Europe Part 2

So having spent our first few days in Munich and having watched our first football match it was time for us to venture off for more football and some sightseeing, Italy here we come!!

It was an early start for us as the train left the Hauptbahnhof before 7am which isn’t too bad but in Munich in the middle of winter it was freezing cold. We stocked up on some food and coffee for the trip and found our train. The plan was to get to Milan which meant a train through the mountains to Verona in Italy via Innsbruck and then a fast train from Verona to Milan.

Things seemed straightforward enough until the train was crossing the border between Austria and Italy where it stopped at Brenner station and didn’t leave. No announcement, no signs, we just didn’t move until after an hour everyone got off and found the next train that was coming through, we were lucky to get a seat but at least we were on our way to Verona.

In Verona we topped up on some pizza and espresso from the train station and then caught the fast train to Milan which was straightforward enough. We were staying somewhere we had stayed before so a quick trip from Centrale on the metro to our hotel and then we were ready to hunt around for some food for dinner.

Of course we did pizza and washed it down with some gelato, the toughest part was choosing which pizza place to go to and which type to get. After wandering around for a bit and taking the mandatory photos of the Duomo we retreated to our hotel for the night, what could go wrong now?

I’m not sure what it was but whatever it was it was one hell of a stomach bug and that night I spent the night being sick. We spent the next day laying a bit low although we did go to the worlds best Starbucks and do some souvenir shopping where we sampled some chocolates. I progressively started to feel better. The one positive was that we decided to walk to Maccas which was a few kilometres away so we got to see the streets of the suburbs of Milan which was interesting even if it was a bit sketchy around the Maccas.

After a solid effort of recovery we were off to the football for the night to watch AC Milan take on Roma at the San Siro. I’ll do a much bigger review separately but we had an amazing night, Italian football is excellent, the crowd and atmosphere was excellent even if it felt like the San Siro was going to collapse and it was great to watch another home team win, the night ended well, or so we thought.

We had one more day to kill in Milan so we decided to do some sightseeing, after the customary morning walk to Maccas. We decided to head out to Monza, the home of the Italian Grand Prix to have a look around and see what it’s like (it’s a park that’s open to the public). To be fair not much was happening, and so we decided to walk to the nearest train station, which on reflection wasn’t the brightest of ideas because we had to take a detour to get there. Anyhow after about an hour of walking through some tiny villages (which was actually interesting) we found our train station, a tiny little one tracker, which unfortunately for us we had seen the train go the other way so we knew we had to wait for it to come back, but that was part of the adventure.

Sure enough we got the train and came back to our room for the night, this time it was Sebastians turn to be randomly sick. Still no idea what was making us sick but it was as much of a shock to us as it was for the attendant who we asked to come with a mop so we could clean it up, thankfully he did the job for us, but it meant it were finishing our time in Milan on a bit of a downer but we rested up to get ready to move on the next day to Turin, or Torino as the locals would say.

Goodbye Milan, we loved your football, not sure we loved some of your food.

Michael