DAY 171 - TREZZO SULL'ADDA TO MILAN

10 October, 2011

21.1 miles (Total: 1737 miles) 42,200 steps (Total: 3,775, 601 steps)

Buffet breakfast was back on again as I made a good start for the final stretch into Milan. The stretch of the walk from Rijeka, Croatia, which I left on 21 September, has been very demanding. I have covered 330 miles in three weeks and I am beginning to feel that pace in my joints especially hips, knees and ankles. There were very few highlights in the three-week period.  Normally encounters about the truce keep me going and break the journey, but this was just a hard slog all the way. I also felt as if I had missed understanding the enormous significance of the part of the world through which I was travelling—I had spent less than a day in Trieste, a day in Verona, had by-passed Venice and was going to arrive into Milan late evening and leave on the train for Rome early the next morning.  Along the way I only had about four serious encounters with local people who could offer me insights on the history and culture of the areas I was walking through and with whom I could share the vision for the truce and the purpose of the walk. This is perhaps understandable as I am seeking to make it through the Alps before the winter snow, but it is still less than satisfactory.

Milan is the largest city that I have encountered since Athens five months ago. One of the difficult aspects of the entering a large city is that you can arrive in the suburbs and think you have finished, but then discover that there is another two hours of walking to do.  I arrived in Piotella, which was just on the outskirts of Milan and thought I was there, so much so that I took a rest at Wanna’s Pub and relaxed over a couple of glasses of Chianti (because I couldn’t afford the Diet Coke).  I started reflecting on the last section of the journey from Rijeka, but I then had to get up and walk for another two hours into the centre of Milan and I then spent another hour walking around the circumference of the enormous Milan Central Station (pic) looking for a youth hostel which I had been told was next to the station. As usual it was about the last place you see, mind you it was only a few rooms on the sixth floor of an old apartment block literally next to the station, so close that I could hear the train announcements, which was a strangely comforting sound. It was a great location, a friendly welcome, and there was plenty of time to chat to the fellow guests in the queue for the single bathroom, but they had fast wi-fi and I would only have to cross the road for the 9AM train to Rome the next morning.

I spoke to my parents on Skype and they reminded me that we had been in that same place in 1974 when I was 13 and we were catching the car transporting train on our way back from Florence to Paris. It was one of those moments when we paused and said together “that is almost 40 years ago”. Life is a wonderful journey full of lines that cross each other often many, many years apart. I thought, I wonder if you had told that young boy in 1974 that he would be actually walking through Milan on his way from Greece to London when he was 50 to promote the Olympic truce what he might have said. I conclude he would probably first have said, “What’s the Olympic truce?” and then wondered how a 50 year old could manage to walk at all! Still here is the true joy of life—the future is an unfolding mystery that we just don’t know, and personally speaking, I think it is better that way. We seem to have developed an industry of wanting to plan into the future; we want five-year plans not only for our businesses, but even for our kids and have barely started working before we start worrying about our pensions. Yet, having looked at and even written many five-year plans, I can tell you that I have never met one which came anywhere remotely close to what actually happened.

Because our eventual destination is not determined by a long range forecast, which by and large merely extrapolate the present into the future, but rather in the cumulating effect of the often small decisions and actions which we take each day. By dwelling too long on what we think is the future destination, we fail to pay sufficient attention to the moment and the use we make of it.  The decisions we make in that moment will shape our destination more surely than any well structured spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation.

Nowhere is the culture of planning more apparent than in education children.  Parents start worrying about their kids exams from when they enter kindergarten.  Kids are told that there life will be determined by exams at 7, 11, 14, 16, 18 and then their university. By focussing their minds on the next thing, they can often miss out on the value of the present thing. They can think that life is a sure thing: you study, pass an exam, you advance on the board and get the rewards, but life is not a production line, things happen: illnesses, love, misjudgements, accidents, risks, the discovery of a talent, once in a lifetime opportunities, the cruel word or deed, the life changing chance encounter. Moreover, past performance is no guarantee of future returns anymore in the lives of people than it is in the stock market. As has been said ‘If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you’re going to be cockeyed today.’

Rather than planning for the next exam, it would be wise to spend time examining the current life because favourable outcomes will be more likely determined by Character, Courage, Commitment and Compassion; for with these qualities, young people will be equipped to navigate a course through the events of life as they are presented before us each day.

DAY 170 - PALAZZOLO SULL'OGLIO TO TREZZO SULL'ADDA: 21.4 MILES (42,800 STEPS)

9 October, 2011 

21.4 miles (Total: 1715. 9 miles) 42,800 steps (Total: 3,733, 401 steps)

The marginal utility of a buffet breakfast has risen since entering Italy. Previously I might spend 5-10 euros a day on snacks and drinks, but in Italy this is running close to 15-20 euros. Hence it is worth trying to find a place which may be more expensive than budget (30 euros) because by the time you have done more laps of the buffet table that a Formula 1 Grand Prix, filled the empty water bottle from yesterday with fresh orange juice and made up some cheese sandwiches wrapped in napkins along with dried apricots and walnuts—you have enough to keep you going for the day.

