I'll Gather Lilacs

Well this is different, I thought as I got off the train.  Full, extensive, platform decoration!  

Unfortunately when I got closer I saw that it was a big old advert.  Don't you hate it when that happens?  "Oooh, what an interesting piece of art!" you think, then you squint a bit and realise it's a plug for a chicken shop. Allianz are the world's largest insurers and their Italian branch was based in the development above my head so they'd bought up the entire length of platform one to promote how brilliant they were at making money.  They even had a section devoted to all the buildings around the world with Allianz in their name.

I was surprised to spot a London location on there.  Allianz Park?

This was, it transpired, the home of Saracens rugby union team.  The sponsorship ended in 2020 after a financial scandal at the club meant that Allianz no longer wanted to be associated with their dodgy dealings.  This is a company where the first paragraph of their Wikipedia page says "Allianz was a major supporter of the Nazi movement and was an insurer of the Auschwitz concentration camp" so you can understand why they might avoid negative PR at all costs.

I poked my head round to platform 2 and discovered it was red.  I initially thought this was a rare example of a company being willing to mix up its corporate look to be interesting, but actually, it was because this platform was sponsored by Generali, the largest insurance company in Italy.  Basically what we had here was old fashioned corporate rivalry.

Generali had gone for look at our long proud history in Italy, unlike those Germans on the northbound side as their theme, with old posters exhibiting their centuries operating in the country.  There was also some corporate guff about their manifesto for the future - printed in both Italian and English to try and capture as many readers as possible - but I'd already turned away in boredom at that point.

The escalators were blue, by the way, which says to me Allianz paid that little bit more and therefore won the battle for Tre Torre's soul.

You don't have to be a fluent Italian speaker to work out that Tre Torri translates as "three towers".  When the Fiera Milano complex moved out to Rho it left behind acres of prime real estate in the centre of Milan, which has now been developed into a complex of offices, shops and homes.  The centrepiece are the Tre Torri, three huge skyscrapers that rival the complex at Porto Nuova for the future capital of Milan's corporate world.

The Allianz tower is nicknamed the straight one and, as previously noted, is the tallest building in Italy if you don't count the spire on top of the UniCredit Tower, which this blog absolutely does not.

The Generali tower is nicknamed the twisted one and is currently without a corporate logo on the top because in June last year the whole sign fell off.  Fortunately it was caught by the rigging at the top of the building and didn't plummet to the plaza below; it was, however, extremely embarrassing for everyone involved.  An application recently went in for a new sign, which presumably will be held up with more than chewing gum and crossed fingers.

The third tower is nicknamed the curved one, because it bends forward towards the centre of the group.  You can't really see it from below, though; it looks like any old skyscraper from here.  This one is occupied by Oscar accountants PriceWaterhouseCooper, who were nowhere to be seen in the Tre Torri underground station.  Perhaps they should've sponsored the escalators.

At the base of the three towers is a wide circular plaza, and I absolutely could not tell you anything interesting about it.  In fact, a couple of days after visiting, I struggled to remember if it was here or at Porto Nuevo where I ate a little pot of fresh fruit.  The fruit was far more interesting and memorable for me than the architecture.  

The development isn't actually called Tre Torri, by the way; it's called CityLife.  Again, you may have noticed that CityLife isn't actually Italian, and is, in fact, corporate bollocks.  It's incredible to me that Milan allowed a massive flagship project to be given an English name, but then I guess it's easier to sell that to foreign investors than the Italian version, which Google Translate tells me would be Vita Cittadina.  That sounds extremely glamorous to me, but finance bros don't want glamour, they want the minimum complication possible so they can concentrate on doing all those Hard Sums that actually the computers do for them.  Also, don't get me started on the capital L in CityLife, which is right up there with MediaCity in Manchester for sheer nonsense.  There has only been one good use of a sudden capital letter halfway through a word, and that is in GoldenEye, where it is transcendent.  Everywhere else it's bollocks.

I left CityLife through a series of blank plazas filled with luxury brands nobody was actually shopping in.  There was a Dyson store, and a DJI store, and a Nespresso shop, and the Carrefour had its entrance carefully hidden below the main stretch so that you wouldn't accidentally see someone poor leaving with a carrier bag full of loo rolls and Domestos.  I couldn't imagine anyone waking up of a Saturday morning and saying "shall we nip to CityLife for a look round?" the way we used to go to the Arndale in Luton, but I guess that's not the target market; the target market is people with too much money trying to find some way to spend it during their lunch hour.

