The warmth of the Milanese is a breath of fresh air
By Ian De Cotta, TODAY | Posted: 10 December 2009 1014 hrs

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Two Chinese men struggling to communicate with each other in a European city can be amusing to onlookers.

Throw an Italian playing translator into the mix and it can be hilarious.

I found myself in that situation recently at a Chinese restaurant in Milan.

The eatery was near my hotel, and the first hint it was going to be an interesting visit was the menu. The English version was entertaining for starters: "Porky soup", "cow and vegetables stir fried", "noodles with spicy pig" ...

I can't speak any Chinese, and assuming that the eager waiter knew a little English, I asked if the curry was spicy.

Wiping his forehead with his arm, he replied: "Huh?"

An Italian gentleman from the next table offered his assistance. "Okay, I help you order."

I had no idea what transpired in his conversation with the Chinese waiter, but their animated chat in Italian with hands and arms waving in the air was quite a blast.

The Milanese encapsulated the warmth of the city during my week's visit there.

Just like the cafe manager who whipped up a plate of spaghetti bolognese for me when he had yet to open for lunch and the cook hadn't arrived.

Or the bar assistant who offered to telephone a taxi for me after I got lost in the suburbs of Milan, even though I was not a patron of her pub.

Or the old lady who ushered me to the front of the queue at the ATM machine because I was burdened with a heavy backpack.

I did not expect the Italians to be welcoming. The media often doesn't flatter them that way.

Maybe their hospitality had to do with the city's geography and history of coming head-on with non-Italians. Situated like a sentinel at the strategic northern passage into Italy, Milan had been coveted throughout the ages by neighbouring powers.

It had at various times succumbed to the Austrians, Germans and French, and even faraway Spain, when the country yielded its might in Europe.

Maybe the Milanese figured the way to mitigate such drastic encounters was to roll out the welcome mat for people passing through their city. And there were many.

Milan was the confluence of various European cultures and thought, and attracted the holy and the violent at different stages of its existence.

The city is home to two of Christendom's greatest theologians, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine.

It is here that Leonardo Da Vinci stamped one of his most memorable works, The Last Supper, onto the walls of the Santa Maria delle Grazie Church, searing Milan's Christian heritage into its memory.

But the city was also the birthplace of the scourge of Italy in 1919. It was fertile soil for Benito Mussolini to found his fascist party that aligned the country with the Nazis during the Second World War.

The scent of saints and sinners is powerful in the air of Milan. It is written in the ancient architecture still resplendent in the city - the Duomo, for example, the fourth-largest church in the world - and in the wealthy districts and cobblestoned back alleys.

The charm of the Italians has managed to thrive over time.

My encounter with the Chinese waiter had to be the odd occasion when two people were lost in translation. It was at odds with an Italy where expression is an art and easily understood.

Hands and bodies are language tools even when words are foreign to the ear.

Milanese never miss a beat communicating their thoughts in fashion, art and these days in graffiti on every shop shutter, city wall - and amazingly on highway overpasses!

- TODAY/yb

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