The motel I checked into in Trezzo was in a shopping centre and advertised a buffet breakfast.  Sadly like most other places in Italy it wasn’t open on a Sunday, so we were served a coffee and strictly one croissant at the reception desk. The poor receptionist/waitress had just been given a very hard time from one of the other guests, so I didn’t have to complain though I did give a big smile and ask if there was any discount on account of the breakfast not been available and she politely replied that I had already had it, prices were lower on a Sunday evening—I hadn’t noticed.

I never cease to be amazed as to how the shops in northern Italy are able to make a living, as they clearly do, when they open for so few hours in the day. Shops may open around 10AM and then close for a siesta at 2PM and then may open again between 6PM and 8PM. They have a saying which is that “2PM is too early to finish and too late to start.” I contrast this with the long hours culture of the UK and US where stores will often stay open for 12 hours a day and open on Sunday. An Italian store may open for 36 hours a week, whereas their UK counterpart would probably open for 80 hours, but if, as I suspect, the takings in the stores in northern Italy are comparable to those in the UK, then that means that their productivity is twice as much as ours. Much more important, the shorter hours strengthen family and community cohesion. In addition, Italy has some of the lowest consumer debt in Europe whereas the UK has by far the highest—in fact I am sure I heard that half of all consumer debt is from UK consumers.

The prime minister in his speech to the Party conference reportedly had to remove a section in which he urged consumers to pay off their credit card debts after a hewn cry from the press, but it could be that the structural adjustment we need is to learn from the northern Italians in shunning credit cards, living within their means, working less and living more. Not only will our financial system become more sustainable, but perhaps our families and communities will be more so also. I think the prime minister’s instincts were absolutely right in his original message.  Perhaps then we wouldn’t need to have 24/7 shopping, where people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have, and will have more time for the truly important things in life—family, friends and community.

I also had a useful chat with a young cyclist from Colorado who was cycling from France to Bosnia & Herzegovina and had just come through the Alps. He reported that the snow was already falling down to 1500 metres and some of the higher (and shorter) passes were already closed. I was able to reciprocate with thoughts on routes and places all the way to Sarajevo. His brother was a film maker and he had made a film about Bosnia. We spoke about the tensions that remained in that country and the sense of hopelessness amongst many of the young people I encountered. Cynicism in the old is depressing to see, but when the young are cynical it corrodes the soul of a nation.

There is a fellowship amongst travellers; I only wish I could meet more, but it remains a fact that I have not met a single foot traveller on my 1700 miles, all my encounters have been with cyclists.

DAY 169 - BESCIA TO PALAZZOLO SULL'OGLIO

8 October, 2011

21.8 miles (Total: 1694.5 miles) 43,600 steps (Total: 3,690, 601 steps)

I have navigated my way through the Pindos Mountains in Greece and remote Albania, but I got lost in IKEA. How is it that there isn’t a simple entrance to the restaurant and you are required to walk a veritable yellow brick road of home furnishings, candles, and candles, and more candles when all you want are Swedish meatballs and chips? They even offer tantalising short cuts from the odd shaped candles section to the scented candles section, but none of them seem to lead to the seasoned meatballs section.

I still haven’t worked out the rationale for the pricing structure of drinks in Italy, but here is an example from today: a Diet Coke is 3 euros; a cappuccino is 3.5 euros; still water 2 euros; a glass of wine 1.5 euros. How do you get as system where a glass of wine is half the price of a soft drink? Surely there is a bit of an excise revenue opportunity for the Italian government here should they ever find themselves in need of a few extra euro.

Whilst I am having a bit of a moan—mosquitoes are the dumbest insects ever: first, after they have taking your blood you would think they would escape as quickly as possible from the scene of the crime, but no, not the mosquito, they then decide to dive bomb your ear like a scene from Top Gun when Maverick buzz’s the control tower. Do they not know that this is likely to stir their victim and he/she ain’t going to be too happy about it? So then, and here is the clever part, when the person you have just drained of blood, as effortlessly as a mobile phone operator, switches on the light and comes for you with a flip flop, where do you hide? Answer—on the wall beside the headboard. “Wo—above the headboard, you don’t say….almost had me there mossy.” It’s like game we play when our kids are three—“I wonder where Matthew is?” ignoring the bulge in the curtain, the heavy breathing and the tiny feet poking out from beneath the drapes, we conclude “Well I just can’t see him anywhere he must have gone away.” They don’t even realise that having provided a regular buffet for his mates all the way from Greece to Italy, that I might have just figured out their cunning plan. Well there was one less mosquito around to pass on the bad news that their cover has been blown—for the record the truce hasn’t started yet.

In case you were having a ‘IKEA moment’ and couldn’t follow where I was going with this entry….SUMMARY: not much happened today.