You can see the arch of the curved one there.  It actually reminds me of this bloke I met on New Year's Eve in 1996 where his [the rest of this story has been excised in case my mum reads this].

Domodossola is another crossover point between the metro and the suburban lines, though it's a far less important connection than one on the S-bahn tunnel, carrying a couple of smaller routes.  The arrival of the M5 has meant an upswing in users though and Trenord are currently in the middle of upgrading it.

Look at the state of me.  Dripping with sweat and clutching a bottle of water like it's my newborn child.

Domodossola doesn't have a wealth of corporate sponsorship at platform level.  It doesn't have any interesting alcove tiling either.

Perhaps Gerusalemme will be better?

Did you ever have that thing as a kid where you picked one birthday present to open first, and it unluckily turned out to be the best one, so all the ones after it were a bit disappointing?  

The neighbourhood I walked out into was delightful.  The metro station had been covered with a tree-lined piazza where children played on swings and slides.  People wandered past with dogs and bags of essentials.  I vanished into the streets behind and found a school, where the pavements had been permanently inlaid with hopscotch and shapes for the kids to play on.  

As well as the odd bit of trigonometry to stop them having too much fun.

I was walking along the Via Monviso, a street that had all the hallmarks of being a quiet city backwater, apart from the cars that drove down it.  The traffic was relentless, even though it was barely a single carriageway, and none of the drivers seemed to be especially keen on obeying the speed limit.  I'd not encountered many of the notoriously reckless Italian drivers during my time in Milan - mostly the cars had been something that happened off to the side of me while I wandered around looking at balconies - but here it was a potent reminder that you can build a comprehensive public transport network and walkable streets and cars will still turn up and annoy you.

I hadn't realised it when I took this route to my next station, but I was actually about to pass a bit of Milan's transport history.  The Messina depot is the home to about 150 of the city's trams, a network which ranges from modern articulated models to single carriage streetcars.  

As I approached one of those streetcars accompanied me on the road, moving at a speed which definitely implied it was the end of the driver's shift, and turned into the entrance of the tram depot.

I followed it past the opening to the building and took a hasty snap inside.  There was a man stationed in the entrance, presumably as security, and I didn't want to be accosted as some kind of insurgent.  I am quite aware that transport spotting is a very British hobby - I often think of those poor aviation fans who were arrested as spies in Greece even though they were actually only massive nerds excited to see an aeroplane - and explaining to an irate man in a second language that no, I don't want to blow up Milan's transport network, I just want a picture of your depot roof, is not something I fancied doing.

Although now that I look at the picture I think he may have been asleep.

I crossed the Via Cenisio to find the imaginatively titled Cenisio station.

You might have noticed, from the previous photos, that the stations on the M5 were smaller than their M1 and M2 equivalents.  The platforms are actually half as long, with trains to match.  This saved a lot of money when it came to building the new lines and helped push them across the line for funding.  The loss of capacity on the line is made up for by the automation; driverless trains can be run at incredibly high frequencies, with a potential gap of ninety seconds between them.  In reality, it's more like three or four minutes, because the need isn't there yet.

It made me wonder why we didn't adopt a similar method to build new metros in the UK.  Somewhere like Leeds or Manchester could get an underground for a lower set up cost.  Then I remembered: it's because us Brits can't have any nice things.

Tile colour at Cenisio: light grey.

Tile colour at Monumentale: a slightly lighter grey.  Hey, maybe the greys will subtly change the further I get along the line, until they're white at the terminus?

Monumentale is named for the huge cemetery next door, and the station turned me out into a plaza dotted with flower salesmen.  A pair of young children played with the water fountain there, running across and getting their hands wet, then fleeing with a scream of joy.  I interrupted their game to refill my bottle then left them to it.

I walked to the busy road bridge that spans the tracks behind Garibaldi station.  That should've been my next stop on the lilac line, but of course I collected it as part of the green line.  The Via Carlo Farini crossed the railway, a busy wide road with strips of pedestrian walkway at the side, unfriendly and to be hastily passed over.

