Green Park

 

I never want to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" again.  No, I'll rephrase that: I don't need to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" again.  I'm done.  I've heard every single variation on it, every version, a different chord arrangement, done fast, done slow; I've heard it.  I don't need to hear it again.  And I certainly don't need to hear it played on an acoustic guitar on a train in Italy at nine in the morning.  

(Here are some other songs I do not ever need to hear again: Robbie Williams' "Angels", Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", literally anything by Billy Joel.  I know you're probably adding "Don't Look Back In Anger" to that list but I have a very fond memory of spontaneously singing that with a coach of students in 1995 as we headed back from a night out at Manhattan's, Southport, and so I can never really hate it).

The point is I was not in the mood for a metro busker, though, if I'm honest, I never am.  She strolled up and down the train, warbling "Hallelujah", trying to catch our eye so we'd be guilted into handing over a couple of coins.  Trapping someone on a train - on a train that is an going a relatively long way without stopping at a station to let you escape - and forcing them to hear Leonard Cohen is surely a violation of the Geneva Convention.  What was worse was I wasn't even getting off at the next station: that was Famagosta, which I'd already collected.  I gritted my teeth and wished I had my headphones until we finally reached Romolo station.

The streets around the station were still in rush hour mode, the bus exchange disgorging commuters, the traffic carrying the slight anxiety of drivers who were that little bit behind time.  The pedestrian crossing held the cars and I could feel their tension, the revving of engines as I walked by, the need to move on.

A thin boulevard of shops and then I was in a park again.  Paths wound beneath trees and alongside grass that still hadn't turned yellow from the sun.  New apartments had been slotted in alongside, built on top of industrial units.

I crossed another road and was then in a different park, this one named, somewhat, incongruously, for Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement.  I was a cub and a scout until my early teens - not especially because I wanted to, mainly because my parents thought if I didn't have some kind of enforced social activity I'd have spent my entire childhood in my room alone reading (and they were right) - so I did a little three fingered salute to the man who started it all.  I wasn't a very good Scout, but I ended up a patrol leader because after a certain point every boy of a certain age became a patrol leader; I still have trouble with a reef knot, I've never been able to do that one where the rabbit goes round the tree and in his hole, and anything more complicated than that is basically an Indian rope trick to me.  

There was a tree near the exit to the park, and someone had hung a small white circle of paper on it, like a Christmas tree covered in wishes in a shopping centre.  On it was written E ALLORA Ti TENGO LE MANi SULLE ORECCHiE E ALLONTANiAMO i RUMORi DEL MONDE - "AND THEN I HOLD MY HANDS ON YOUR EARS AND WE MOVE AWAY THE NOISES OF THE WORLD".  I'm not sure what that means, or why it's all caps except for the "i", but it's a sweet sentiment.

The park emptied me out onto another canalside.  Porto Genova was a district of workshops and factories but, like other areas of its type in cities across the world, in recent years it's been colonised by bars and clubs and transformed into a fashionable district for young people to hang out in.  

At this time of the morning it was recovering from the night before.  The pavement was being hosed down, the seats were being set out, the shutters remained tightly fixed on every third establishment.  Small hole in the wall places had opened to dispense pastries and coffee to passers by but it was an area still yawning.

Why don't we have more vending machines in the UK?  The rest of the world loves them, and they're convenient and always available.  In Britain you usually find them inside a store, which kind of renders them pointless; if a store is open you don't need a machine.  Of course we'd never have tobacco dispensers on street corners - won't somebody think of the children - but it'd be nice to know at three in the morning that you could still get a packet of Wotsits and a bottle of Coke Zero if the mood took you.

I crossed the Navigli Grande via an iron bridge, named the Ponte Enrico Molteni after the bassist for the band Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti.  He lives nearby and this was seen as a fitting tribute to him; he's not dead, though, which always worries me.  Naming anything after someone who's still alive - unless they're a king or a president - runs the risk of them doing something dodgy in later life which will result in a hasty rebrand.  Wait until they're dead - in fact, give it five years to be sure - and then slap the nameplate on it.  (I should add, for legal reasons, that to my knowledge Ragazzi Morti is a model citizen and the renaming of the bridge is a worthy tribute to a gentleman and hero.  His music's not bad, either - sort of like mid-90s American indie, the stuff they did after Grunge while we were all in on Britpop).  

I do think that, if Enrico lives nearby, he should nip round with a bolt cutter and get rid of all the padlocks that have been attached to the railings on his bridge.  Can we stop this?  It's not original and it's not romantic and it's plain annoying.  I'm sick of going to scenic bridges and seafronts and seeing a mess of cheap Yales with Debbie and Garry scrawled on it in permanent marker.  They won't be there forever, because the council has to come round every few months to cut them down or the fence will collapse.  Bury a time capsule or something instead, you basics.

