S506

Last night we went to one of the few places in Milan that was actually open. I'm not kidding about this, people - the city is shuttered and we're running out of things to do. Everyone else is at the seashore or sucking in buckets of fresh air at the mountains but jokes on them because last night we got to see a submarine in the middle of Milano!

We went to the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” di Milano - aka the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. It was open for the evening in celebration of the S506 Enrico Toti Submarine's one year anniversary at the museum. The sub had been trekked from Sicily to Cremona to Milan and last night celebrated its happy out-of-water life here in Milan.



The submarine is daunting and stands in the middle of an outdoor area featuring fighter planes and a giant lemon with 3 girls inside selling lemon icees and cocktails. Truth be told I think the giant lemon may have been for last night only but Stefano was happy to find a museum that not only had a giant submarine but drinks as well.

The Enrico Toti is the first submarine that Italy built after World War II and is called an SSK, Submarine-Submarine Killer. It's goal was to ferret out other submarines and destroy them. At over 150 feet long and armed with torpedoes, I wouldn't want it tailing me in the high seas.

The Italian public seems to be quite smitten with their land-locked sub and flocked out in droves to see it. So much so that by the time we arrived all of the tickets for touring the interior of the submarine were long gone.



Watching the news later that night we learned that people had lined up very early in front of the museum. Well, to say "lined up" is giving an undue impression of order. As I may have previously mentioned the culture here does not tolerate orderly lines. There's more of a mass blob approach where every unprotected inch of space will quickly be filled by an anxious Italian. This may have resulted in an injury. My comprehension of the facts was not perfect but in the TV footage there was an unhappy person standing very close to emergency medical personnel.

Going in the submarine is a project in and of itself. We witnessed the visitors signing what appeared to be waivers and then donning hairnets and hardhats. Hair nets and hard hats! How festive! They went perfectly with the jazz band jamming in the yard. In fact, had it not been for the flocks of mosquitoes alighting on you every time you stood still it would have been the perfect evening.

It was definitely fun though, and we can hardly complain. We had found something to do in Milan in August. And not only was there a giant lemon, but there were hard hats and a submarine. Find me a quaint little mountain town with that!