Italy 2026 i

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 4 June.

Finally disgorged from the flying-can, after 26 hours in transit.

Bienvenuti a Milano, capital of Lombardy, second largest economy in the EU. Europe’s creative capital.

The airport rubs-it-in, with enormous posters of impossibly thin, attractive women, wearing extremely expensive clothing in wildly decadent interiors. Billboards in airports everywhere aim to entice the discombobulated traveller to part with their hard-earned, but in Malpensa they smugly welcome you with, ‘You’ve arrived! Start feeling hopelessly inadequate, bella!’

You don’t need to tell me twice. I’m sweaty, hot and crumpled, like a greasy burger-wrapper in desperate need of a rubbish bin. Yet fast approaches the moment of glory; for the first time in seventy years, Oscar has an Italian passport! He and I will soon be marching triumphantly through the EU Passports express queue, leaving the blue-passport losers to writhe like maggots in slow-moving lanes.

But the queue entrance is disorderly, we enter the wrong stream, have to backtrack, and end up amongst the masses anyway.

We make it to the electronic gate. Oscar is old and confused by digitisation. Inserting his passport the wrong way, he proceeds to chuck an analogue Italian tantrum. I step in, insert the document correctly and the gates open for him to proceed. He walks forward into the cattle-crush with his luggage blocking the gate open behind him. Mamma mia Oscar! He hasn’t travelled for years and he’s not comfortable in the automated world. I can see I’m in for a modern-day Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.

We make it out beyond the gate, entering a beige, high-traffic, terrazzo-tiled no-man’s land that the latest renovations will never, ever reach. Duty Free is way behind in travel fantasy-land. No more ‘bellezza’ til Milano Centrale. As we head for the station, I try to get my eSim operational. They assured me it would work with the flick of a switch.

Ma - va fanculo - why would it be simple?

Oscar says we have to catch a bus. I don’t believe him. We head for il treno. 

The ticket area fills up with people like us and queues start forming. I feel my anxiety on the boil. Naturally, Oscar speaks Italian, but if I let him negotiate we’ll have a hostage situation on our hands.

I ask a young lady trying to flog luxury train tickets standing to one side. She says we have to catch the train to Centrale, then we purchase tickets to Trieste, so I go to the biglietteria like everyone else. 

Then my phone dies.

The next train departs in 20 mins. I park Oscar and our luggage on the platform and run off to find a power-point. Goddamn it, why didn’t I bring a power bank? 

Finally, with some juice on the phone, we’re on the train heading for Milano, where I continue to work on the eSim.

Oscar observes a couple of young people sitting across from us, both obviously surfing the internet. “How come they managed to get theirs going?” he asks, not unreasonably. “Because they’re young.” I reply.

The train from the airport to Centrale takes an hour. Oscar tells me the last time he came via Milan he took the bus. “They didn’t have this thing back then,” he says, referring to the train.

Uffa!

Glad we didn’t take the bus.

At last we glide into Milano Centrale terminus. I’m told you can fit fifteen football fields under the railway canopies and two Milan Cathedrals inside the pavilion. 

Architect Ulisse Stacchini called it “In Motu Vita” (“Life in Motion”), where once huge iron horses snorted from smokestacks into thick grey air. The unstoppable monsters of the late Industrial Machine Age dragged humanity behind them into modernity. The Locomotives are long gone but their ghosts remain, quietly haunting the massive curved iron-and-glass arches.

Milano Centrale was very deliberately orchestrated to be OTT. Inspiration for the pavilion came from the palatial Roman Baths of Caracalla. For those unfamiliar with the excesses of Rome, a little history lesson. Set over 25 hectares, in use between AD 212 and 530, Caracalla was a luxurious leisure centre that would make made Tim Gurner’s Saint Haven look like a tacky brothel. Notable features included frigidaria, tepidaria, caldaria (cold, medium and hot rooms), and saunas heated by subterranean fires that reportedly burnt 10 tonnes of wood per day. It contained two palestre (gyms), two libraries (one Greek, one Latin), marble floors and 100ft high groin-vaults supported by gigantic Egyptian granite columns. The baths were open to the public for free with a daily capacity of 6 to 8,000 patrons. It was the most lavish place in the Empire to soak with fellow plebs and complain about taxes.

