The Green Mile

Before I headed out to Milan, I looked around for books on the network.  Sadly, there didn't seem to be any, or at least none in English, and I didn't have time for a crash course in Italian.  I finally found Italian Ways: On and Off The Rails From Milan to Palermo, by Tim Parks, but I didn't enjoy it.  Parks is a resident of Northern Italy and the book catalogues a series of rail journeys he'd taken over the years, but it came off as somewhat patronising to me.  What he enjoyed, on his trips around the nation, was when the service was chaotic, when the trains were a mess or broke down, when the staff were rude.  When high-speed services with new electric trains are introduced, he grumbles about their efficiency and their seat reservations; when Milano Centrale is rebuilt and modernised, he complains that it has lost all the charm it had when he got his bag stolen and you'd be accosted by random panhandlers.  

It's a very middle class English attitude, that the Continent should be a bit ramshackle because it's so much more authentic, and that Italians are completely wrong to want trains that are reliable and clean and decent.  I imagine that when he comes back to London and a suburban service is cancelled he's furious and hisses "typical British Rail" but because it comes with an Italian accent it's somehow delightful.

The reason I bring this up is because my next station was Lambrate, and Parks specifically mentions it in his book.  I quote:

"This is the station where the Gypsies gather, on the southbound platform on the metro, the Green Line.  They take over the stone bench opposite the last carriage when it arrives.  There are three or four swarthy men, unwashed and unshaven, half a dozen women, one or two with babies in their arms, and a few adolescents, girls and boys.  The boys have violins or accordions.  Often they have painted nails, sometimes even lipstick.  The girls have an infant in tow.  As each train comes and goes, one or two Gypsies get on it.  They start at the back carriage and work their way forward, the men in scruffy waistcoats playing their musical instruments, the women begging in their long dresses, repeating their mournful spiel over and over in a high pitched monotone...

...As a rule they work the Green Line down to its southern end, then take the train back and spill out onto the platform at Lambrate for a break.  No sooner do they stop begging than they cheer up at once."

Reader, I travelled all over the metro for an entire week, up and down the M2, in and out of every station, and I encountered beggars on the train exactly twice.  One was the student girl singing Hallelujah I previously complained about; another was a clearly homeless man who shuffled down the train when I was on the M3.  Now admittedly, Parks' book was published in 2013, so perhaps there's been a huge crackdown across the entire network in the past decade that has seen them wiped off the map.  I will say that I disembarked at Lambrate, went all the way up through the metro station to the exit, and didn't see a single fake Romany ready to fleece the innocents of Milan. 

This isn't to say that Lambrate was a charming country halt.  Outside it was like any other urban European railway station; a bit grubby, a bit panicky.  There were dodgy looking salesmen with armfuls of Temu-level crap.  There were backpackers who were blissfully unaware of anyone else in the world and who stopped in front of information screens without warning.  

The underpass beneath the tracks also served as a public walkway, so I went through it, delighting in destination boards listing exotic places like "Verona" and "Brescia" and "Bergamo".  Places you knew about as holiday destinations stuck on the front of a train the same way "Leeds" or "Birmingham" would be in the UK.  Travel broadens the mind, and also reminds you that every beautiful tourist trap is just a place where people live and work and shop.

At the back of the station was a newer extension and a car park, plus a large gyratory which I negotiated to get to the Via Ronchi opposite.  It was a long straight road with flats and shops, much the same as I'd seen elsewhere in the city.  I crossed over to the far side where there was a hint of shadow; it was almost noon and I was feeling both the heat and the exhaustion from all that walking.

Udine station was at a busy roundabout surrounded by bars and cafes and a small park.  A group of students looked confused outside the entrance, checking their phones obsessively, in a way that implied they'd somehow ended up here against their will.  Old men sat on the pavement with their cigarettes and coffees watched them with bemusement, absolutely not offering to help in any way, but enjoying their befuddlement.

Udine is also the last underground station on the M2.  The track goes on the surface after here, taking over old tramways in some cases, and as such this was my last chance to experience the distinctive Milan Metro architecture I'd become very familiar with.

