Champions

After all that trouble getting off the ground my brothers and I only arrived in Milan 45 minutes late. Exhausted and grimy, but with high spirits, we clamored through border control and out to baggage claim. The turnstile took 10 minutes to start working, it spit out about 20 bags and then stopped. Of course, and I say of course because you think it would be obvious,it took 35 more minutes or so for our bags to roll out. We flew through the rest of customs without a passing glance from the guards and met Spencer's quasi international love on the other side.

So not to rehash this point, but everything here is much more difficult than it need to be. The machine to pay our parking pass, broken, everywhere except right in front of the gate to the lot. So you have a bunch of Italian drivers parking in front of the caution arms that let them through the toll, walking across 10 lanes of people doing the same, to wait in line impatiently to pay their parking ticket. Illia (Spencer's interest), drives like a maniac, I love it, enough said.

It took an hour to get Erba, outside of Cuomo. We had to spend the night with Illia and her family, which we had been looking forward to. My parents were not set to arrive until the next day. Lunch was the size of dinner, we ate three hours and drank everything. Illia's grandmother lives in the house, she never stops cooking. Their house is beautiful, they have views of the foothills of the Swiss alps, just ridiculous. Plus its this old stone house, the pictures can't do it justice. I would talk forever about it, but the day was so much longer.

We spent the day lounging on their lawn and playing scopa, an awesome card game. At night we decided to head into Cuomo. It just so happened to be the Champions League final and Milan was playing Bayer Munich. Milan won and let me tell you, the mayhem that transpired could not be put in words. People were driving around hanging outside their cars with flags and scarfs, honking and yelling. And IT NEVER STOPPED. We were outside for two hours. At one point the mob gathered in one spot and proceed to usher the cars through the crowd yelling, screaming and blessing each car with the flag on Inter Milan and a fight song. You would have thought they won the war, and in some definition they had.

My night ended with a fever of 101.7 degrees. Cold washcloths and Advil, hopefully I can find some equilibrium tomorrow. More to come.