The landmark here is the Torre Arcobaleno, a concrete water tower for the station that received a makeover for the 1990 World Cup.  It was rebuilt and covered in 10,000 coloured ceramic tiles to create a huge piece of art.  The tower was restored again in 2015 when the Expo came to Milan, and a couple of years ago they added LED lighting ahead of the Winter Olympics; basically it gets a revamp every time a large international event is held in the city.  I don't know what they'll do for the Euros in 2032 - build it a massive hat?  

Negotiating the circus at the end of the bridge was complex.  Four roads crossed there, plus a tram line, while the pavement dipped below the surface of the tarmac.  I crossed with a man who looked like he had no idea where he was going - by the time he reached the Holiday Inn on one corner he stopped and scratched his head like Stan Laurel.  I crossed again, into an office development that had been built alongside the railway lines.

The halo effect of Porto Nuova outside Garibaldi station means that what was once a run down district is now a desirable business address and a series of glass boxes had been squeezed into a triangle of land.  There was a back exit for the station here, too, to enable a quick commute, while the walls had been covered with lively street art.  It still didn't feel entirely kosher, however; the new office buildings couldn't quite shake the shabby air of railway lands.

More traditional Milanese buildings in brown and orange were overshadowed by a reappearance of my friend, Bosco Verticale.

I was taken with it all over again, the shape, the trees, the sheer humanity of it.  A skyscraper that felt completely natural.  The Tre Torri had been big and bold but I bet they haven't been taken to the hearts of the people of Milan the same way Bosco Verticale has.

There was a street market in the road leading to Isola station.  It looked like a slightly tacky one, the same way markets are all over the world, flouting copyright laws with cheap imports.  Having the towers of Porto Nuova behind me and the stalls in front of me was an interesting contrast.

Above me two men were dangling on ropes from the roof of a building.  They were painters, adding another layer of white to a villa, and they'd apparently decided to eschew scaffolding in favour of abseiling.  I couldn't decide if this was clever or stupid.  Yes, it saves you money, but if you drop your brush you're having to bounce all the way down to the street and up again.  Also, you're not exactly protecting pedestrians underneath from rogue drips.  I decided to be cautious and crossed the road, heading past the market and up to the station.  

There was some graffiti on the building here: Boys don't cry - they OD and Huggs [sic] are free.  I will be honest, when I've been at my worst mental health wise, hugs have been a bit annoying, but you can't deny that it's a nice message to spread.  Putting it in English rather than Italian does feel a bit like they're scolding Brits in particular.

They're taking the piss now.

My train was also indulging in a little light sponsorship from a plant-based food brand.  You can also see one of the delights of the metro - well, it delighted me; when there are notices about the services, ATM prints them on a piece of laminated card and hangs them from the grab rails so you can read it while you commute.  In this case it was telling people attending concerts at the Ippodromo not to use Ippodromo station, but to go to San Siro, where there was better crowd management.

I skipped Zara - saving that for the M3 - and got off at Marche instead.  The last six stations are in a line, following the course of a single road (called the Viale Zara at this point, and then the  Viale Fulvio Testi after the Piazzale Istria.  I suspected that the architecture for these last few stations would be even more standardised than on the rest of the line, so you can imagine my disappointment when I saw a distinct lack of tiling in the seating alcove.  That's the end of that dream.

The road was wide here - a boulevard - with a tram line running down the centre.  I got out of the station with an incredibly noisy family - mum, three kids, none of whom seemed to know the meaning of "indoor voices" - but fortunately they were headed south while I walked north, clinging to the dark shadows for a little relief from the sun.

I passed a library, where the three flagpoles were occupied by the Italian flag, the flag of Milan, and the blue EU flag.  Someone had dangled a Progress Pride flag out of the window alongside to make it a row of four, and I gave a little salute to whichever LGBTQIA+ individual was inside.  The library system is absolutely rife with homosexuals, for the very good reason that it's a quiet job that's inside and gives you access to enormous quantities of books.  I don't know where they're all going now councils are closing them left right and centre.  

Further up the road a poster had been stuck on a traffic light control box.  It was captioned CIA OF SIDNEY POITIER above a headshot of the venerable Oscar winner.  Perhaps it was a reference to his work in underrated Nineties thriller Sneakers?  A bit of internet searching and I discovered this blog of the same name which if I'm honest hasn't cleared anything up at all.  A page on Blogger that makes no sense whatsoever and seems to have been composed by a lunatic?  Hey, that's my gig!

