Italian Unity Day

6-11-2010
Originally uploaded by cspatrick

Saturday, November 6, 2010 Day 129
It was cool and foggy when we set out for the train station this morning with a goal of exploring the path Christian would take the next day upon his arrival. His plane was scheduled to land at 7:40 and he has a voucher for three tickets to see The Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie church at 10:45. We wanted to check everything out and expedite his arrival as much as possible from the airport into the city. We first went to the train station and lucked out in spotting a bus just arriving from the Malpensa Airport. However, something I read had said there was a train as well, so we looked around and found that the train from the airport doesn’t come into the central station, but comes into one called Cadorna which, coincidentally is the same location as the closest metro to the church. We bought subway tickets and took the metro down to Cadorna. We made a mistake with the metro tickets. Expecting things to be as they were in Paris, we bought what we thought would be a set of 10 tickets for nine Euros, thinking that the three of us could share them when Christian got here. No such luck – what we got was a single card which says on it that it cannot be used by more than one person for any one trip. Ah, well . . . we will just give the card away right before we leave. I bought five single tickets at a Euro each and we hopped the metro to Cadorna. We exited the metro station and entered the train station which is just at the mouth of the metro. In the train station we walked about a bit to get the lay of the land, which was not too hard, as there are 20 tracks and they all exit at the same place. We consulted a chart about the Malpensa train and it seemed to show two or three trains every hour. Then we discovered the office for the Malpensa train and the clerk there told us that the trains come every half hour from Malpensa, even on Sunday. Most of the train station is open-air and rather cool today, but the Malpensa train office was cozy and had several chairs. That done, we set off for Santa Maria delle Grazie church. This was not hard to find, and took us less than 10 minutes to reach. We scoped out the ticket office and walked back to the train station where I scoped out the toilets, and we departed.

Once we left the station, we turned toward a nearby castle and park. We happened upon a small military (“dog-and-pony show” per Roger) outside the castle. There was a bit of military paraphernalia on display, including a helicopter, a snowmobile along with an alpine patrol, several motorcycles, some 20 or so horses (some pulling two artillery pieces, others ridden by cavalry personnel), an armored personnel carrier, a communications van, a rubber raft, a red cross van, a tent with a recruitment station, and some 50 or so enlisted personnel. Additionally, we saw some coast guard personnel in their van, but we never saw them exit the van, although I assume they did at one point. One of the Carabinieri, pictured here, chatted with us for a bit, explaining that this is a demonstration of Italian Unity, and the ministry of defense was visiting in the castle and would arrive to inspect the troops in about 10 minutes. In the meantime, spectators (maybe 150 in all) were invited to sit in the helicopter and have their photos taken, and to wander around and freely inspect the equipment. I don’t think they were offering horse rides, although some of the kids would have died for one. We wandered about, then took the opportunity to have lunch from a nearby snack stand. Roger had a panini which contained some unidentifiable meat (alleged to be chicken) and I had some sort of meat and cheese (maybe ham and mozzarella) inside a cornmeal crust shaped into a ball a little smaller than a baseball. The redeeming quality to both was that they were hot. Our orange drinks were cool but not cold.

Finally, some 30-40 minutes after our discussion with the solider, some uniforms with blue sashes started coming out of the castle. These were people with swords, medals and stars. Some had so many medals that they listed seriously to port. There were a couple of guys with three stars on their shoulders. One in particular seemed quite important, and we realized this must be the minister of defense. A military band struck up a tune and everyone seemed cheerful. The horses pulled out and broke into a brisk trot along a wide walk in the park, then returned to their former station. We hung around a bit, then headed on down a path toward a peace arch at the far end of the park. Partway down we could hear cannon fire from the demonstration of the artillery.

Later we returned to the hotel, then walked to a continuous-service restaurant for a mediocre meal of pasta and bread, then we turned in for the night.