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Edward on wheels-day 18-the end

admin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:25:43 +0000

In the morning I went to the police station with Denis to report the bike stolen, mainly the get a crime report to give to the insurance company. When Denis told the policeman that I had left my bike locked at the central station, the policeman rolled his eyes and said to me “thees es Milano…”. Apparently the central station is widely known as being notorious for bikes being stolen and general shifty activities going on.

On the recommendation of one of the couchsurfers I went to porto genova to see if my bike was now on sale at the weekend market, which it turned out not to be. I did get a new bag, which would be easier to carry on the plane than my bike panniers clipped together.

In the evening there was a big couchsurfing meeting for apertivo in the city, with about 40 people expected to come. Milan is one of the most active cities in the world for couchsurfing, so their events tend to be big. It all started off quiet, just a big pile of us in a bar stuffing our faces with pasta and chips and whatnot and there were quite a lot of foreign visitors in the group-people from russia, france, belgium, australia etc.

Later the group moved on to the Celtic new year celebrations being held at the citadel. The celtic new year is apparently an ancient tradition where everyone drives around milan for an hour looking for a parking space. Eventually we found a parking space and caught the last 5 minutes of an irish folk music concert, managed to find the rest of the group and then within 2 minutes lost them again, but gained some more randoms. At this point I felt A-culturaly enlighted and B-fucking exhausted, so I decided to make an exit to try and find denis so I could head home.

Unfortunatly denis was halfway across the city, so much hauling ass was required. By the time I found him, I was pretty much going to pass out from exhaustion, so as soon as we got in the car it was nap time.

Edward on wheels-day 17-milan

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:23:06 +0000

A good nights sleep meant I could finally think straight again.

I went to the central station to meet one of the guys from the milan couchsurfing bike sharing collective who had offered to look after my bike until I had recovered and could come back and pick it up buuuut…………..there was no bike. For the second time in a week, my bike had vanished, only this time it quite definitly not coming back.

In the evening, some of Denis’ friends were holding an apertivo at their apartment, another leaving do coincidently and I went with hime to that. Much fun was had by all, along with much very tasty food and very much alcohol for the rest of them. The food was amazing and I tried a couple of new things, including barley with pesto salad and some kind of pasty-like object, which was one of the few times I’ve had cauliflower that actually tasted good. Unfortunately almost no one spoke english, but a few people did, so I was ok. One of them was an irish girl, the girlfriend of the guy that was leaving and it took me a good few seconds for my brain to realise that I could actually understand what she was saying and she was speaking english. When I left, everyone signed my cast, mostly in things I don’t understand and needed translation for (”Ridalami mi bici”=”give me back my bicycle” and “makwa ikwa”, which no one knew what it meant, but since the girl that wrote it had a tatoo of it, we assumed it couldn’t be too bad)

Edward on wheels-day 15&16-milan

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:21:04 +0000

Wednesday was another day of doing bugger all, so I went to the cathedral and just sat around doing as little as possible. Despite the hordes of tourists, its a nice place to relax, since its quiet, pretty impressive and theres occasionally organ music. Admittedly the organist does tend to have emo mood swings, randomly switching from relaxing, peaceful hymns to toccata and fugue style songs with a volume and darkness that would make slipknot proud and tend to appear unexpectedly when you’re trying to nap.

The tourists have the downside of bringing tourist sharks with them. Theres random guys waiting by the subway exits and wandering the piaza who will start to chat to you in english and offer you a string bracelet for good luck, except when they’re done, they ask you for money “for the luck”. Not in a pushy “you owe me money” way, but in a “got any spare change” way. They’re also always black, which is somewhat random. I’m guessing they’re all from the same country or something, but I have no idea which one.

Thursday I finally managed to get a couchsurfing host in milan, Denis in one of the suburbs known as garbanate milense. The train there was quite neat, it was the first time I’ve been on a double decker train.

Denis was kind enough to make me dinner, a simple, but impressively tasty dinner of gnoccci in tomato sauce (note to self: put cherry tomatoes in tomato sauce, also apparently putting a tiny bit of milk in takes away the sourness), with sliced meat and bread. He also introduced me to pickled aubergine, which is surprisingly tasty on bread.

edward not on wheels anymore-now what?

admin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:16:06 +0000

gah, so may damn emails to write to people, you can all just read it here…

The short version is:

“fell off bike near lugano, fractured wrist, but still alive. arm in cast, made it to milan, trip home organised, going to spend 2 months in plymouth then start again”

got all that?

