Como

I’ve been attempting on this trip to try to visit places I’ve never been before, which is why I’ve traveled to Bergamo, Turin and Verona. But after yesterday’s expensive adventures in Frecciarossa bookings, I wanted to remain relatively close to home but still somewhere pretty and interesting that could be reached cheaply. I decided on Lake Como, playground of the northern Italian rich.

My troubles started early, at the ticket machines at Milano Centrale.

 

Me: Please sell me a ticket to Como.

Ticket Machine. Do you want Como Lago, Como Camerlate, or Como San Giovanni?

Me: Um… I have no idea.

Ticket Machine: (electronic equivalent of a shrug)

Me: Can you please show me a map?

Ticket Machine: Ha ha no.

I eventually got Google Maps on my phone to show me that I wanted Como San Giovanni, and ticket machine sold me a ticket for 5 euros. The next train was a regional train but it was an express, so it actually only took 39 minutes to reach Como.

Unfortunately although today is not an Italian public holiday, it is the last day of school holidays, so a lot of people are still having a day off. Como was heaving. I’d been tossing up whether to take the ferry up to Bellagio, but seeing the hundred metre long queue for ferry tickets put me off – with ferries leaving every few minutes, poor old Bellagio would be like a sardine can. So I bought some gelato, I think from the same place I bought gelato the last time I was in Como, in 2011, then went for a stroll along the waterfront, soaking in the sunshine and the views across the lake. 

 

 

I took the opportunity to give Explorer Sam (and Giacomo) a little gift. I gave Admiral Ackbar a Vespa, and Benny a vintage Fiat 500; Explorer Sam got a brand new Fiat 500. Gotta take care of my selfie proxies.

 

 

By the time I came back, it was about time for lunch, so I did my usual trick of wandering around for an hour looking at and rejecting various restaurants – too big, too small, too touristy, the word ‘burger’ in the name, too tacky, too overpriced, too many pictures on the menu, uncomfortable looking chairs, no outside seating and a stuffy interior, too crowded, not crowded enough, and so on. Eventually I settled on a bar with good outdoor seating just off one of the main piazzas, not too busy and no obvious tourists at the tables.

After some discussion with the bubbly waitress, who introduced herself with, “So, tell me everything,” I ordered a limoncello spritz and a version of pizza – a toasted flatbreak slightly fried by its own olive oil, covered in thick juicy slices of white mozzarella and sweet shavings of parma ham and drizzled with olive oil.

The limoncello spritz was a little mediocre, but the pizza thing… it was exactly what Italian food is supposed to be; simple but exquisite ingredients combined to produce this magical union of flavours and textures. It was amazing. So I spent the next hour taking bites of it then needing five minutes to calm down.

It turned out that I was in the perfect spot to people watch, as this bar was right next to the main thoroughfare of Como. It was fun to play Spot the Nationality: pasty white flesh insufficiently covered means English, vividly tinted hair and enormous sunglasses means Russian, exquisitely clean but ridiculous designer clothes means Japanese, eye-watering artificial fibres means Chinese, slim natural blondes in athleticwear means Scandinavians, and outrageous crimes against fashion means either Germans or the Dutch. Occasionally there would be a serious man in a beautiful slim-cut suit hurrying by: obviously Italian.

One lesson we can take from the Italian fashion sense is that you must be slim to wear clothes properly, but if you are fat, then you must still dress in close-cut clothes. You will look fat, but if you do what the fat Americans or the fat British do, and dress in shapeless oversized clothes, you will look fat and unkempt. The Italian way is the lesser of two evils.

A few further vignettes from my afternoon meanderings:

- I coined an updated version of “mutton dressed as lamb” for the chav English women I saw around town; “Spanx dressed as slim”. I saw a lot of very hardworking shapewear today.

- I witnessed another influencer getting a small girl, either her little sister or her daughter, to take her selfie for her sitting on the lakefront. She had a peeved frown on her face while she arranged her hair and her cleavage, but as soon as the phone came up to take her picture, she suddenly switched to a sincere, warm, generous, engaging smile. Once the phone came down she reverted to an irritated scowl. It was majestic in its toxicity.

- I saw some leather sneakers in a shop window and went in to try them on, only to discover that they were actually vinyl, not leather. The man in the shop looked like he wished the ground would open up and swallow his shame.

- After I entered a different shop I heard the male shopkeeper come up behind me and announce “Ciao, bello.” or “Hello beautiful” when addressing a man. I turned around in some trepidation to find him on his phone.

Eventually it was time to head home, and I went to the train station to buy a ticket. The machine told me that the next train was already full, but allowed me to book a seat for the 4.10pm. The ticket validating machine didn’t seem to have any way of validating my ticket, but the lady at the Trenitalia office wordlessly validated it for me with an old-fashioned stamp and some scribble with a pen. But then, when I tried to board the 4.10, the conductor told everyone, in Italian, that there was some issue and they had to take the next train. I checked the board and the next train was at 4.36pm.

Meanwhile another train roared into the station, dirty, old and graffiti covered, like the mysterious unscheduled train in a horror movie that bears foolish teenagers to Hell. A few brave souls got on it. Was this the train the conductor meant? The sign said that it was actually destined for Milano Porta Garibaldi, which is actually closer to my hotel but not the Milano Centrale I’d purchased. I elected to wait until 4.36pm, which didn’t actually arrive until 4.45pm, but by that stage I didn’t care as long as it was going in roughly the right direction. I’m guessing that the holiday throngs drove Trenitalia to the limits of its functionality, and we were one computer crash or power failure away from total anarchy.

But I caught the crowded 4.36pm train, the conductor cheerfully stamped my ticket, and I got home tired but grateful to actually be there. There was just time for a quick lie down before going out for aperitivo – I tried a new place called Tipsy, which made perfectly decent cocktails, but for the hour I was there, I was the only one there. Awkward. Especially since it’s literally next door to a popular wine bar that seems to be doing great business. Hospitality is a fickle bitch.