The Romans didn’t muck around when it came to public infrastructure, so Stacchini followed their cue and went for broke. He designed the pavilion in Liberty / Art Deco style, before Mussolini brought his decorators on site and gave it a Fascist glow-up. Benito loved trains and he also loved a bit of SPQR appropriation, hoping the butch masculinity would rub-off on his Camicie Nere.

I was looking forward to seeing the megalomania of the head pavilion, however stopping to admire the architecture isn’t very practical inside Italy’s second busiest railway station.

Besides, I’m having an argument with Monsieur Hulot, who’s convinced the tickets we purchased are valid all the way through to Trieste.

For 15 Euro, I seriously doubt it.

There are ticket machines everywhere, but I’m humouring Oscar by bringing him to a ticket office so he can yell at somebody else for a change. The queue is enormous, when a young, dreadlocked customer starts having a go at one of the salespeople. Everybody - security, other salespeople, customers - start yelling back at him, telling him to wind his neck in (in equivocal Italian). It turns into a circus before he eventually leaves in a huff.

I decide to take my chances with a ticket machine. With some assistance from a nice customer service ragazzo, and after spending fifteen minutes typing in email addresses (like Oscar has a functioning email address!) passport numbers, and bullshit accommodation addresses (they haven’t sent it to me yet because I haven’t virtually checked-in…because I can’t connect to the internet), we obtain tickets to Trieste on the Frecciarossa.

Now we wait for the platform to be called.

I’m standing with the luggage in the midst of a fast-moving river of people, trying to connect to the crappy free wi-fi, while Oscar paces back and forth between departure boards wearing the suit jacket he brought with him for snazzy dinners.

It’s 34 degrees and humid as fuck. Poor Oscar, he must be feeling it, even though he’d never admit it. He claims to love the hot weather. The hotter the better for him. 

I, on the other hand, cannot cope in the heat. These days I don’t know if I’m suffering menopause or climate change, or both.

At last, Trieste, departing binario 11. CHARGE!

We join others waiting for the call and form a herd, making our way down platform 11 to the carriage where our seats are located. Finally, a few hours’ respite from the struggle. Now we’re heading in the right direction, I don’t even care we’re not doing anywhere near the advertised 400km/hr (Italian trains never do, but they still manage to run on time), it’s got charging points and reliable wi-fi, ‘che miracolo’. Finally I can sort-out our next moves in peace; check-in to the short-term rental and make contact with cousin Mauro.

Frazzled, hungry and a little miffed with Oscar, who doesn’t have a clue about tech-stress… Mind you, this is one of the (many) reasons I’m accompanying him on this trip, as I’ve convinced him travelling has changed since he took the Lockheed Super Constellation back in the day. 

I’m exaggerating, he’s been back many times, but not since COVID. Travelling’s harder for all of us now, but especially for a hard-of-hearing 93-year old who refuses to wear hearing aids or use his mobile phone.

And there’s no way he’s driving a hire car.

I’d anticipated having a panino back at La Stazione. Surely that wasn’t too much to hope for? A simple little panino of prosciutto and mozzarella di buffala, kissed by a sandwich press. And maybe an espresso? Not a big ask, but with all the chaos and confusion it didn’t happen.

The last thing we ingested was a pre-dawn inflight breakfast.

Bad, even by airline standards. 

Now it’s 4 and we won’t arrive in Trieste until after 9:30pm.

I ask Oscar if he wants a snack, then stagger along the carriages as we hurtle East across the north of Italy. First problem is, I’ve got nothing in-between a 1 Euro coin and 100 Euro note. Second problem is, the buffet-car has nothing besides bottled water and bags of crisps. 