Down the steps at Istria station to the platform.  I'm not even going to post a picture of the seat alcove because it's so upsetting.  Instead I will post a picture of my advertising nemesis during my trip to Milan: Sofia Vergara.

Pretty much every station I went to had this poster for Skechers where Sofia looks like she's about to French kiss a trainer.  I'm not sure what particular foot fetishist spearheaded this campaign but in future please keep your deviances to yourself and stop forcing much-loved comedy actresses to participate in them.

You know that bit in Father Ted (written by Arthur Mathews and nobody else) where Dougal sees a big button that says "do not press" and it's all he can think about?

Please let me pull the forbidden lever.  Please.  Just once.

Ca'Granda: more of the same.  I should, by the way, mention how much space there is in the lilac stations.  When you go from the platforms to the mezzanines there's acres of bare open floor that seems to serve no purpose at all.  It's a huge circulation space for a small station with no interchanges.

It was clean and tidy though, as were all of the stations on the M5.  The pale walls weren't anything special - they reminded me of offices blocks in the late 90s, where PoMo was fading away, leaving behind the basics but without any of the indulgences that made it interesting - but they were undeniably brighter than the black of the older stations I'd been to.

Each of the stations here was less than a kilometre from the next; it's the kind of public transport service that you dream about.  Dense walkable neighbourhoods filled with trees and businesses and plenty of options for travel that aren't cars.  We should be copying this example across the planet.

This is a memorial to the resistance fighter Baccalini Guglielmo who was shot and killed by Germans on this spot.  It was quite touching to see that there's still a wreath hung here, even if it does look like it's on its way out.  I was always slightly wary looking up the names of people commemorated on the side of buildings.  Italy has a, let's say, complex relationship to its history in the 1930s and 40s, and sometimes you discover that the person being lauded is a man who probably should've been up before a tribunal.  Fortunately, in this case, Baccalini was very much anti-Nazis, so hurrah for him.

I passed a small shop offering photocopies and printing from USBs and marvelled that it was still going in this day and age.  Then I remembered that Millennials and Gen Z don't own printers any more - it is apparently a sure sign that a person is an oldie if they have an Epson on their desk.  This may be because young people are in tiny flats where they don't have the space for an inkjet, but still, it shows how technologies can seem obsolete and then make a sudden reappearance.  The children yearn for a Prontaprint.

A small retail park gave me the opportunity to get a Coke from a Carrefour.  Also in the park was a Boots, which surprised me; I had no idea they were so international.  There was something very odd about being in a sweltering hot Italian sun and seeing that familiar blue and white signage.  Outside was a vending machine which might as well have been termed the Real Emergency Services.  Inside was everything you could possibly need from a pharmacy after dark.  Condoms, nappies, stuff to both stop and induce bowel movements, face masks, pregnancy tests.  I imagined a queue of embarrassed looking individuals late at night all pretending not to notice that the person in front had a bottle of Durex lube clattering into the bottom of the machine.

The station at Biocca - which sounds like one of those gastric solutions - was squeezed into a triangle of tram lines.

Here's an interesting little architectural feature.  The balustrades on the stairs in the stations incorporate this funky M5 logo, which makes it look extremely glamorous and 1980s.  If you put this on the cover of an Italodisco LP it wouldn't look out of place at all.

Ponale also had a rarity; an in-station cafe.  These were all over the M1 and M2 but ATM few of the stops on the new Metro line had them.  It didn't seem exactly welcoming - I'm not sure it was even open - but that's not the point.

I trudged up the steps to the street, my legs weary by now, my knees protesting.  The heat struck you as soon as you stepped into the sun.  It was burning.

On the plus side, there was only one more station to go.  For now, anyway.  The M5 is going to be extended all the way to the adjoining city of Monza, interchanging with mainlines and the M1.  It'll more or less double the length of the lilac line and will put the home of Italian Formula 1 on the metro map.  

I dragged my weary carcass the last few hundred yards to Bignami station.  Two men smoking outside an office block gave me a peculiar look as I passed, no doubt wondering how a recently exhumed corpse could look so bad.  Then, there it was: the final metro stop on the M5, the end of another line.

Would the end of the line be commemorated with a final tilework to capture and entrance me?  A last gasp of art to celebrate this major achievement in public works?  

Bloody sod you then.