Milan Furniture Fair

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I shouldn’t really have gone to Milan this weekend because of schoolwork.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on things other than school recently, but this was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up.  I had bought a ticket with RyanAir, the ultra-budget airline from Ireland, for under €70 a month ago, so it wouldn’t have been a huge financial loss.  But I had been wanting to go to this international furniture fair, the Salone del Mobile, in Milan for as long as I can remember so I threw caution to the wind and went for it.  I couldn’t have gone under better conditions, as my friend Marcello (who is from Milan) was also going, and would be taking us on a guided tour of the city and the fair.  Being not only a local, but a design student at Politecnico Milan, he was the best person to see this city with.  Sharon, a student at TU Delft from Singapore, and her sister Kelly, were also traveling with us.

We flew from Eindhoven, the town where the Design Academy is located.  Jon Igharas, a classmate of mine from Emily Carr, is on exchange there, and met us at the airport to go to Milan as well.  A short flight later we were picked up by Gio, Marcello’s father, at the airport.  He took us to his house, about 30 minutes outside of the city where we met Marcello’s mother (Donata) and sister (Lydia), before dropping us off in the center of Milan.  By sheer coincidence, Marcello’s roommate  in Delft has an apartment 10 minutes walk from the Duomo in the center of the city, and she offered it to us for the weekend.  More stars were aligned that I thought possible. 

So with our base established, we spend the rest of the night in an area called Zona Tortona where many design studios and shops were open late to the public for this week.  This is where the madness and inspiration began for us.  So much clever and elegant design within such a small area.  The streets were packed with design-tourists well into the night.

The next day, Saturday, we headed early to the main conference center where the Salone was taking place.  I can only describe the excessive amount of space taken up by the exhibitors as obscene.  In this, the largest exhibition/conference center in the world, there were about 16 american-football field sized buildings full of furniture on exhibit.  In 6 hours, we got through nearly five of them, often at running pace.  It was mind-boggling, exhausting, inspiring, disgusting and more.  I took about 500 pictures during this day, and some of the best can be seen by clicking on the picture below (this link is only to the design-related photos, the rest of the trip photos are linked at the top of this post):

After the Salone we visited the Design Trienale, a design museum that had recently been renovated.  An exhibit here featured a show about what Italian Design is, and outside there was a Kartel garden display featuring huge plants in the shape of furniture.

Sunday was spent walking around the city visiting more exhibitions and stores, including a stop at the Boffi showroom.  For those unfamiliar with Boffi, it is the premiere luxury kitchen and bathroom manufacturer in Italy.  If you wanted a decent set of kitchen cabinets from them you could easily spend over $100,000.  So this was like design porn for someone who likes this kind of design – like me.  Dinner was spent with more friends of Sharon’s, who she had met when they were on exchange in Singapore.  Fantastic food was everywhere on this trip – I won’t go on about describing it.  After dinner we went to another restaurant for drinks and to just hang out, and guess who I ran into?  The whole crew of my classmates on exchange to various places from Emily Carr College.  Caine, Ranine, Jon, Jhon, Stephanie, and Zain had stumbled upon the same place we had chosen.  It was quite a trip sitting in a small Milanese eatery comparing notes with other students from Canada.  After that night I didn’t run into them anymore.

Marcello showed us the Politecnico on Monday, and we had lunch with some friends of his.  The school had some amazing architectural projects on display, but not too much industrial design.  It looked like a fun campus for sure though!  Some shopping followed, including the purchase of both a Louis Vuitton and a Prada bag by Kelly.  That night Marcello’s family treated us to a fantastic multi-course meal that lasted well into the night.  A true Italian family experience that we found out was actually quite short by their standards.  

In the morning Gio took us to the old city of Bergamo, on top of a hill, before dropping us off at the airport for another lovely (groan) RyanAir experience.

Jen in Holland!

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Arriving back in Amsterdam on Friday night, I was fortunate to have been offered the use of Timo’s apartment for the entire weekend.  I met him at his bother’s house, where he was staying, and we had a nice dinner.  He had decided not to go out dancing with me, so I took off solo for a club called Melkweg.  Steve Lawler (one of the best dark progressive house DJs on the planet, and one of my all time favourites, for those of you who don’t know) was on the decks and the timing was perfect for me.  Fly in from Morocco, see an awesome DJ, pick up my fiancé the next morning….. life is good.  At the club I made friends with a group of people who really reminded me of my friends in Vancouver.  They accepted me into the fold, and we all had a good time dancing our asses off.

The next morning I picked up Jen from the airport.  Waiting at the arrivals door, the anticipation was intense.  I hadn’t seen Jen for over ten weeks, and when she walked out into the hall, it was like a dream. She dropped her bag and book, and ran towards me.  At the last second she jumped into the air, and I caught her in my arms.  Real fairy tale stuff, I know!

