Everyone's moving to Milan

Everyone's moving to Milan

How Italy’s creative and financial hub has become a respite for global citizens to mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto...

The maitre d’ was making me a poncho from a bin bag. It was raining heavily – fat spring rain that glossed the cobbles and made the bankers on their bicycles skid as they cut the corners. He poked two arm holes in the sides of the bag. “Milano chic!” he proclaimed, and then made another hole where my head would go. “For cigarettes,” he explained, offering me one to light up. It was about 4pm, an hour or so after lunch service had finished (tonnarelli with cacio e pepe and some red shrimp on top, plus some tiramisu, plus some ice cream). I’d had to return to Il Solferino because I’d left my wallet there, and the wallet contained a little pouch, and the little pouch contained an engagement ring, and the engagement ring contained my life’s savings. The group of waiters and cooks, about a dozen of them, having their early supper from a vast spaghetti pot, looked alarmed as I burst in, soaking wet and English and flustered. The maitre d’ handed me the wallet at once (he also gave me a rose stem, which may or may not mean he looked inside it), and said: “We could have just dropped it to your house this evening.” I said I was staying at a hotel and leaving tomorrow, unfortunately, but thank you anyway. “Oh, I thought you lived here,” he said. “All the English live here.” And he went back to tailoring his bin bag. He seemed to be contemplating pockets.

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