station so every day we start with a taxi there, and there are really 200, but before you realize which ones you can and cannot take, you are half an hour further. It's really a drama.

Summer? What is summer?

It is summer in Milan. At least, that's what we think. Cheerfully we march through the streets with bare legs and without a jacket, while the average Milanese goes out with thick jackets and large scarves. Crazy, we think, but they also think we are crazy so that fits perfectly.