Well, I got my arm fixed, after having much fun with the hospital and not speaking italian and spent a few days bumming around the hostel in lugano. Now I’m in milan, also bumming around in a hostel, but meeting more couchsurfers tommorrow. Since I can’t cycle, i’ll be leaving my bike here with someone until I can come back and pick it up, so getting home will be easy enough (and hopefully paid by the insurance company).

After that I’ll probably stay in plymouth until I recover and I already expect to be busy for every waking hour of it *cough*Barcamp*cough*

so, I’m still alive, shockingly busy and generally still making mayhem.

Edward on wheels-day 14-Milan

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:17:10 +0000

Today was my last day in Lugano and Switzerland, as I got a train in the morning to Milan. This was quite fun as it involved trying to get my bike on the train one handed, but I managed. The train was pretty quick, but it took a long stop at the italian border so they could check passports.

Once I got to Milan, I locked my bike up at the station and headed to a hostel, since I didn’t fin any couchsurfer hosts in time. The milan underground system is a strange and confusing place if you have experienced the london underground. Apparently you don’t need to sell a kidney every time you want a ticket, its very odd. A single journey is €1 and a 24 hour ticket is €3, which works on the underground, trams and buses. Internet cafes are vastly cheaper here as well. The internet cafes in Lugano cost from £3 to £5 an hour, here they cost £1.50 to £3, which was much more useful.

For dinner I went to the supermarket and picked up some kind of local equivilent of the pastie, since the hostel only had a microwave. I also made the wise choice of buying a big bag of biscuits and a bag of bread stick things, which managed to last me as breakfast and lunch for almost a week.

Unfortunately I seem to be quite tired now, I think its the arm doing it to me, combined with the normal intensity of travel, I seem to be quite mood swingy and need a lot of nap time It also makes my brain fuzzy, which isn’t good when I have so much to organise.

I went out to meet a bunch of couchsurfers for apertivo, but I got somewhat lost, so by the time I got there, they’d all buggered off.

Edward on wheels-day 13-Lugano

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:55:10 +0000

I went to the hospital today to get my arm checked out again and also, after much fun with voip, international calls, language barriers, faxes and different departments managed to get my EHIC wotsit faxed through to the hospital so the NHS would pay for the treatment. The actual medical bit was pretty quick, they just whacked on another layer of cast plastic and told me to wait for it to dry, then bugger off.

The downside was that my bike had somewhat vanished a bit. I was foolish enough to leave it locked up by the door of the emergency ward, so they had to cut the lock and move it since it was getting in the way. I didn’t panic too much when I found it was missing, since I guessed this was what happened and after much going up and down stories of the hospital I managed to get it out of the building maintenance office and pushed it back to the hostel.

At the hostel, I had been talking to a swiss guy called Mike who has been travelling the world for years and he was now talking to Christina, a dutch nurse, so we decided we’d go get dinner together. I suggested the pizza place Gianni took me to on the first night, since it was close, cheap and good.

My arm seems to be getting better, its not really painful anymore.

Edward on wheels-day 11 & 12-Lugano

admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:45:01 +0000

I did sod all these two days, other than spend stupid amounts of time in front of a computer screen organising things. I stayed in the hostel for a couple of nights, as Gianni’s girlfriend was staying over so there was no room for me and I couldn’t find another CS host. That said, I’m still hugely appreciative of how much help Gianni had been, without him, life would have been a lot more difficult. At the Hostel I did manage to find a Larry Niven book in english which kept me occupied for a while, especially since I haven’t read any good sci fi in ages.

On saturday Gianni took me to a grotto in the hills for lunch, a proper old school italian restaurant. It was cheap and cheerful, but dammit the food was good. I had Polenta with beef and aside from trying proper polenta for the first time, the beef was probably the best beef I have ever tasted, it was amazing. The polenta went incredibly well with the gravy and it costing only £7 made it taste all the better.

Edward on wheels-day 11-lugano

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:22:52 +0000

I spent most of today wandering aimlessly around lugano with nothing much to do, which is admittedly a fun hobby, since this place looks amazing.