We spent the weekend in Amsterdam riding around on rented bikes doing tourist stuff.  Canal boat tour, Red Light district, museums, etc.  On Sunday night we visited relatives of Jen’s north of Amsterdam, Gert and Susan.  They were fantastically nice, gave us dinner, and we chatted for a couple of hours.  Very nice hospitality.  We’ll look them up again for sure.  A late night train then took us home to Delft.

On Monday we picked up a friend’s bike for Jen and we explored Delft.  Jen had found the number of people and bustle in Amsterdam quite overwhelming, and was much more comfortable in Delft.  Part of the purpose for her visit was also to get a feel for what it will be like to live in the Netherlands for a while.  The rest of the week was mostly devoted to biking around Rotterdam and The Hague.

On Wednesday we visited The Hague on bicycle, and found it to be a very pretty town with lots of old buildings and beautiful neighborhoods.  We biked up to the beach north of the city, and saw many of the Consulate mansions along the way.  By the end of the day we had a pretty good feel for the city, and headed back to Delft.  The process was repeated on Thursday for Rotterdam.  This is a totally different city, and felt much more like Vancouver.  Most of the city was destroyed by bombing in WWII, so there are a lot of modern, tall buildings are found in the center.  We found a nice neighborhood to live in called Kralingen, which reminded us of Shaughnessy.

Friday we went back to The Hague to compare it again to Rotterdam.  This time we got a much better feeling for it, and came very close to deciding that this is the place to live.  We checked out the M.C. Escher museum too. Escher is Jen’s favourite artist so it was exciting to see originals here.  His work is unbelievable in its detail simplicity.  It blew my mind!  That night we went to a club to see what dancing was like here.  The music was OK, but it was mainly nice to be dancing together again.

On Saturday we hung out in the sun at the market all day, went to a movie, made dinner, and prepared for taking Jen to the airport the next day. The airport experience was a gong show though.  After a cancelled flight, changed flight, and overbooked flight, KLM finally gave Jen a hotel room for the night, some money, meals for a day, and a flight on Monday.  WOO HOO…. Another day with my girl!  I stayed at the hotel with her, and went back to Delft on Monday morning.

Morocco with Armel and the Castellans

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The end of the quarter (half a semester) saw the dawn of some more great adventuring for me on this side of the globe.  I took the plane on Friday to Casablanca, Morocco to hang out with my best friend Armel (and his girlfriend Sarah and his family) for a week.  The Castellans have a very good family friend from Morocco named Abellah who is the master of hosting in high style.  The occasion was for the wedding of his son, Cassim.  We stayed with Abdellah’s sister Latifah in a house big enough for three families.  It had four living rooms, a swimming pool, and was a ten minute walk from the beach.  Truly luxurious.

It was the biggest wedding I had ever seen, with around 600 guests.  It was a traditional Moroccan (Muslim) wedding and was very dramatic.  No alcohol of course, but the bride and groom had many different costumes and were carried around the room severeal times by troops of men,

Throughout the first two days in Casablanca we ate enough food for a week.  There was always a lunch to go to somewhere or dinner to enjoy with a different party of the family.  I’ve never eaten so much or so well in such a short time before.  I vowed to live on bread and water when I got back to my regular student life.  This was more like the life of VIPs or Diplomats.

We left Casa for Essaoira on Monday, a beautiful town further down the coast.  It has a very pretty old town right on the water, with an active fishing industry and tons of shops lining the streets.  We made a trip to the beach the next day, and enjoyed body surfing, fine sand, and a nasty blowing wind.  I’m still finding sand in my shoes and clothes from that day.  I have vivid memories of crunch teeth.

From there we drove inland, past Marrakech, and into the Atlas Mountains.  What a change of scenery along the way.  Until just after Marrakech it was all desert, but then we saw big mountains looming in the distance.  Everything became greener, and the mountains kept getting bigger.  I think the highest ones were up to 4000 feet high.  After sleeping in a hotel in the foothils, Sarah, Armel and I went for a run in the morning.  We crossed a river and ran up into a village that didn’t have roads big enough for cars.  It was like stepping back in time, and was perhaps the richest experience of our busy trip.

Following some more driving through the mountains, we returned to Marrakech for Dinner with Abdellah and another sister of his, Sekina (at whose house we slept).  But just before dinner we managed to insert a whirlwind trip to see the big mosque, the market, and the location for the second wedding which would happen the next day.  The location was the fanciest restaurant I had ever seen.  Too bad I had to leave the next morning.  Armel and I got up befor sunrise the next day and he took me to the train station.  Three hours later I was in Casablanca airport, waiting for the pland back to Amsterdam and reflecting on the wonderful week that had passed.  But it wasn’t time for school yet. Jen would be arriving the next day!