Incidentally, look at how clear that water is!  It certainly puts the Leeds and Liverpool to shame.  Not a single shopping trolley or bloated corpse to be seen.  The local gangsters couldn't chuck a "shooter" in there to dispose of the evidence, everyone would see it.

The Via Casale takes you away from the canal, back into the city.  It was more touristy here, with restaurant menus in multiple languages.  There were clusters of young travellers wheeling their suitcases over the cobbles, kicked out of their Air B&Bs, looking for some breakfast.

At the top is the Piazzale Stazione Genova, home to the Porto Genova railway station... or at least the building.  Milan is in the process of rationalising its rail network, creating larger more modern hubs and redirecting tracks and services in the process.  Part of this rationalisation meant that the services that previously went to Porto Genova were redirected to the much larger Rogoredo station; the opening of the M4 line meant that people in the area could access them via the Metro with a couple of changes.

The station closed in December last year and as yet there doesn't seem to be a plan for what to do with it.  The booking hall is still open, though the ticket office is closed, as is the access to the platforms; there doesn't seem to be a reason for it, unless Italian railways are determined to provide access to Photo-Me booths.  Even the KFC which occupies the café space has closed its door into the station building.

I returned to the piazza outside to get to the Metro station, a set of stairs descending beneath the ground with an arched roof to deflect the sun.

The Milan Metro is definitely showing its age.  (Aren't we all?)  A lot of the paint is peeling, there are water stains, and the concrete is chipped.  This does create opportunities for street art, however - see?

When life gives you lemons, turn them into a seated gorilla having a chat with Audrey II.

Sant' Agostino station is one of the deepest on the entire system, constructed to try and cause as little disruption to the buildings above as possible.  As such it's a rare Milan Metro station with two tubes carrying the tracks, one on top of the other, meaning a network of escalators and stairs to take you to the mezzanine.  (Isn't the graffiti on the train in the picture above wonderful, by the way?  A charming addition to the boring livery, and definitely not incredibly irritating vandalism that reduces the quality of life of everyone who sees it).

S. Agostino station is not to be confused with S. Ambrosio station, which is one stop further on on the M2.  I feel like they could've put a little more thought into the station names there, so that there weren't two stops with the same name five hundred metres apart.  Still, at least they're close, so if you do get off at the wrong one it's not much of a walk.

There's an extensive plaza on top of the station, though it's pretty featureless and is no doubt mainly used for gatherings of revellers and diners.  (In fact, look at it on Google Streetview and it's like a war zone as the binmen clear up after some kind of public protest/celebration).  The presence of two "British" pubs, the Old Fox and the Nelson, made me wonder what state the square had been in the night before.  It was the morning after England beat Mexico to get to the quarter finals of the World Cup, and I imagined it had been a scene of debauched indulgence and exultance.  I was impressed that Milan's street cleaners had managed to tidy it up so quickly.

However, the Old Fox's Facebook page doesn't mention the World Cup at all, even though there were events for St George's Day and they boast of the best Fish and Chips in town.  I wondered if they'd politely decided not to rub England's success in the faces of their Italian neighbours, a bit like when I picked up my GCSE results with my friends Mandy and Laura and had to keep quiet about my As because they were sobbing over how many they'd failed and all the resits they were going to have to do.  

The Via Olona takes you past Milan's science museum, naturally named after Leonardo di Vinci, and home to the city's railway museum.  A pavilion houses a lot of old engines which I'm sure are fascinating if you like that sort of thing but, as we've established, I don't.  I did consider going for a look round if I managed to finish the Metro early, but I didn't, and besides, I'm not sure any transport museum can compete with Stockholm's Spårvägsmuseet.  It remains the gold standard, as far as I'm concerned, mainly because it used the transport to tell the story of the city and its people, and didn't simply stick a massive steam train in front of you and expect you to coo over its bogies.

S. Ambrogio - yes, I did check to make sure I was writing about the correct station - was given a major uplift when it was chosen to be the interchange with the M4 line.  

It's not immediately obvious that there are two lines here, however.  The ticket hall remains in the standard M2 style, not upgraded in any way.  The only way you'll find the M4 is following the signs down below.

Another four stations under my belt.  I was going to carry on writing about more on the line, but I think we all need a break, don't you?  And perhaps a lie down.  Come back another time for Lanza and beyond.  We can get through this together.