Disastro a Milano

Milan was probably our biggest adventure. We have to go there each time we travel, since most flights leave from there, but many people in the program wanted to see the city itself. I went on a day trip with some other folks. We took a train in to the Milano Centrale station, which is historical, large, and beautiful. The station is rather far from the historical center, so we took a half hour to walk in, getting lost a few times. We hadn’t time to reserve a spot for the Last Supper, so we decided to show up early and see if there’d been cancellations. There had--4 (but there were 6 of us). Natalie and Erica let the rest of us take the tickets. We stopped for breakfast at a café before….
-Il Duomo--A beautiful church on the outside, pure white, and where I imagine Saurmaun from lotr living. The inside has the remains of a saint (I think) with a gold death mask, which is positively eery.
-The last supper is painted on a huge wall, and the building has been conserved for this reason. You have to be dehumidified multiple times before you can come in, and then you can only stay for 15 minutes. They recently stripped the restorations from it, so you can see the actual brush strokes, and that left it very fuzzy. It was still incredible, huge, and with the audio guide, I realized what a complicated painting it was.
-We met up with some of Natalies friend in the Milan program, and walked around a beautiful shopping mall, and went to an apertivo.
-After our day in Milan ended we headed to the train station…and the real adventure began. We had planned to take the last train back to Verona, at midnight. Next to our time, the sign said “Cancelato” 3 weeks into our trip, our Italian was still pretty terrible, but eventually we found out that there was a strike, and that it was lasting 24 hours. About 20 of us were there, and we had no idea what to do. We had no internet, hostel front desks were closed at midnight, and we had no idea if the first train at 640 was running. I called our program director, which resulted in me essentially being in charge of the situation. He said he couldn’t drive us all home (obviously), and he could charter a bus for us, and we’d have to pay for it. He also gave us a hostel, but at that point we were all exhausted.
The Milan train station is not heated, and it was January. It connects to the outside, so the trains come in, so it was probably about 45-55 degress in there. We found a heated spot by the bathroom…which apparently closes at 12:30, and is privately owned. The police kicked us out, but took pity and said they’d protect us from the homeless if we wanted to sleep near the police office, which was in the coldest part of the station. We started there, but it was so cold 4 of us moved and ended up huddled in the “Imaginarium”, a store in the station. Ryan had brought sheets and blankets for his hostel, and a laptop, so we were decently comfortable on the floor, going into hysterics over how ridiculous this all was, watching movies, and avoiding pigeons and thinking of nothing but going to the bathroom when it opened or sleeping in an actual bed.
The trains did run in the morning, but we couldn’t cancel the bus. We took the train anyway, since it was 3 hours earlier, and we were exhausted. What a day.