Milan - Italian Fashion, Italian Passion
I was sent to Milan to cover a story about aspects of the city and its passion for football. I could not have timed my few days in the city better.
AC Milan were playing on one of the days at the San Siro Stadium. For £10, about a tenth of the price of a Premier League match in the UK, I bought myself a ticket. Apparently the stadium is considerd one of the meccas of European Football.
On the very same day Iocal rivals Inter Milan were announced as winners of the Championship and so I headed for the town centre and the predominance of red and black at the San Siro gave way to the blue and black of Inter Milan. Huge flags were being waved from car windows and by pillion passengers on scooters, cars stopped in the middle of busy streets for fans to jump out and run around in circles waving their beloved colours.
Throughout the celebrations it poured and one of my £5000 'weather sealed' Nikon cameras stopped working! I had to retire to a nearby gents to place it under the hand drier and get it back in action.
I returned to outside the Duomo and climbed onto the statue in the central quad with a multitude of fans and was able to shoot the remarkable spectacle of passion, energy and delight.
I do not follow football but it was something to witness the joy of half of the cities populous.
My lack of Italian also meant I used Google translate to show to the Italians I would meet to explain who I was shooting for and ask permisssion. I was covering many parts of the city.
Fortunately I asked the writer of the article to cross check what I had printed out. Inadvertenty I had asked to kill people, the literal translation of,
"I am shooting for " and "May I shoot you for . . ."
I have no idea what a jail in Milan would be like but the female police officers wore heels!