The advice given to me that “after 2 weeks’ immersion in Italy you’ll be speaking that language with ease” was totally wrong! No-one had higher expectations than I when, after completing a year of Italian language classes in Australia, I planned to live in Milan for four months and continue to study Italian.

Well, needless to say, two weeks came and went without any marked improvement. At that point I was barely able to recognise any familiar words when overhearing conversations of fellow passengers on trams and metros or in cafes. Everyone spoke so fast and seemed to roll their words together so smoothly that it was hard to differentiate particular words.  No wonder no-one could understand me when I was carefully and slowly pronouncing what verbs I had mastered and clumsily rolled them into a sentence or question.

Early on in my Milan adventure I realised I was not as proficient as I thought I was when I attempted to pay for a meal at a restaurant with an American Express credit card. My query to the cashier, “pago con American Express?” was interpreted as a request for an Americano espresso which the barista graciously made for me. In an attempt to rectify the misunderstanding, I paid the bill using Visa while the barista drank the coffee!

10 Corso Como

Undeterred, and still hopeful that my Italian was improving, I tried again in a boutique along the trendy Corso Como at Porta Nuova. I did my best in Italian to explain what I liked to wear and what colours I preferred and I was pleasantly surprised when the assistant said that she could understand what I was saying (although she had to repeat the phrase in English so that I could check my understanding of her Italian)!  Finally I felt I was beginning to fit in.  Not surprisingly I bought a dress from her. Why do I now believe it was part of a clever sales pitch? Because assistants in every boutique or store since then all asked me to “please speak in English.”

Bar Sempione

Massimo inside the eclectic interior of Bar Sempione

As I discovered, memorable acquaintances were formed without the need for fluent Italian.  As my local barista, Massimo from Bar Sempione, became familiar with my daily visits to the cafe for a macchiato he would welcome me with ‘buongiorno madame,’ and he would blow me a kiss each time I called out to him ‘buona giornata’ as I left for class!  At a later stage of our acquaintance, in halting conversation with him I discovered that Massimo was 53 years old (numbers in Italian were more easy for me to recognise) and that he had lost two children – one at aged 6 months and the other at age 8 months. I conveyed to him that I felt sad for him. He made the sign of the cross, shrugged his shoulders and continued making coffees for other customers. As I was leaving and opened my wallet to pay him for my coffee he lightly put his hands over mine and he wouldn’t let me pay for it. Special moments like that still give me goosebumps!