Milan – the city of fashion, dignified and praised by fashionistas, well known among travelers around the world, and eternalized in books and movies.
Knowing what I knew before a brief trip to this city in the North of Italy, my expectations were not as high. After all, everything I needed to know, I grasped long before, though unintentionally. To a certain point, I was also biased, as the cliches accumulated over the years through media were enough to irk me.
The curse of living in our time is being exposed to more than we need. Before we experience, we absorb information. Like a sponge soaking up the liquid, we gradually absorb and drown in the sea of information without even realizing it. Although experience is ever-lasting, somehow, we devour the information over real-life exposure.
One can not stop imagining what traveling to a popular destination can feel like. They already consumed a form of media a movie or a photo, listened to local music, or read about it. So did I when imagining Milan – pizza, men howling after me, shops being flashy, and the Prosecco tasting better than any other place I have drank it before.
If one can manage to leave behind the things they already assume, one could see more to Milan, like discovering beautiful vintage-looking yellow trams on the walk from Piazza Cavour to Castello, the locals being annoyed when finding out about your inability to respond in Italian, detecting a new column or a nice facade among marvelous buildings, and smelling the cigarette smoke unapologetically exhaled on you by Italians standing right in the middle of the street.
What made the trip unique, in a sense, was acknowledging the beauty of the Italian language. It was not the first time I heard this language. But this was the first time I took notice of its melodic tones. So far, I am not sure if it was the culmination of experiences or if it was hearing an abundance of Swedish in the past three years – a language known to be not the most aesthetic. But Italian sounded rhythmically beautiful.
This was my first time in Milan, and I hope it is not the last time, as a lot was left behind to discover.
25.11.2024
Milan, Italy
Some of my shots from Milan
Leyla's Notes 