My not so secret Italian love affair

After the big success of first Nicole's story... THE NEW STORY of Nicole Heyermann.

My friend Corrado, someone who bills himself as a true ‘Milanese’ is always telling me that Milan is soooooooooooo boring. Same people, same places all the time. And everyone, and he means EVERYONE, is antipatico. According to him there are no amusing or polite people in Milan. ‘You have to get out of Milan’ he insists, ‘if you want to have good experiences in Italy’.

I fully disagree, and not just because I happen to be a foreigner in a very strange place called Italy. Take this morning for instance. I stepped into the elevator to go up to work, oblivious with my ipod on, pressed the button for the 6th floor, and somewhere between the ground and first floor the elevator got stuck.

Now this elevator isn’t your standard automatic American contraption. It is sort of circa 1930, has an outer door and two inner doors, all three of which you must close completely or else the elevator refuses to budge. I had carefully shut all of them and so was completely bewildered as to why this had happened. I pressed and pressed the buttons again, rang the alarm for the portinaia (who wasn’t there) and then started to panic. Not from claustrophobia or anything mind you, but from the thought that I wasn’t in America anymore where service is immediate and I where I would have been freed inside of three minutes.

No, I live in Italy, where even purchasing basic food items takes a bit of thought and effort. I predicted that it would be a complete ‘casino’ (mess) to get out of this cabin, and would take the better part of the day. As I tried to think of what to do I could hear people on the other floors calling down to me. Who is in the elevator? Ah, Signora are you ok? We will call someone to help you! What’s wrong with the damn elevator again?, etc. I managed to find the emergency service number and they picked up on the first ring (amazing!). ‘Signora are you stuck in an elevator?’ the lady on the other end of the line asked me. ‘Si! Si!’ I said, ‘sono imprigionata nell’ascensore!’ (I’m imprisoned in the elevator!) I replied. She asked me for my phone number and said that a technician would be right over to help me. He would be there in ten minutes.

Highly skeptical that this guy would show up any time in the near future, I made myself comfortable on the floor, with newspaper in hand. After a little while I heard a voice come up the shaft saying ‘Wait just a minute Signora and I will free you!’. And the good, good man did do so, with a smile and an apology that I had to wait so long. How charming.

Moral of the story? Nothing works here exactly the way you expect it to. Someone tells you that the Milanese are antipatico, and they are the first people to offer to help when you really need something. They are amusing and polite. There are public transport strikes, endless levels of bureaucracy, and everything and everyone is always late. If you happen to do something complicated like trap yourself in an elevator however, efficient is the only word I can think of to describe the experience.