While flipping through my sketchbook yesterday, I came across this picture, which I sketched exactly four years ago to the day. My wife and I were on sabbatical in Milan, and our daughter and I were drawing plants on a sunny day in the Brera Botanical Garden – a quiet green nook in the middle of the city. There, we met a local artist, who came over and mentioned that he used to have the same kind of sketchbook. We chatted and looked through each other’s sketches – mine on paper and his on his phone. It was one of those fascinating “one chance – one meeting” moments, which I often go back to in my memory. Actually, it turned out to be not just one meeting, because we later had a chance to visit the artist’s home studio, being somewhat overwhelmed by his and his wife’s hospitality.
I took thousands of photographs and video clips during our six-months stay in Italy, but the sketches, which I got into a habit of doing fairly regularly, definitely carry more emotional content for me personally. On reflection, this makes me want to pick up the sketching habit again.
I am not a fan of “Top N things to do in Place X” type articles, partly because I think Rick Steves already does an excellent job with practically any place I realistically would want to visit. Having said this, last week, a friend asked about some advice about places to stay at and sights to see in Milan, so I pointed her to the Sabbatical section of my blog. While doing so, I realized that last year, while on sabbatical with my family, I wrote more than thirty posts about our life there – less than what I originally wanted to write, but more than I retrospectively thought I did. It actually felt good to know that my personal experience and opinion could be of use for someone else, even considering the wast amount of information available on the internet and elsewhere. Rick Steves might be a professional traveller and a better writer than me, but he is not me, so his impressions and opinions are not mine.
So here are my recommendations for a few days in Milan:
I suggest trying to visit the lakes (Como or Maggiorre) if you have a chance. Maggiore is particularly nice – you can take an island-hopping boat tour. Here is my blog post about how we did it. The town to stay in is Stresa. It is also easily accessible by train from either Milan or Switzerland.
In Milan, try staying close to Duomo – it is in the middle of everything, and the cathedral itself is the main attraction anyway. The most posh shopping is right next to Duomo too, but there are more reasonably priced stores (most of the same brands) on Corso Buenos Aires, a couple of metro stops away from Duomo. The kids will probably like the the Lego store (one block behind the Duomo along Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II).
Other areas worth visiting are Brera (for the ambiance), Sforza Castle (for the museum and the park), and Piazza Gae Aulenti (for the modern architecture). There are also some very neat churches, which are like mini museums (…those are real gems, and it reminds me that I’d like to write about them some day).
After spending a beautiful afternoon at the Butchart Gardens, my daughter wanted to go for a run/bike ride with me. We first did thins kind of thing last year in Milan. I would go running, and she would bike alongside. We would go from our apartment along Naviglio Martesana to a playground that was about 2.5 km away. That was about how far my daughter could pedal nonstop at that time. Today we did a solid 5k, almost without a word of complaining from her. Our average pace was still nothing to brag about, but I am not taking for granted that we can do this together at all. At some point, it is I who won’t be able to keep up and will be slowing her down. What are the chances that she would want to run with me then?
I’ve been reading the biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, and it’s insightful to learn that even an artist of such enormous stature as Leonardo had his own role models and influences. It is somehow liberating to find out the small, even mundane details about people, who are universally recognized as absolute giants of achievement. The more you know about your idols, the more human they become. In fact, some say you should never meet your idealized role models in person because of the risk of becoming disillusioned with them.
Leonardo, most likely, had never met his role model, Leon Battista Alberti, who was influential among artists and engineers of his time. Curiously, Leonardo strived to develop his uniques style, without much regard to the option of others, but in everyday, mundane matters, he aimed to exercise artistic approach, following Alberti’s maxim: “One must apply the greatest artistry in three things: walking in the city, riding a horse, and speaking, for in each of these one must try to please everyone.” Leonardo, apparently, became a model for his contemporaries in all three.
Panoramic vie of Florence from Pizzale Michelangelo. Italy.
Falling ill or getting injured abroad is certainly not fun. We have had several brushes with foreign medical services during our travels. The first time, it was in Czech Republic, when my wife got bitten in a leg by an insect while taking a long-exposure night photo on Charles Bridge in Prague. The bite got infected, and, following doctor’s orders, my wife had to spend the next few days in our hotel room with her leg elevated. “But we have vacation plans. How would I get around?” my wife asked the doctor (they were communicating using equal parts of English, Czech and Russian). “You’ve got a strong-looking husband,” she replied, “he should be carrying you in his arms.” I took it as a compliment. This happened on the second day of our trip, so fortunately, she had time to recover while I was attending a conference, and our subsequent vacation travels were not interrupted.