As though it knew this, Udine offered up an ideal example of the form.  The station was clean and well-maintained.  At the mezzanine level, there was not only a newsagent-slash-miscellaneous store, but also a coffee shop in one of the underground units.

Much as I love a metro station, I don't think I'd be happy sitting at a table to have my lunch in one.  They're places to pass through, not to enjoy the moment.  I liked the untouched 1970s aesthetics of the bar, though, and wondered if it would be allow to continue now there was a private company involved in the letting of station retail.  I wondered if it'd all be ripped out and replaced with a Starbucks because they signed a deal to appear in every station on the Green Line.

The overground section was arriving at almost exactly the wrong time for me.  The brief moments in cool dark depths gave me time to recover and regroup.  Now I was being sent into thirty-odd degree heat, at lunchtime, covered in sweat and general unpleasantness and tired.

Cimiano station did give me a moment of nostalgia.  A long station with a canopy roof, wedged between a motorway and tall apartment blocks, I was reminded of Stockholm's Green Line; specifically around Kristineberg station.  

I headed down the steps to the ticket hall, which is under the railway viaduct; as at Lambrate, the underpass doubles as a right of way.  The busier, more dense part of the city was to the right, but I turned left.

I was following the track along the backs of apartment blocks on a route that was theoretically parkland.  It felt neglected and unloved, boring lawns and winding paths that you wouldn't let your kids play on alone.  A homeless man slept on a bench in the shade.

I was following a small woman with a shopping basket, at a reasonable distance of course so she didn't think I was a pervert, winding round the car parks of flats and the back walls of homes.  Now and then a cyclist would pass in the opposite direction.  On a corner, a fly tipper had abandoned a fridge freezer and a broken wooden sun lounger.

My next station, Crescenzago, presented a problem for me as it was closed for refurbishment.  This whole section of the M2 was getting a comprehensive makeover; indeed, if I'd gone to Milan a few weeks later, I'd have had much more severe access issues.

There was a rail replacement bus linking Crescenzago with its neighbours, but no train services at all.

We now have a dilemma.  The rules - the rules I invented - say I need to get a train to or from the station for it to count.  I couldn't do this.  But I had walked there, and I would pass through the station on my way back into the city (and also when I subsequently collected the Gessate branch).  So as far as I'm concerned, I have been to Crescenzago.

It's me, it's a Metro M, it's the station Crescenzago.  Job done.  As always, if you disagree, please proceed to my Ko-Fi to give me airfare and hotel money so I can return when the station reopens in September.  Happy to help!

I turned into the streets then, away from the railway line, happy to have a little bit of shade.  I was really flagging now.  Once again I'd forgotten that I'm nearly fifty, that I can't just decide to walk ten miles a day in record temperatures without any advance preparation, that I need to lose a lot of weight.  My knees were starting to complain about the lack of care and attention.  I drank deeply from my vending machine water bottle and made a decision.  Bus.

I imagine I was quite firmly judged by the bus driver.  I was less than a kilometre from the end of the line; this was in fact the last stop before we got there.  I didn't care.  I had a few minutes of blessed sitting down in an air conditioned seat until we pulled into the bus station.

Cascina Gobba is a major confluence point for transport of all types.  It nestles in a cloverleaf junction of the motorway, and so it's got a massive car park, a bus exchange, and fast regular trains into the city centre.  There are works underway to extend a tram line to the complex, with a footbridge under construction to take you straight into the metro station.

It also had, for twenty-five years, an automated people mover called the MeLA.  This was an elevated cable tramway which connected with the near, but not near enough, San Raffaelle Hospital.  However, the people mover closed "temporarily" in 2024 and has never reopened.  It's officially meant to be coming back, but there's no word on when or how.  It should be noted that the MeLA wasn't integrated into the transport network, and needed its own separate ticket for access, which makes me wonder about its financial viability.  I was mainly disappointed that I didn't get to ride it.

One thing Cascina Gobba* doesn't have is a station sign outside.  This is a ridiculous oversight on ATM's part and rest assured I will be writing a strongly worded e-mail via Google Translate.  As such I will have to provide a platform sign as proof that I was in fact at the station.

