Mentholated in Milan

by | Apr 24, 2010 | Going Places, Just for Fun, Once Upon a Time | 0 comments

“Ah, Italy!” people have said to me, before they began to enthuse about the Uffizi Gallery, the Grand Canal, and a villa they rented in Tuscany where the locals brought them organic hand-knitted goat’s cheese. “Italy is just divine!”

Oh really? Here’s my adventure in Italy, all seven hours of it, spent entirely in Milano Centrale station in April 1991.

I arrived at about 6:30 p.m. I’d been on trains all day, and despite the sublime Alpine scenery I’d traveled through, I felt grumpy and grimy and gritty and grouchy. Lots of “grr” words. Churchill was right when he said that “the head can’t take in more than the seat can endure.”

My Italian has been gleaned from menus and operas and is therefore colorful but limited. Luckily the information office was called “Informazioni” and the man spoke English. I asked about couchette (sleeping car) reservations for the midnight train to Nice and he sent me downstairs to Prednatazione.

Waiting for Prednatazione

This was a vast room with a dozen glassed-in booths, only three of which were staffed. I drew number 125 from the take-a-number machine and sat down to wait. Presently the machine broke and a queue formed behind it of people waiting to get numbers so they could wait to be waited on.

Two hours later, my number was called and I expressed to another man my wish for a couchette on the train to Nice. He looked at his watch. “Too late now. Buy on train maybe.”

In the ladies’ room with M. Pipi

By then I needed a restroom. The Ladies’ Room had a man behind a counter — in France, a friend told me later, he’d be called “Monsieur Pipi” — and cubicles with toilets and sinks but no soap, paper towels, or toilet paper. You were supposed to buy these from M. Pipi, but I was damned if I would. Instead I went out and bought a packet of tissues.

Back in the restroom, I conducted my business and decided to stay in my cubicle for awhile, taking a restful break from the busy station. Suddenly my crotch began to tingle. What the hell? I read the fine print on the packet of tissues. They were mentholated.

M. Pipi knocked on the door. There were plenty of empty cubicles, but apparently you weren’t allowed to linger in them. Why didn’t I know how to say, “Please, M. Pipi, I must be alone! My private parts have been mentholated!” I was still trying to work it out — “Sola, prego … mia parti privatazi sono mentolazioni” — when he knocked again.

Back in the station, I found that if I sat or even stood for more than a few minutes, a man would sidle up and try to initiate a conversation. A restaurant beckoned, but I had no Italian currency and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to exchange my German, Swiss, English, or American money. So I walked, making up a jingle to pass the time.

Oh listen to me, lasses
When it comes to boring passes
The most persistent asses
Are in old Milano town.

They will not let you linger
Though you give them the finger
They’ll put you through the wringer
Despite your fiercest frown.

So stay out of the station
Hell, shun the whole damned nation
Choose any destination
But old Milano town!

A pox on Italy withdrawn

File:Stazione centrale milano.jpg

When the train to Nice finally came in, an hour late, I stalked into an empty first-class compartment, slammed the door, strewed my luggage all over the seats, and glared at everyone who glanced in. No one entered. We pulled out of Milano Centrale and I reflected sadly that every negative stereotype I didn’t want to have about Italy had been confirmed. Nothing works, the trains are late, the officials don’t care, and the men are land-sharks.

Also, the tissues are mentholated. A pox on Italy!

An Italian guard knocked, came in, and inspected my first-class rail pass. Wanly, expecting no for an answer, I mimed a question: was it permissible to sleep on the seats? The guard smiled, asked me to stand, folded down the two window seats to form a bed, showed me how to turn out the light, and in a mixture of French, English, and Italian, assured me: “Don’t worry. I’ll see to it that you’re not disturbed.”

What a nice man! What a lovely country! I must come back soon, I thought, and see it properly. In the meantime, when people say, “Ah, Italy,” I nod and keep quiet. And then I take the women aside and warn them about the mentholated tissues.

First image: Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Second image by DracoRoboter, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.