DON'T FORGET TO STAMP YOUR TICKET

Today is Saturday July 14^th and Joan and I have passed the half way mark of our stay at Villa Wally in Bellano, Italy. We have had such a great time here we want the clock to stop ticking. I was just out on the veranda reading in the morning shade thinking about how fortunate we are. Thank God the populace of Arizona liked good ice cream over the years!!

Yesterday was a fun adventure as we decided to take the train to Milano for the day. We caught the 10:08 and settled in for the ride through the countryside to Milan’s Stazione Centrale. This is the main train station in Milan and is housed in one of the most stunning and beautiful buildings in the city. The ceilings are at least thirty five feet tall and are very elaborate with glass and steel. It is incredibly busy with hoards of people scurrying in every direction, long lines at the ticket counters, vending machines and food stands. I watched one in particular and couldn’t help but try to calculate his profits. If he isn’t living next door to George Clooney on Lake Como I’d be surprised. On our ride in we passed through the city of Monza, world famous in racing circles for its annual hosting of the Italian Grand Prix. My brother Mark and his son, Jon, have tickets for this year’s race in September and I’m sure they will have an exciting time.

After exiting the train station Joan and I started walking towards the massive central square that contains Milan’s Duomo, the beautiful cathedral which took over 430 years to build. We had been in it years ago and the lines were long so this time we only admired it from the outside. It is the third largest church in the world!! Our walk was most enjoyable as the weather was mild and the scenery entertaining. We passed many retail stores that got more and more expensive as we got closer to the Duomo. We finally stopped for lunch at a small café and had a modest meal. The diet Coke, called Coke light in Europe, cost four Euros, about $5.50!! Wow, Safeway sells a twelve pack for $2.99. I refer to this as the “Milano Bump”, a phrase we use a little too often!!

Adjacent to the Cathedral is the massive Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a shopping mall to end all shopping malls. A glassed in ceiling to only be appreciated by standing underneath it and gawking up in wonderment. We were only window shopping (thank God) but it was fun checking out the goods and the people. I can assure you there is only one of these in the world! After walking at least three miles we grabbed a quick cab ride back to the train station for the ride back to Bellano. The cab ride cost less than the Coke Light!! We thought we had plenty of time but after purchasing our tickets and trying and failing to purchase a couple of bottles of water (the line was too long at George Clooney’s neighbors little food stand) we barely made the train. Joan and I could not find two seats in the same car so we were separated for the one hour and fifteen minute ride back.

We found out the hard way how the ticketing process worked. Over the years when we had occasion to ride European trains it always amazed me how often the conductors never collected our tickets. Since we always had our tickets it really never made any difference to us. I often thought that many riders just got on and never bothered paying and got away with it. Well we finally found out how they counteracted that little ploy. As we were pulling into Bellano (I finally found a seat in the car Joan was riding) the conductor asked for our tickets. We handed them to him and immediately he started talking to Joan in an animated half English and half Italian way. I’m thinking what’s this? We have valid tickets. It turns out that after you purchase your ticket you must validate it! Now Joan noticed in the morning at the Bellano station that everyone was stamping their ticket at a small box before the train arrived. She said maybe we should be doing the same with our tickets we just purchased. I said why should we? We just got them five minutes ago. Anyway the conductor going to Milan looked at our tickets a little quizzically, initialed them and went on without comment. Anyway our short little Italian sh** conductor whipped out his violation book and wrote us a twenty five (could have been fifty) euro fine! There was no talking him out of it! I was afraid he wouldn’t let us off the train. This is the train systems way of not letting you use an unpunched ticket in case you got to your stop before the conductor got to you to punch the ticket. Oh well, we learned a valuable lesson and maybe they can use the 25 Euro to clean off the graffiti which is quite prevalent in all stations and on the buildings along the tracks!! We were very happy to get back to the friendly confines of Villa Wally.

It was actually a fun day (other than the fine) and we had a “leftovers” meal for dinner and another fine beer!!