If you can somehow manage to see round my enormous head there, you'll notice that the station has four platforms.  This is the point where the M2 splits into its two branches, and so the station is laid out to accommodate that.

Irregular font alert on that station sign as well.  That e-mail just got even narkier.

On the train to Cologno Sud, I made a decision.  The last three stations are all within the municipality of Cologno, spread along the track at an even distance, and I realised... I couldn't be bothered.  I decided I'd go to the stations, of course, that wasn't up for negotiation; but I wasn't going to walk from one to the next.  I was too hot, too tired, too irritable.  I'm sorry Cologno, I let you down, but I'm not sure I really missed much.

Certainly the view outside the station wasn't exactly picturesque.  The line runs on a high concrete viaduct and so the entrance is housed on a bare stretch of land that's overshadowed.  Nice and cool, yes, but I wouldn't fancy wandering around here late at night.

It's this viaduct that's caused the whole line to be closed at present.  At fifty odd years old it's reached the point where the concrete needs to be examined for flaws and reinforced where necessary.

Back up, onto the train, then off again at Cologno Centro behind two ATM workers arriving for their shift.  I tried not to be distracted by their extremely tight trousers and headed out, through the ticket barriers, and into the extremely similar exterior space for the sign picture.

At track level, the stations are great; there is absolutely no chance a similar station in the UK would get a roof these days, and the glass everywhere keeps them bright and open.  On the street though, they're no looker.

Picture taken, it was back up to wait for my penultimate train.  Outside peak hours there can be a fair wait.  I sat on one of the cool marble benches and drank my water.  Only after about five minutes did I notice the sticky patch right next to me, swarming with ants, which caused me to leap up hurriedly.  I hoped that none of them had breached my short leg and given me literal ants in my pants.

And then the end of the line: Cologno Nord.

The line had dropped down to ground level now, meaning my poor knackered legs had to climb a staircase to get to the exit.  Just beyond here there's a depot for the trains.

Up, over, down to the car park and the station's back exit.  The final station on Milan's longest line.  The behemoth.  It was all easy from here.  (Yes I know there's still one branch of the M2 to go.  I'll get there.  Another day).

*(note to self: write children's book with a loveable character called Cascina Gobba)

The Green Stuff

It doesn't look like much, but that's actually an extremely rare station sign.  The Milan Metro has two types of entrance; in the main, they're voids in the street, stairs and escalators and lifts disappearing beneath the pavement.  In some cases, such as at Pero, there's a small pavilion covering the entrance, to make it more noticeable.  Only at Lanza is there an entrance actually constructed inside a non-Metro building, as you'd find in many other cities round the world.  I'm not sure why Lanza got this special treatment.

This may be as good a place as any to complain about the street presence of the Metro.  Pretty much every station entrance looks something like this:

A low wall surrounding a staircase down, with a red flag with a white M acting as the signpost that the Metro is here.  The actual name of the station is tucked away.  You can just about see it if you look down, but the best spot to read it is when you're halfway down the stairs.  That's strange to me.  It meant a great deal of confusion for the many Milanese residents who had to contend with a fat English blogger stood on a staircase taking a selfie.  I suppose it doesn't objectively matter which metro station you're stood outside; the important part is that it's a station.  It doesn't sit right with me though.  I guess I want all metro stations to be prominent, important parts of the landscape.

Lanza station deposits you in a small piazza outside the Piccolo Teatro Strehler, one of Milan's premier theatrical venues.  We were at the edge of the Parco Sempione, the extensive landscaped area behind the Castello Sforzesco, and it was an area dripping with money.

I disappeared into the tiny streets and squares behind the theatre, ending up on the Corso Garibaldi, another of those exclusive shopping streets Milan does so well.  It was the first time when I was really captured by the city, having a moment of "this'd be a nice spot to live in".  Obviously that's because it's the nicest, richest part.

This is not a burn on Milan.  It's an exciting, vibrant city, and remember, I wasn't going round looking for the pretty bits.  I was following the railway lines and nothing else.  None the less, I wasn't taken with it in the same way I had been by Stockholm and Helsinki.  The heat didn't help, of course, but I think it came down to money.

