Onesie’s Log

So wow! Not World of Warcraft “wow” but excitedly impressed “wow”. Yesterday’s first impressions were a bit off putting but today was a pleasant surprise. We’re about a week in to this trip and naturally our supply of clean clothes is starting to decline. I pack like a girl so I’m good for about another 5 days, however Chris packed light and needed to get his laundry did. We opted to save the company money by sourcing a laundromat instead of using the hotels laundry service (which could have cost up to 100+ Euros for 5 days worth of clothes). The hotel staff pointed us to a location that wasn’t too far away. We later realized that this laundromat was in Milan’s chinatown.

The actual cleaning of the laundry was not that hard of a process. There were like 10 washers and 2 dryers and a little helper dude that over-saw everything. You could basically tell the guy you wanted to do laundry, he’d help you put it in the machine, you could leave and he’d make sure noone stole your shit. He

didn’t really speak English but someone had posted signs in English basically posting step-by-step instructions. Now I can see some people scoffing and saying “How the eff hard is it to do your laundry at a laundromat”. Well, if you can’t read the signs that say how much it costs for how long, or where to put detergent or how long it takes, or which buttons to press to kick of the show then it can be almost crippling.

While the laundry was getting did, we stopped by a McDonalds (we don’t even care if its lame at this point because we’re very hungry) and walked around a bit as it was gorgeous out today. As it turns out there is a huge motorbike convention in town (think Italy’s version of Sturgis) and as a result people are racing their harley’s up and down the streets. We thought it was weird there were so many Harleys but then we walked by a huge Harley Store …. go figure.

After laundry we started off on another poor mans tour and started walking. We took some pictures and added them to the page “le foto di Milano”. Again, we really have no idea what we were taking pictures of but by this point people expect us to take them but according to our tourist map we saw the Arco Della Pace, the Triennale, Castello Sforzesco, and the Duomo. The Duomo was this sick looking church/cathedral thingie however we don’t actually know what it is (though I’m sure a quick google search could tell you).

The area around the Duomo looked to be the shopping district. This place was absolutely huge and almost inconceivably crowded and busy. We counted at least 2 H&M’s but there were easily over 1000 shops and restaurants. We did the cliched thing and sat drinking cappacino’s and people watching.

Oh yeah and we got scammed. I’ve seen this happen to people before but I was totally blindsided. We were walking through the crowds and up came this guy asking if I wanted a free bracelet. Before I could answer the guy had it on my wrist asking if I liked it. This guy then started talking to me in broken English about some atrocity or something rather that is/was/will be happening in Senegal. At the same time Chris had been cut-off from me by another one of these Senegal dudes and was going through the same thing. The guy asked if I wanted to donate some money. I said “piss off brotha” and started walking. He grabbed my arm and said I owed him 10 Euro. I said “fuck off you said it was free”. He said 10 Euro. Then I started noticing his compatriats all start to encircle us. Great. So I gave him 10 Euro. Then Chris yelped that he needed 10 Euro because the same thing happened to him. Fine … fuck! We start walking away and holy shit another guy starts fucking hassling me about these damn bracelets. I tell him no but he starts following us and tries to cram these retarded little bracelets into our pockets chanting “10 Euros, 10 Euros”. For like 200 yards this fucking guy is hassling us to by a damned bracelet. Eventually we stick our hands in our pockets so he can’t jam bracelets in them and keep walking away. He eventually leaves us alone and we continue to our journey.

About 30 minutes later we walk back through the square and the fuckers try to give us the damned bracelets again. Now I know why the entire world wears ear-buds when they are walking around — so they don’t have to give money to fuckers asking for donations for Senegal. I tell you what though, for 20 damned Euros i’ll be wearing this circa 1993 bracelet for awhile and Chris better wear his too.