Water it is.

Back in my seat, I’m wrestling with the lid that refuses to detach itself from the bottle. For fucks sake, this might be the last straw…

Progress by 2026 standards: paper straws and integrated drink bottle lids.

Begrudgingly I concede it’s not a bad idea, as I open Instagram for a spot of mindless scrolling.

Despite the lack of wi-fi up to this point, the algorithm has cottoned-on I’m not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I appear to be getting fed Milan-themed content. There’s a post by Plastik magazine featuring a quizzical older lady seated upon a white couch, immaculately coiffed hair, attitude, gaze and cigarette - smouldering. The caption reads: the eternal style of Milanese sciura’s [sic]. (Plastik, 2026)

“A sciura (pronounced shoo-ra) is part style-icon, part cultural archetype, [ ] a distinctly Milanese figure: an older woman whose elegance has been shaped by decades of living, dressing and observing fashion.”

I’m witnessing images of filthy-rich older baddies living their best lives, wearing outrageous yet somehow tastefully age-appropriate outfits. They’re the antithesis of the curated bullshit posters in Duty Free, anathema of the careful ladies of Eastern Suburbs Sydney who - despite their black Amexes - appear to not understand fashion well enough to subvert it, boring-conservative fashion-slaves, shit-scared they might differentiate themselves too much and end up exiled from their tedious-bitchy social circles.

Finally, something to aspire to as a post-menopausal woman.

As we rocket along my cortisol-spike recedes, the carriage empties and the sky begins to darken. Progress is slow from Venezia-Mestre, and I realise because of the coming darkness, Oscar will miss-out on one of his favourite spectacles - gazing out at the dazzling expanse of the Gulf of Trieste.

Not that he’s complaining.

Anyway, I have a surprise in store for him. I found accomodation perched on the cliffs right above the sea in Santa Croce, which is where he grew up. There, he can gaze to his heart’s content. I haven’t told him how much it cost but I’m confident he’ll be so thrilled he won’t ask silly questions.

But that’s down the track. That’s our ‘grand finale’, close to the end of the trip.

Hopefully we’ll still be speaking by then.

We draw into Trieste at 21:37, quasi-delirious. All I want is my bed, but the next-best thing is seeing cousin Mauro on the platform, conspicuous by his height off in the distance, towering above the crowd, dutifully waiting to meet us.

Mauro: ‘I will take you to find your accomodation, then would you like to go for dinner or a drink?’

Oscar: ‘What do you want to do, Tash? Do you want to go out?’

Me: ‘No, not really. But that would be rude, so yes.’

After locating our digs and dumping the luggage, we hit the town, walking familiar streets. Crossing the canal, we head towards the Piazza.

I adore this city. We have history, this town and I. 1977: European Vacation, Tretiach-style. 2000, was it…? Era of the exes. 2002, 2004, 2006. 2010: meltdown. Afterwards, the post-ex era, when I discover travelling with gays is better. More fun, less complicated. 2013, 2016. Has it really been ten years?

Nothing’s changed…

Mauro: ‘Trieste has changed a lot since you were here last. Now it’s full of tourists.’

Me: ‘Why, what’s happened?’

Mauro: ‘The city featured in some films and TV series in the past years. And many of the cruise ships can no longer go to Venice.’

Shortly we arrive at Piazza Unità d’Italia, the largest square in Europe facing the sea. It’s a glorious space, with the exception of the awful Fountain of the Four Continents, a jumble-sale in a stone quarry.

We hang a left and jag an outside table at Caffè deli Specchi. The surly waiters don’t hesitate to make us feel unwelcome.

Bloody tourists.

Don’t worry, we’re not here for a three-course meal.

The night melts into a beautiful blur.

Plastik (June 4, 2026) The Eternal Style of Milanese Scruia’s. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/DZIVsaPEXBX/?hl=en