The other couple of incidents happened when our daughter became sick abroad, most recently a year ago in Milan. Just a few days ago, it was my father’s turn to get injured, while visiting us here in Victoria.
Dealing with all the stress and logistics, I thought that it was amazing how time heals the wounds, metaphorically speaking. The worry, the pain, the frustration eventually became blurred in our memories. My wife and I mostly remember the funny details of dealing with the language barrier, the universal kindness of doctors and nurses, the interactions among ourselves during the difficult times.
To be philosophical about it, health issues are a part of life, and they are bound to happen on the road as much as they will occur at home. And a far as travelling with family is concerned, I think that such trips are not so much about the destination itself or sightseeing, but more about spending time with family while travelling. Being on the road only adds a common element of novelty and excitement (and a bit of stress) to experience together. And the sickness or injury, as the time passes and the wounds heal (in the literal sense), eventually becomes just another experience – something that adds to the overall impression of the trip. Just buy insurance before leaving home.
We discovered that our daughter loved drawing in museums when we are on sabbatical in Milan last year. We would bling her sketchbook and pencils wherever we’d go, and she would stop in front of every sculpture to draw it.
Today, we went to the Royal BC Museum in Victoria to see the wildlife photography exhibit, and there were some interactive setups aimed, I suppose, to teach kids the “rule of thirds” of composition. One could look at an animal figure through a frame with some wire grid and sketch it on a piece of paper.
Our daughter was happy to draw the animals, and she thought that the frame was cool, but as far as I could tell, she did not use any composition rules. I am glad that she she feels in her element drawing in public. And I miss our Italian museum trips, where my daughter and I sat side by side, sketching something. We should start drawing together again, while she still wants to do it.
Today, my daughter and I went for a bike ride/run to a nearby ocean-side park. I ran and she biked. I remember that the first time we did this was last Spring in Milan, where we were on a six-months sabbatical. We would run/bike along Naviglio Martesana. She could handle about 15 minutes of non-stop pedalling on her bike, which we borrowed from my colleague. In that time, we could get to a playground, where she would play for about half-an-hour, spending most of that time hanging on monkey bars. We would eat an apple and some pretzels, which was her go-to snack over there, much like “fishy crackers” are consistent favourites here in Canada, and head back home. It was hot. We strategically chose the path to stay in the shade, as we ran/biked along the canal.
Today, it was cold (by Victoria standard anyway – about 0 degrees C) and windy. My daughter is stronger now and she has a bigger bike, so she can ride 30 minutes non-stop. Still, I ran at a pace, where we could talk without breathing hard. It was fun to run with her, but it was no question about playing when we got to a playground at the local park. It was so cold, that even stopping was uncomfortable. This is the thing about Victoria: the running trails around our home are some of the best I’ve tried anywhere in the world. The air is unbelievably fresh – I was really missing it in Milan. The nature is spectacular. The people are friendly and polite. Yet, it is just not quite warm enough to be truly enjoyable.
To be fair, though, I would need to compare apples to apples, or rather, winter to winter. The very first time I ran in Milan was in the winter, in the cold, in the dark, along a busy Via Melchiorre Gioia to Piazza Game Aulenti, which was the closest place to our apartment (that I knew of), where some stores were open late at night. I wanted to buy a thermos for my daughter to bring hot chocolate in to her ice-skating lesson the next morning (the irony of the fact that she came to Italy from Canada to learn skating is not lost on me, by the way), so I decided to make a running workout of the shopping trip. It was slippery with ice, windy, dark, noisy and generally quite unpleasant to run that night. But at that time, when we were without a car for the first time in many years, simply bing able to cove some distance on foot and explore the new city was liberating.
Today also, the simple fact that my daughter and I could on the whim put on the runners, jump on a bike and be in a forest, by the ocean in less than 15 minutes, chatting all the way there, was definitely a gift, cold weather or not.
Night view of the Unicredit tower in Piazza Gae Aulenti. Milan. Italy.