Lugano is on the edge of a lake, is surrounded my some of the biggest mountains in europe and has almost tropical weather. It also has free wifi by the lakeside

I did end up trying roast chestnuts for lunch, which are very very weird tasting indeed.

In the evening I met up with Gianni again, but while I was was waiting for him, two random guys wandered up and asked my about my arm. It turned out they were missionaries and doing good deeds is part of their remit, so they wanted to know if there was anything they could do to help (and also to convert me a little bit), which was nice, but there wasn’t much I really needed other than help getting dressed, which I don’t think they would have been interested in.

I had made a half assed effort to organise a couchsurfing meeting, to which a grand total of one other person turned up, a girl called Merche. We chatted for a while, but she had to bugger off, so I went out for dinner with gianni again, meeting up with some of his work colleagues as one of them was leaving for germany and having a dinner. I ended up having one of the best damn pizzas ever for about £8.

edward not on wheels anymore

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:00:16 +0000

well, I appear to have hit a small snag. And when I say snag, I mean pavement.

The good news is I’m atill alive and everthing is ok, the bad news is I have a fractured wrist and have my right arm in a cast for the next 6 weeks.

Everything was going just dandy on the way to lugano, when I decided to get off the busy road and onto the pavement for a bit, except that is ot something my bike likes doing. I have slick, thin tires anda rigid frame, so the front wheel goes up on the kerb fine ,but the back wheel is still heading parallel to the kerb at about 10mph and can’t get up the kerb.

this means the back of the bike is going a different direction to the front, so the whole thing just falls over, dumping me on the pavement.

I didn’t get hurt too bad and 2 cars pulled over to check I was ok, which was nice of them. luckily I crashed right next to a train station, so I was in lugano and then in a taxi to the hospital without much bother.

much fun was involved in getting treatment thanks to the language barrier, but eventually it all got sorted, I got diagnosed with a fractured wrist bone and a tiny fracture near my elow that they’re not bothering with, so now I have a cast on up to my elbow.

So now I have the fun question of what to do next, since cycling is definitly out. most likely I will head back to plymouth for 6 weeks to lick my wounds and then fly back here and pick up where I left off.

Edward on wheels-day 10-Lugano

admin — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:21:52 +0000

Jean daniel suggested I visit one of the castles in bellinzona, so early in the morning I head there and find what looks like one the the installations from Halo. Its very weird and I keep expecting Flood and covenant to start appearing.

The cycling involved an unexpectedly huge uphill, Mont Ceneri, which took about 6km of uphill and was a pretty hardcore way to start the morning. But, for every uphill, there it a downhill.

However, after that, things went a little bit wrong…

I made it down the mountain and had managed to get off the cycle route and onto a busy main road, so I thought it would be a good idea to get off the road and onto the pavement where it would be safer. This turned out to be not a good idea.

The front wheel went up onto the pavement ok, but the back wheel was too heavily weighed down by the panniers and got dragged along the road parrallel to the pavement, so the front wheel was going one direction, but the back wheel and the momentum was moving in another, so the whole bike toppled over and tossed me onto the pavement. Luckily I fell in the pavement direction instead of onto the road and I managed to get the brakes on, so I wasn’t moving very fast, but I landed pretty badly, and my wrists took most of the impact.

A couple of cars stopped to check I was ok and after picking myself up I was pretty sure and had some nice road rash on my hands, but everything functioned ok, so they left me to it. I was pretty close to a railway station, so I got on a train to lugano and by that point my right arm wasn’t really working right, so I got a taxi to the hospital.

At the hospital, much fun ensued trying to get my european health card details and checking my insurance, since I had neither actual document, but only the insurance details written down. They checked me out and apparently I have a fractured wrist bone and a small fracture near my elbow, so they need to put my forearm in a cast, but the elbow will heal by itself, so I don’t need it cast. So they put a cast on me and tell me to bugger off and come back in 4 days.

Afterwards I head to my couchsurfing host, Gianni and since I can’t be assed with making dinner myself we head out to get a pizza. He takes me to his favourite pizza place and I have a seriously kickass pizza for about £7.

Afterwards some of his work colleagues were meeting at a bar, so we joined them briefly. They were self described “uber geeks” and given that they worked at a robotics research institute, they certainly lived up to this claim. Normal people don’t use the word “hueristics” in normal conversation…