Walking around it felt like everything was directed towards money, the earning of it, the spending of it, a city as capitalist as it could possibly be.  I didn't get that sense that the city was relaxing and enjoying itself.  It was a grinding, relentless place, a city that would pick you up and spit you out and not care one bit.  Come here to trade, not to perambulate.

I sank back underground for the trip to Garibaldi station.  Centrale is the grand arrival point for people from all points across Europe; Garibaldi is its suburban brother, bringing workers from the region into Milan.  It also carries transnational services that want to avoid the fees at Centrale.  Opened in 1961, it has 20 platforms on the surface, plus another load underground.

On the M2 this means something unique: island platforms!  They're kind of pointless, because the outer line is only used for storing stock, but after two days of seeing exactly the same architecture over and over again I could've cried with joy at getting a bit of variation.

Garibaldi's also got a far more modern appearance, mainly because Milan keeps building new lines through it.  A tunnel was dug across the city centre to allow suburban trains to pass straight through, creating an S-bahn network that interacts with surface lines at Garibaldi; it opened in the 90s.  Then, twenty years after that, the M5 crossed underneath too. 

Garibaldi's home to one of ATM's customer service centres, which may be the least friendly ones I've ever seen.  Firstly they're appointment only, so if you fancy dropping in to ask the best way to get to the airport you're out of luck.  In fact the one at Centrale seems to employ a security guard on the door whose entire job is to turn away hapless tourists wanting to buy a day pass from a human being.  On some level I admire their refusal to be anything other than obnoxious.  So many railway companies pretend they're your friend while they tell you they're running fast to the terminus because their late running is more important than you getting home.  ATM is unapologetically "we'll serve you when we want and not before".

 

The piazza outside the station is named for Sigmund Freud, presumably because all those trains going into tunnels made for comedy symbolism.  It was in the final stages of a renovation when I was there, removing the parking that used to dominate the front of the station and making it more of a pleasant spot to hang out.  Garibaldi's no looker, however, so I can't see it ever being a stop on the tourist trail.

Directly opposite me was a mass of incredibly tall buildings.  I was stood in the Piazza Sigmund Freud and staring at massive erections; too obvious, Milan, too obvious.  This was Portanuova, a former industrial district turned into the city's version of Canary Wharf.

What really caught my eye was at the base of the towers: the words Food Court.  I was thirsty after sweating all morning so I walked in to hopefully get a seat and a cold drink and some aircon.  Sadly, it was still largely shut up; it seemed to be designed for the office workers to get their lunch, not breakfast, so I went to the supermarket and bought a small pack of fresh fruit and a Coke.  I went up to the plaza and ate it on the edge of the water features to lower the tone.

Milan is Italy's financial centre, and Portanuova is its beating heart.  The headquarters of Alfa Romeo, Pirelli and Versace are here; the UniCredit Tower is the base for Italy's biggest bank and claims it's the tallest building in the country.  Theoretically.  The Allianz Tower, also in Milan, has the highest roof, but the UniCredit has an eighty metre spire as part of the design which pushes it over the top.  I don't think that counts, personally.  That's like me claiming I'm the world's tallest man because I'm wearing a really big hat.

From Portanuova I headed out into the BAM, the Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano.  That translates as the "Library of Trees, Milan", which is fancy design speak for "a park".  Call it a bloody park, that's what it is, that's what people understand.  Giving it a stupid acronym for a name benefits nobody except a load of wankers in a design studio.

BAM is a series of lawns, trees and playgrounds spread over a wide area; it's now the third largest park in the city.  I was headed to its northern rim first, because I wanted to check out a specific skyscraper.

The Bosco Verticale is two residential towers that have been covered in trees and vegetation.  Designed by the Boeri Studio of architects, they're a dense mass of greenery that also includes some beautiful homes.

The screening of green has multiple benefits.  It cools the interior.  It filters pollutants.  It absorbs carbon dioxide.  It encourages wildlife.  But most important of all, it looks fantastic.  Water is recycled from the tenants to feed the plants, distributed via an irrigation network, and the shift of the seasons means that the exterior is always changing and developing.  They're wonderful buildings and the only downside is that they've not been copied all over the world.  So many boring, cheaply clad boxes springing up everywhere, glass towers that reflect burning sunlight down on innocent passers by, and you could have a series of lush vertical forests spreading across the globe.  It hasn't even been copied in Milan; BAM should've been surrounded by clones of the Bosco Verticale and instead there was more terracotta cubes.

