The Hinterland Part 1, 20Aug, Day 7

Today I put some laundry in the machine her, packed a lunch, and walked to the train station to begin exploring the area north of Milan, near work. Since Italians like to vacation in August, the busses and trains have rather limited service, and it ended up taking quite a while to get to Vimercate. However, I enjoyed talking to the buss driver for the entire half hour bus ride from the metro station to torre bianche. He even offered me his phone number. However, once in Vimercate I realized I had forgot my printout, and after walking around for a bit I decided to go back to the bust stop to wait continue on to explore Monza as a possible place to live. On the way though the torre bianche mall, I was distracted by a bookstore and bought an English-italian diccionary.

I waited a while for the bus next to an Egyptian guy with rotting front teeth who didn’t know where Miami was, but thought it was a country. Monza is a smaller city with a cute and pretty well preserved center. I think it could be a nice place, but Emiliano’s advice seemed true- That it is a city of old people. I would imagine the median age was about 71. But this brings me to question if all the younger people are still away on vacation. –Especially since everything but the cathedral and gelaterias were closed.

I took another bust to Sesto, where I could pick up the red metro back to Milan. Sesto feels more like Milan. –More like an extension of the city than a separate tow. Compared to Monza, it doesn’t have a traffic-free center, has less old people, and I would guess is about 15 minutes closer to Milan, and 15 minutes farther from work. I’ve also heard that it’s cheaper. (And it’s believable.)

I took the red line back pretty tired after my gita today and crashed an apertivo buffet for a 6€ dinner of pasta, ham, and salad.

A couple other pictures of Arona