When I was taking photos of famous Italian violins at the Sforza Castle museum in Milan a few months ago, I did not imagine that very soon I would begin my first violin lessons to keep a company for my six-years-old daughter. These are the first formal music lessons of any kind for both of us, I might add!
So here are my first impressions of learning violin.
The initial stage of learning the most basic fundamentals of this highly technical skill, which is completely foreign to me (that is, I cannot draw upon my experience in any other field) is incredibly rewarding. Immediately, after the very few first attempts to extract a clear sound, I have a completely new level of appreciation of classical music that opened to me. If before, when I heard some virtuoso play a violin concerto, I would think: “This must be incredibly difficult.” Now I have a first-hand sense of what specifically is so difficult and how many of these tremendously difficult aspects must align perfectly for the music to appear that fluid. It’s a different world from what I could imagine!
Also, it was nice to hear my teacher draw an analogy between violin-playing and martial arts in that the essence of practice in both areas is to focus on the form. If the form is executed flawlessly, the result is automatically beautiful.
Two years ago in Genoa, or more precisely in a neighbouring village of Boccadasse, I was surprised by how many people were jogging along the seashore in the middle of the day. It was contrary to my stereotypical expectation of Italian lifestyle of everybody taking long siestas in the afternoon. If I squinted hard and blocked out the views of hilltop villas and “Genova rosso”-coloured houses, I could imagine that I was in California.
Things are completely different in Maiori. Maybe, it has to do with the Southern Italian mentality. Maybe, I am seeing things differently in vacation mode. But during our first two days here, I din’t see a single person jogging on the street. There are also not many model-like bodies in the latest-season swimsuits. The general impression is not of an effortless visual perfection that people in Milan project. Instead, the tourists here (majority of them Italians) seem to be very relaxed about their physical conditioning, healthy eating and fitness.
Still, I was determined not to drop my running routine, which took me a good portion of the past year to establish. So in the morning two days ago, I woke up early and set to explore the town. I ran East long the Amalfi Drive and in no time found myself outside the town limits. The road was narrow and winding, and I thought that it was good that we didn’t rent a car during this trip. Even at the early hour there was some traffic, and even being on foot, I had to watch out for the oncoming cars and hug the cliffs to let them through. My average pace on that run was quite poor, because I stopped at every corner to snap a photo with my phone – another thing that would have been impossible if I was driving. The “scenic point” parking spots are few, far between and tiny.
We are on a high-speed (Frecciarossa) train from Milan to Naples. It’s the first day of our vacation. The display under the ceiling says that our train is moving at 296 km/h. It feels as if I am sitting still for the first time in the past several days.
Going to and coming from a six-months sabbatical feels less like a vacation trip, but more like moving the entire household. The amount of luggage we are taking with us is overwhelming. In our defense, we have been away from home during three distinct seasons, so just the clothes take up a lot of space. In fact, our five-year-old grew out of a good portion of the wardrobe that we brought with us. We knew this would be the case, so we didn’t even make an attempt to travel light.
Claudia, who was checking us out of the apartment, asked how we would manage all these bags at the train station.
It went like this:
I called the taxi and asked them to pick us up in a van. We took down the bags in three trips by elevator (again, in our defence, it’s a tiny one). The driver helped us load the bags into the van. At the train station, there were two types of porters, who helped with the luggage. First, an “unofficial” porter loaded the suitcases on a dolly and carried them to the platform level of the building, but he could not go to the actual platform (only passengers with tickets and the station employees can go there). From the ticket checkpoint, one of the official porters (i.e. an employee of the train station) took us to the train. He had a tablet, which showed the platform assignments for the trains a couple of minutes before the announcement was made on the monitors. This was the crucial advantage, which by itself made hiring a porter worthwhile, because getting to the train early gave us some time to figure out how to store the luggage before the rest of the passengers poured in.
We were in the “2nd standard” class coach, where the seat rows are located close to each other. The designated spaces for luggage on the floor between the seats can accommodate the “large” suitecase, but not the “extra-large”. The XL bags, surprisingly, can fit on the overhead shelf, albeit with some effort. The hard shell suitecases, which are very popular these days, are actually more difficult to fit, because they do not deform as easy as the ones made of the soft material.
Now, the train is speeding along, but it feels like we have finally stopped moving. I am ready for vacation.
I am not a fan of “Top N things to do in Place X” type articles, partly because I think 
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