Transition

 

We left Perth late in the evening on a gigantic new A380, a plane so large it took an hour and a half just to get all 500+ passengers on board. Just like last time, I managed to snag a seat in an exit row, which is good, because I’m pretty sure I’ve become accustomed to being able to cross my legs, stretch out my arms, and not need to fight down claustrophobia-induced panic attacks. I was supposed to pay an extra $250 for it, but something went wrong with the airline’s booking app, the nice ladies at the check-in desk fixed it, and then sent me on my way without asking for my credit card.

We boarded, I ostentatiously stretched my legs out to make everyone else jealous, the plane took flight and we landed in Doha 11 hours later. I’d actually managed to sleep two or three hours all up, mostly by slumping over my tray table like a passed-out alcoholic. I don’t have whatever gene it is that allows some people to origami themselves into a sleeping position in an economy class seat, even one with profligate leg room.

Once I’d disembarked I wondered how to pass an idle three hours before my connecting flight. It turned out that the solution was easy – I could walk. A lot.

I’m not sure what the technical term is for an airport the size of Hamad, but I’m going to go with gargantuanious. It took me over twenty minutes just to walk the length of one of the departure wings, past indoor water falls, arboretums and the famous giant teddybear melting into a desk lamp statue which since 2022 gives everyone unpleasant Balenciaga vibes. How many Tiffany stores does an airport need? I’ve extrapolated it to six, given that my wing alone had two.

So a couple of hours passed just identifying which gate I needed and walking to it while resisting the siren song of $5,000 cufflinks. Once boarding did commence, it quickly ground to a halt because… there’s a special kind of meaningless delay you can only find in airports. We had to use shuttle busses to get out to our plane , and once they’d filled the first bus, it just sat there, crammed with passengers, for fifteen minutes while hi-viz Somalis and Pakistanis stood around, chatting and waiting for something completely opaque to everyone else. Eventually a radio squawked something and one of them sauntered into the driver’s seat and drove the bus fifty metres up the road, where it stopped for another ten minutes while absolutely nothing went on around it.

At least there was a moment of fun in the queue waiting for the bus. An elderly Muslim woman elbowed her way to the front of the line, literally shoving other passengers out of her way, and was one of the first to step outside… only to have to wait for her husband, who had the boarding passes, and was stuck way back in the line. I caught the eye of a European woman she’d shoved particularly rudely and we had a good laugh about it.

We get it; your husband is the most important man in your village and you’re used to people falling over themselves to do your bidding. But you’re not in your village now, sweetheart, and here your husband is probably poorer and less privileged than the office manager from Exeter that you just shoved out of your way.

 

This second flight, from Doha to Milan, was a mere six hours, so I elected to just get an aisle seat rather than struggle for an exit row. As it turned out, this smaller, older plane was only half full, so after the Italian couple sitting next to me decided to make use of the empty row opposite us, I had a row to myself. So I stretched out and continued bingeing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (verdict, not as clever as The Orville, less irritatingly woke than Discovery, about equal in cringe to the original 1960s Star Trek. So… yeah, sure, if you’re on a long flight and you need something colourful and actiony).

After the A380 this perfectly adequate little Boeing 787 seemed unacceptably primitive. What, I can’t bring up the plane’s external cameras and watch a live feed of the landscape we’re flying over? Outrageous! Is this plane being flown by the Wright brothers?

Despite my new-found technological entitlement, I actually quite like flying on Qatar Airways. They may be owned by a brutal fundamentalist regime that embraces virtual slavery and literal misogyny, but damn, they do a good low-cost international airline. The best part of both flights was the catering. Perhaps because they’re owned by Muslims who are not used to the social paradigms of booze, they just make it available with every meal, including breakfast. They don’t raise it as an option, especially with the sternly bearded old Middle-Eastern men who glare at them and also everything else, but it’s right there on the cart. So people around me were opting for wine or a gin and tonic with their omelet or pancakes. As the attendant wheeled up to me, I spied a familiar style of bottle, “Is that a Prosecco?”

“Yes sir,” she smiled. And so I had prosecco for breakfast, along with my omelet and chicken sausage.

Later on, when they were circulating with more beverage service, I got another prosecco and more coffee.

Just before landing, the attendant shyly touched my elbow and delivered yet more prosecco, unrequested, because, she said, they’d opened the bottle and no one else had asked for it. Fair enough!

We arrived in Milan in the early afternoon. Coming in to land there was a fair amount of unpredictable turbulence, which caused something in the plane to start resonating and make a whoop whoop whoop sound like an alarm. I mean, I assume it was resonating rather than being an actual alarm, because actual alarms are not normally broadcast through the passenger cabin. Worse yet, the closer we got to the ground, the more the rate of whoops sped up, getting closer together and seemingly more urgent. When we landed without any sort of fireball or death, it was a welcome surprise.