Look at it next to the UniCredit Tower - which one draws your eye?  Which one is more pleasing to look at?  (And do you see what I mean about the spire giving it the record of tallest building being a big old cheat?)

The steps of the Stecca 3.0 building were covered with a school trip, a couple of dozen children in high-vis jackets drinking bottles of water.  Apparently it's an "Incubator for Art", which seemed a little over the head of the eight year olds on the steps, so I guessed they were visiting the district itself and had paused for a drink.  It was certainly brutal crossing BAM in the naked sunshine with barely any cover; the emphasis was on arrangements of vegetation in circular spaces leaving the paths in between exposed.  A few nice avenues of trees would've been more than welcome but I suppose that's very old-fashioned and undeserving of the BAM name.  What do you think this is, a park or something?

Gioia was at the base of a canyon of tall office blocks, surrounded by building sites and forcing me on temporary walkways to reach it.  It's another island platform, the tracks either side, and slathered in branding for KPMG, whose HQ is next door.

The next station on the M2 is Centrale, but I was saving that for the M3, so instead I continued to Caiazzo.  The walls were covered with this interesting faceted blue cladding.

Look, I've already run out of things to say about the architecture of these stations, ok?  Let me have my minor differences.

The next station after Caiazzo on the line was Loreto, which was of course where I'd paused my M1 journey the day before, so I cut across through the city streets in search of Piola.

Quiet residential streets, lined with blocks of apartments and trees, straight as a die and intersecting over and over in patterns of diamonds.  It's funny how in the UK, there's constant handwringing about the death of the High Street, and yet here in Italy every single building seemed to come with one or two retail units that were occupied and thriving.  Part of this is to do with shopping habits of course, but it's also the density of the city; those seven of eight floors of apartments all contained people who needed milk and bread and coffee and somewhere to eat out and plumbers and electrical appliances.  

Perhaps, instead of letting our shopping centres fill with vape shops and charity shops, we should do something a little more radical.  Demolish the vacant precincts that, even at their height, were dead after five pm, and rebuild them with stacks of flats above.  Move people back into town centres.  It'd also have the advantage of creating homes for the many, many people who can't get on the property ladder, giving them apartments that are liveable and where you don't need a car.  I can't think of a single reason why you wouldn't do this, apart from, oh yeah, it'd cost money.  So that's the end of that.

I crossed a wide boulevard with a sprightly older person who walked even faster than me, something I didn't think was possible given that I have a TurboMince.  The streets on the other side were narrower but still packed with homes and businesses.  Tiny hole in the wall restaurants offered different cuisines; a café with a long counter disappearing into the darkness at the back served miniscule coffees to parched Milanos.

The large roundabout at the Piazzale Gabrio Piola stood between me and the Metro station; I, naturally, went the wrong way round it and ended up doing almost an entire circle before I reached the entrance.  The plaza with the staircases was covered with young, excitable people; this station is close to PoliMi, the Politecnico di Milan, the city's oldest university and one of the most prestigious in Italy.

In the hall below I found something I'd not seen anywhere else on the network, and would never see again: members of staff making sure people had a ticket.  Though every station has barriers blocking your way in, there are no ticket sellers any more, and most of the stations were entirely devoid of staff.  You can tap and go throughout the network - that's what I did every day - with a capped limit on how much you spend, while machines dispense passes for the more traditional sorts.

I'd guess that Piola, with its high proportion of cheap students, has a problem with fare dodging and so security guards were there to watch people go in and out.  Judging by the shocked reaction of a load of girls who came down the steps with me, it wasn't a regular thing.  It makes me wonder what the fare avoidance levels are throughout the Metro.  This was the only time I saw any enforcement at all.  Perhaps Italians are far more honest and reliable than British people.

The M2 was getting done.  I had one final branch to do.  The other one could wait.