Blue Moods

 

Remember that 90s dance hit Santa Maria?  That's going round and round in my head now.

There were more neat newly laid gardens over the top of the station, chopping the street in half so that traffic was less of a priority.  Which is how it should be, of course.

This was a less charming end of Milan, a bit more bland and corporate.  The buildings were newer - probably built with one eye on that handy M4 link - and well-appointed but they were filler.  Density for the sake of it.  A cross at the road junction, and I could see Sforza-Polyclinico station up ahead, handy for the university and its entrances in a polite square that was still getting finished.

That square was recently named the Largo Dario Fo, a tribute to the Nobel Prize winning playwright who died in Milan in 2016.  I am an uncultured swine, so I'm not familiar with the works of Mr Fo; I headed to his Wikipedia page and discovered he was a satirist and political writer.

Humour is very subjective, isn't it?  It doesn't really travel through cultures.  There are some things that are universal - people falling over, sex jokes, comedy moustaches - but once you get into wordplay it becomes far more complex.  I thought this as I glanced over some of Fo's works and tried to work out how bad the hostage situation would have to be to make me watch one.  Transmissione forzata, for example, "featured ironic songs about RAI censorship and Italian politicians, dancing girls and satirical news bulletins, a ballet on Palestine and a "weather report" on national rape statistics"; while Grande pantomima con bandiere e pupazzi piccoli e medi included "masks instead of characters—representing Capital, the Confederation of Industry, High Finance, the Church, the People, Rebels and Peasants—included a giant puppet representing fascism which gave birth to representatives of the Church, the Monarchy, the Army and Industrialism."  Not exactly The News Quiz, is it?

I mean, the man won a Nobel Prize, so clearly a lot of people liked what he did, but all I can imagine is a lot of very well dressed people laughing uproariously because it's so clever and what he's saying is so brave rather than it being, you know, funny.  The English equivalent would be those people who claim that Shakespeare is incandescently hilarious when, ok, he pulls out a few gags now and then, but Airplane is funnier than anything he ever wrote and I will fight anyone who disagrees.  

San Babila had been collected as part of the M1, so I skipped that and headed to Tricolore, which featured actual art!  I was so starved of variation in the M4 architecture I practically leapt for joy.  As you'd expect from a station named after the actual flag of the nation, the work is extremely patriotic, showing images that trace the history of the green, white and red.

The pictures are extremely stylised, almost comic booky:

This one represents the proud resistance fighters who battled against the Germans from their invasion in 1943.  Graciousness prevents me from pointing out that the Nazis weren't the only Fascists operating in Italy in the early 1940s and they seem to have been skipped in this history of the nation but we shan't dwell on that.

It's all nice enough but it's not exactly awe-inspiring.  It's also wedged on the side of the mezzanine level, a little tucked away, where you have to go out of your way to see it.

Still, we shouldn't dismiss any attempt to liven up the grey corridors of the M4.  Well done ATM!

The Piazza del Tricolore, unsurprisingly, has a massive Italian flag at its centre.  It's a reminder that the Union Flag is a really naff flag.  It's so overcomplicated and gaudy.  I guess you can spot it easily from a distance, which is handy, but any time it gets wheeled out at the Olympics or whatever it comes off as ugly and unsophisticated.  

The Corso Concordia opened up into a wide avenue with gardens down the centre.  This sort of epic landscaping is almost entirely absent in the UK, save for in a few cities, but in Europe they casually chuck it into a side street.

I walked down the street, traffic burning by, exposed in the morning sun.  My face was baked and my arms were warm but I could sense the final act.  I was reaching the end of the M4 and with it, the end of the Milan Metro.  It was a strange experience, as I'm sure you've gathered from the amount of time it's taken me to write it up.  It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it - I will happily wander around any metro system in the world, and my Ko-Fi is open if you want to fund this - but it didn't send me the way my previous foreign jaunts did.  The stations were too samey, the landscapes too similar.  I hadn't realised that once you entered a Milan Metro line that was it; the design would be repeated over and over, even if the first station opened in the eighties and the last in the 21st century.