After the pristine gargantuosity of Hamad Airport in Doha, Milan’s Malpensa Airport is a reminder that airports haven’t always been all free wifi and designer boutiques. Malpensa’s main terminal is from the 1960s, but the corrupt, brutalist Italian 1960s, not the sexy swinging MidMod 1960s. There are terrazzo floors but they’re dirty and cracked, and the long snaking lines of tired tourists queue to see customs officers in tiny stainless steel and frosted glass booths. There’s something very mean and dowdy about it. Plus, of course, the Italians basically invented bureaucratic fascism. It’s a treasured piece of cultural heritage to have extraordinarily long queues, opaque signage, and staff who alternate between being snippy, being malevolent, and being asleep.

Eventually Explorer Same and I got onto the train from the airport to Milano Centrale, and I spent the next half hour getting sudden flashes of recognition from the last trip four years ago.

- The grass that grows thickly and luxuriantly, dotted with spring flowers, on patches or waste land that would just be sand and weeds in Perth.

- The fact that the electronic information board in the train announced that it was a direct express to Centrale, then got caught out in its lie when we stopped at a random local station, turned itself off in a sulk, then switched back on when we were a couple of stops from Centrale and it thought we’d all forgotten about it; Italian efficiency at its best.

- The way that the Milanese keep their phones on silent, so that when one went off with a bright melody, it came as a surprise to no one that it belonged to an Indonesian man.

In an effort to fight the urge to fall into bed at 6pm after being mostly awake for thirty hours and my body was insisting that it’s actually midnight, I went for a walk though the springtime evening in central Milan. It’s still a dump, comparatively speaking. Unlike every other Italian city except Rome, Milan has embraced the skyscraper. Some of them, like the famous foliage-covered Bosco Verticale towers, are quite nice and internationally recognised. Others are just standard towers, modern, bloated and out of scale with their surroundings

But the people watching is still rewarding, because, more than any of the other Italians, the Milanese are overwhelmingly stylish. I saw a 20-something man sauntering along in a pale yellow sweater, oatmeal pants and expensive hiking boots the colour of toffee, and looking effortlessly cool. If I wore the same outfit, I’d look like someone dropped a lemon merengue pie. A woman pushing a stroller walked by, singing a little song about bananas to her toddler, while wearing a sleek olive-green coat over biscuit pants and looking more stylish than every single fashionista mommyblogger on Instagram. A teenager flounced by in jeans, a red top and a complicated black leather biker jacket with a spiked leather satchel, looking modern and chic despite being a cliché of every rebellious teenager since 1978.

As the sun set I decided I needed a little aperitivo. I’d noticed a couple of little aperitivo bars in a side street on my wandering, so I headed back towards them. The first one was empty, with a sad woman cleaning behind the bar while a man glumly ate something nearby. The other one was bustling, to the extent that I wondered if they’d even welcome a single man who would take up space that could otherwise be used by a couple. However the waiter who greeted me was friendly and charming and was a little puzzled why I was offering to sit outside in the cool spring air where there were plenty of empty tables. He explained the bar’s concept – you buy an aperitivo board and your drink is included in that - and took my order. He apologised that service was slow as he was the only one working front of house, making him bartender as well as waiter and maitre’ d, but I was just happy that I could be accommodated. The filthy issue of how much my board would cost was not raised.

In due course he brought me a glass of prosecco (have I mentioned how much I love prosecco?), a glass of aqua, and my board.

My board was a delight. There was a little folded omelet, roasted eggplant, arancini balls in different flavours, deep fried toast, spiced couscous, a meatball in tomato sauce, cranberry jam with mozzarella, foccacia with sundried tomato, a little proscuitto roll, avocado toast, and a cocoa cannelloni filled with a savoury creamed cheese. It was probably meant for two people, but it had been a while since breakfast, and the quality was superb. Over the next hour I grazed on it and drank my prosecco while taking blog notes on my phone and watching the other customers – businessmen chatting with each other in English, a trio of girls who looked like some sort of bitchy Mila Kunis appreciation society, Italian couples and their friends having a drink before they settled into their plans for the evening.

Eventually it became too cold to sit outside, so I went in to settle my bill with the busy but still affable waiter. Given the quality fare, the nice surroundings and the location next to a notable local park, I suspected that the bill might be horrendous, but I’m on holiday, so I wouldn’t let it bother me.

It was 15 euros, or roughly $23.

If I’d had a similar board in Perth and walked away with change from $50 I’d have been surprised. I’ve paid more than half that before for the prosecco alone.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I love Italy.