BMCC 2008 Switzerland Blog

Sunday, June 15, 2008

“Wow”!! A Fabulous Weekend in Milano, Italy

Written by Andy DeLaRosa and Sasha Munoz

We woke up after only 2 hours of sleep and couldn’t have been any happier. At 7:30am we started our wonderful 2 day trip to Milano, Italy.

We were so excited we didn’t even worry about eating breakfast. It took us three hours and 45 minutes to reach the Milano Centrale. However before we arrived in Milano the train was delayed because a young lady in her 20’s had to be escorted out the train because her mother was beating her up. Once we arrived in the train station, we were very surprised, the Milano that we were use to seeing on television was not the one we saw when getting off the train. The area was surrounded by crack heads and very poor people (we felt like we were in the hood). We immediately ran to use the bathrooms and surprisingly we had to pay 1 Euro each to use a nasty filthy bathroom. After we used the bathroom we sprinted to convert our money into Euros and get a map from the tourist office. At approximately 12:00pm we found a Mc Donald’s outside the train station, we each ate a Big Mac meal with French fries and a coke. The food was extremely expensive (14 Euros) – at least it tasted fresh and good.

After we were done with our meal we started walking the streets of Milano. It was a mission to get some help since 90% of the people didn’t speak English or Spanish. We were able to find a man at a Western Union office who helped us out with the map by letting us know where the tourist areas were.

As we walked farther into the city, we started feeling better about being in Milano as the streets appeared much cleaner and several famous museums appeared in sight. We immediately ran into the (Natural Art) Museum which was fabulous. The museum tour lasted about 25 minutes because we had a lot to do. Following the brief stop at the museum we started feeling like we were in heaven we started walking towards the Piazza del Duomo (main tourist area) in Milano. We felt right at home and ran into several stores (Dolce & Gabbana, Diesel, Calvin Jeans and H&M).

Finally at 2:00pm on this beautiful and sunny day our walking paid off, we had reached the Piazza del Duomo. We were walking in heaven on cobble stone roads. First thing we saw was a local train with a big sign posted on the side, Custo Barcelona, a famous high end fashion designer from Spain. Along with the lettering he had plenty of models in the advertisement for his fall 2009 fashion designs. The colors and the way the models posed were amazing. Once in the plaza we were happy because it felt like we were in the real Milano. We went inside the Escada, Burberry, Max Mara, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Bulgari and Fendi stores. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the stores (store policy). The prices were high but the clothes were flawless, now we know why Milano is considered one of the worlds fashion capitals.

Distraction settled in and we had realized we had not called our professors to notify them that we had arrived safely. Then we stopped browsing through the shops and purchased a 10 dollar phone card. The instructions on the damn phone card were in Italian, we asked several locals for help and we received none. We felt like we had paid 10 euros for a phone card that was useless. Once done with the shops we wanted to go into Duomo (one of the biggest cathedral in all of Europe). The line to enter was at around 300 people; therefore, we took pictures and had a prayer in front of the cathedral. We really felt good after the prayer and had a sense of peace and spiritual stability.

After we exited the front of Duomo we headed to the metro to take a 30 minute train ride to my aunt’s house. We encountered another issue we didn’t know which train would take us to her home. Luckily a Metro employee who saw us struggling came up to us; it was like God sent an angel from heaven to help us. The man spoke perfect Italian but also Spanish because he was born in the Dominican Republic. He helped us buy our metro passes and walked us down to the correct train. After a 30minute train ride and a long walk we reached our aunt’s house.

Arriving at our aunt’s house made this whole experience worthwhile, seeing her again after 16 years was priceless. She immediately hugged us both and asked Andy “what happened to his brown glasses” he laughed and responded that he had not worn those glasses since he was 7 years old. It was a very emotional reunion; we sat down for a few hours and spoke about the last 16 years of our lives. She immediately called Andy’s mother and they both started crying over the phone because his mother thought we was joking about our whole trip to Milano. We were so happy to reunite with our aunt and to see our older cousins Jorge (23) and Eimy (20), which was cool, because they were still as humble as they were years ago. Later on that afternoon came in Matthias (13) and Giovanni (11) our aunt’s 2 kids from her Italian marriage, the kids were happy to see us being that we had never met before. After all the joy, laughter and catching up, we were finally able to reach Professor Blake-Neis. We took the opportunity to notify her that we were fine.

We was very tired as the night came in but reached deep down within ourselves for some energy when my aunt started cooking an Italian and Dominican meal fused together. We had some Dominican styled steak with peppers onions and pasta with melted cheese, carrots and cucumbers. Thank you Lord Christ for this meal, it was tasty and everything that we had been craving for the last 20 days. Overall, today’s adventures were great; the day was full of laughs and happiness. We were so happy to be in Milano, its feels like an outer body experience something that words can’t describe.

On Sunday, June, 15, 2008, we woke up stress free, after all who wouldn’t after the wonderful day that we had on Saturday. My aunt had a wonderful breakfast ready for us at 10am. We had white toast (with butter), steamed milk and coffee cake. Breakfast was delicious and we felt right at home. Once breakfast was completed it was time to get ready to head back to Chur (bummer). At 1pm we left my aunt’s house and we became nostalgic because we really wanted to spend more time with our family.

We had a latte marchiatto at the main plaza while we waited for our train back to Chur. At 2:25pm we boarded our train and it took us 4 hours to get back to SSTH. Once we reached Chur we were starving, since on Sunday’s Chur is such a ghost town, the only place open was Cindy’s Dinner. We both had an all Americano burger (lettuce, beef, bacon, pickles, onions and mustard), large fries and a medium coke. The food was delicious to our surprise because Cindy’s burgers tasted very similar to Johnny Rockets burgers (New York).

However, we will not lie – over the two days we’ve missed our professors and classmates. Upon entrance at SSTH we were greeted by Prof. Blake- Neis, Dr. Garely, Shevy and Sarah. We both were happy to see them; it felt like an eternity without seeing them. We immediately started chatting with them and gave them all the details of our wonderful weekend away from Chur. Once the long chat was over, we both went downstairs to blog about our wonderful weekend and then went straight to bed afterwards.