This does of course create an economy of scale.  I'm sure the M4 and M5 would still be languishing in the planning stages if each station was required to be full sized and each station was unique.  It doesn't really inspire you as you travel round, though.  This repetitiveness is why I've not ventured to, say, Bilbao or Copenhagen to visit their metros; their stations were built at once, the network planned as a whole, the designs photocopied from one to the next.  When London built its first, early Underground lines, with similar entrances and architecture on the platforms, they knew to mix up the coloured tiles to create a bit of variety and interest.  Two Leslie Green stations on the Tube contain enough points of differentiation to make each one unique.  If my photos of the M4 weren't in chronological order, I wouldn't have been able to tell you which station was which.

Dateo station, at least, provided a moment of contrast as it was one of the stations on the passeo, the underground mainline tunnel that crosses the city.  It meant a very incorrect font on the sign to the entrance and a slight air of intrigue that the antiseptic M4s didn't manage.

Railway stations are living, breathing spaces, hubs for humanity to shelter and move through.  Like everything else in a cityscape, where there is repetition and cookie-cutter compliance, it becomes tedious, and people disassociate from it.  There is a joy to arriving at your local station after a long day, seeing those familiar quirks that mean it's your place, your home.  It doesn't have to be a big effort - a little bit of artwork, a statue, some extra touches of flourish to make this place yours.  Not everything needs to be a Stockholm, with every station magnificent; sometimes you can be an Amsterdam, with little colourful touches and patterns to break up the monotony.  

I don't understand how anyone, from the architect to the city authorities to the general public, could look at that massive slab of grey concrete above the escalators and think "yes, that's perfectly acceptable; in fact we should have them everywhere."  It's like having a big empty space above your fireplace - do something with it.

At least Susa was charming above ground.  There was again a long wide avenue with central gardens, and they'd been filled with all sorts of leisure facilities for the locals.  Playgrounds, sports courts, even a trampoline park, stretched along the length of the gardens.

Everything was shaded by mature trees while benches and grassy patches left ample space to dwell.  I walked cheerily, watching the city enjoy itself, watching people play tennis and let their toddlers swing and walk curious dogs, watching life.  I love proper cities that live.  Milan's metro may have disappointed me but it never stopped being a fascinating place to walk round.

The opposite end of the gardens meant another metro station: Argonne.

Within, everything was the same.  Grey walls, blue handrails, blue tactile tiles.  Neat and tidy, and I'm sure the locals loved it - I'd kill for a station like this at the end of my road - but not exciting.

Stazione Forlanini meant another railway interchange, this time with one on a viaduct instead of in a tunnel.

Nobody will call Forlanini a looker.  It's been built around what were once simply railway viaducts, opening in 2015 and costing only fifteen million Euros.  For a new mainline station in a major European city that's a positive bargain, but you can see where corners were cut, and its maintenance is clearly not a priority.

The road to and from the station is narrow, shadowing the brick arches and with new build apartments next door.  It's tight and claustrophobic.  I saw some people hunkering by the underpass beneath the tracks, huddled together, and I don't think they were discussing the cost of a One Day Travelcard.

I was out on the periphery of the city now, the region where it stopped being chic and desirable Milan and became the spot where people existed.  A hefty dual carriageway carried trucks and buses towards the motorway.  Apartment blocks sat tightly at its side, pushed up close to pack in as many as possible.

In this context, Repetti station, and the M4 itself, became a gift.  It was a couple of glass shelters either side of the road, but it opened up opportunities that weren't there before.  It was a link for jobs and a life beyond the edges.  Metro stations can do that.

And so to my final station, which was also my first.  Linate Aeroporto was where I'd arrived a week before, the airport closest to the city and only open to budget, short-haul carriers.  I'd swept through the terminal, excited, full of anticipation, thrilled at what lay ahead.

It's a great airport station; clean and easy to use, simple to understand, a link to the very centre of the metropolis.  Every city should have one (why hasn't the Northern Line been extended to Liverpool Airport?!?!)  and Milan carries it off with aplomb.  I walked up and through the ticket barriers - following strict Merseytart rules - and up into the terminal itself, just for completion, just to close the loop.

That was the Milan Metro completed.  Every line, every station, tucked under my belt.  I doubt there are many people who've done the same thing - certainly not many people who don't already live in Milan - and I'm glad I did it.  I love this strange little hobby, and I love that there will forever be a part of Italy that I can quietly claim as mine.  I'm sorry I've stunk up the blog for months writing about it - normal service will be resumed soon, I hope - but I had to get it out of my system.  When you complete an epic quest, it needs to be written down.

It's a shame I can't end on a lovely sign selfie but, as you'd expect, the station is embedded within the airport.  Imagine this is a far more interesting ending than it is.