Sunday, November 23, 2008

Autumnish greetings from Milan

Ciao from Milan! The weather has been unexpectedly warm (13 degrees is fab for this time of the year) and sunny. It feels more autumnish and I half regret bringing along my winter coat (the weather forecast predicted 3-6 degrees this weekend). Dominik and I arrived last night and together with his friend/ex-landlord, Paolo, we had pizza and pasta at the local restaurant for supper.

This morning, we predictably woke up later than our alarm setting. Still we managed to make it to the Santa Maria delle Grazie church for our precious 15-minute viewing of Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" painting. It was quite nicely restored in some 20 years. What could not be saved after more than 400 years of deterioration were Christ's legs below the table, cruelly cut off by a door installed when the painting was beyond recognition.

Later on, we visited Castello Sforzesco, the castle of the Sforza family which, according to Dominik, had one of their princesses marrying a Polish king and brought with her some Italian influence to the bland Polish cuisine. Dominik also commented that Ko had taken a picture with the castle in one of his Milan pictures (is that true?). We then made our way to the "Duomo" (Milan cathedral), beautifully restored with its golden "Madunina" on top and the Galeria Vittorio Emanuele across the piazza.

The most interesting event of the day must go to our visit of the Galleria Arte Villa Reale which featured some "artistic" (in its loose interpretation) performances set up by Tino Seghal. Tino himself was not in the gallery but his performers which consists of a band of boring uniformed gallery officers who would tell you utterly irrelevant information (the oil price has dropped below five dollars), dance and sing ("it's contemporary art"), and even strip (every male gallery visitor's fantasy?)! Ah, all in the name of "art". At least we left thoroughly amused.

Ok, we are about to leave for "aperitivo" with some of Dominik's ex-classmates in Bocconi.

cheng

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