Cheri and I finally made it to Italy to see our daughter Reah. It’s only been two years since she moved there. She works for a consulting firm writing speeches and translating documents into English. Their client is an international bank in Milan.
Reah served as our guide. Her Italian is sufficient. Since most all Italian names end in a vowel, wherever we went people thought of us as an Italian family – Dewey, Cheri, and Reah. My Italian improved to the point that whenever we went into a shop I could say, “Ciao now, brown cow!”
We spent most of our time in Milano. Reah’s apartment is a 25-minute walk to the bank, which is in a financial plaza just around the corner from La Scala Opera House, around another corner from the Galleria, and around yet another from the Duomo, the third largest cathedral in the world – 40,000 standing capacity. It’s a pretty exciting neighborhood!
Milan presently is the fashion capital of the world. Gucci, Prada, Armani, Versace, Fruit of the Loom, and Big Mac Overalls are headquartered there.
A group of monks certainly ate in style at one time in Milan. On the back wall of the refectory is Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” and on the front is Donato’s “Crucifixion.” Cheri and I spent a couple of hours walking through the Milan Cemetery, which is included in movies such as the recent I am Love. The family mausoleums there are like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The trains ran on time when we went to Florence and Venice. In Florence we saw another Duomo, went through the Uffizzi Museum, and walked along the bridges across the Arno. In Venice we saw St. Mark’s, the Doge’s Palace, and rode the water shuttle back to our hotel.
Mussolini was largely responsible for the train station in Milan. 500 trains shuttle 320,000 passengers daily. There is a tile mosaic of Italian heroes on one wall. After Mussolini’s death, the Milanese had the tiles with his head on them taken down, leaving a blank expression on his face.
Through it all we walked and ate. Cheri’s only complaint was that Italians don’t drink enough coffee – teeny cups of expresso. Reah has a dog, Tali’Zucha, which is “Come here, little girl,” in Arabic. (The last time we visited her abroad was in Bahrain.) When Reah isn’t walking to work, she’s walking her dog in either of two fantastic parks. On Epiphany Day, Jan. 6, we ate dinner at an Indian restaurant due to most Italian restaurants being closed. Reah’s ordering Indian food in Italian next to a table speaking German was proof that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. We flew home the next day. The Alps in the morning sunlight were beautiful! –DJ
