Lyrics on Postcards

with a cameo from Milan

It’s not always the capital cities, the landmarks and the beauty spots that stay with you the longest.  Sometimes, it’s the places you come across by chance, or the places you were just passing through out of necessity, that you find yourself thinking back to again and again. For me, Tirano is one of those places.

To re-cap, for my 30th birthday my girlfriend and I embarked on an 11 day trip across Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The first part of the trip centres around The Bernina Express, a pillar-box red train that snakes through the Alps: starting in Tirano, Italy, and ending Chur, Switzerland. The Bernina Express is the reason we’re heading to Tirano – but more about that in part two.

I didn’t think about Tirano again until a long time after the trip had ended. My mind was so full of The Alps and cocktails bars and Julie Andrews that Tirano was quite forgotten about until I was sorting through my photos months later, and then I remembered it as if it were a dream – completely out of time and place.

10am, Wednesday 27th December 2017: Milan

Our plane is deposited into Milan airport on a small tornado. I’m scared of flying at the best of times, but it was one of those flights that’s just blustery clouds as far as the eye can see, dark enough for the aeroplane lights to be constantly blinking in the periphery of your vision. I felt an impending sense of doom throughout most of the flight, so I’m relieved to finally be on the runway. 

Of course Milan conjures up visions of stylish boutiques, and fashion parades set against a backdrop of Italian neoclassical architecture – but Jade and I spend most of our morning running backwards and forwards through a concrete high street, our faces turned down against the rain, trying to find a café with a toilet. We may as well be in Basingstoke outdoor shopping precinct. I begin to fear that my winter adventure through central Europe might not pan out as magically as I’d hoped. But still, the knowledge that we were in fact not in Basingstoke but in Milan makes it a lot more exhilarating. 

We did end up spending a lot of our time in The Crazy Cat café, so I can’t pretend Milan was unproductive, but the cat café may deserve its own post. 

2pm-ish: Milan – Tirano 

From Milan, we get the train to Tirano. Tirano (not to be mistaken with ‘Turino’ as I very nearly did when booking our accommodation) is one of the very furthest towns you can reach before Italy becomes the Swiss Alps.

The first half of our two-hour train journey from Milan to Tirano is pretty unremarkable: just the flat towns and grey Lombardy countryside. But then, we skim the edge of Lake Como, and the mountains build, first on one side of the train and then both. They’re not distant white mountains, but relatively low and close and grey, with houses built into their misty facades. But they’re still proper mountains, the kind of which I’ve never seen before. Far steeper, taller and more imposing than the most dramatic of Cornish cliffs. It feels like a sign of things to come.  

Our train arrives in Tirano just before five o’clock in the evening. It’s cold, and clinging to daylight. Everything seems suspended: no longer day, not yet night, no longer Christmas, not yet New Year. In a deserted square opposite the train station, a large fir tree has been decorated with bulbous red and blue baubles. There are a few mounds of compacted snow, and a closed pizzeria. 

There’s no other person in sight. 

We struggle with our suitcases across slippery cobbles and through puddles of melting snow, until we finally get to the hotel with its sign boasting ‘frei zimmern’. This acts alongside the ice and snow to remind us that we are on the border of Switzerland. This isn’t the Italy of movies and postcards with hot, colourful streets overflowing with red wine and buzzing with vespas. This is an icy, forgotten town that people pass through, but never really visit. 

After settling into our shabby room, and wondering whether the electrical cable trailing from inside the shower is ‘just a little bit on the risky side’ or ‘a conduit of certain death’, we decide to venture back into the land of melting ice and snow to explore the old, silent backstreets of Tirano. 

We didn’t realise just how old and silent they were until we were in them. Most of the town was built between 1400 and 1600, so we’re talking heavy mahogany doorways, lion-headed water fountains, and small, iron-barred windows cut into stone walls. The narrow and winding cobbled streets are lit by the sort of soft street lamps that allow you to pretend you’re in a medieval town being guided by candlelight. Just to kill the mood we have to use our phone lights to avoid falling into a pile of slush.

We obviously can’t resist the pull of Italian/Swiss civilisation (and food) for too long, so next we decide to explore the exquisite 20th century architecture of Tirano’s cafés and restaurants. Pasticceria Tognolini is a kitsch and colourful cake shop. Its charm is off the scale. There’s a glass cabinet with neat rows of pastel macaroons, mousses topped with swirls of chocolate and slices of oranges and raspberries. There are ornate gateaux decorated with cute marzipan characters and intricate frosted patterns. We sit on barstools opposite a large glass window, and I marvel at the fact I’m in Italy. I don’t think I’ll ever get fed up with how, on your first day in a new country, you can look back to waking up in your own bed earlier that very same day as though it’s a distant memory. In a world where months go by too quickly, it seems to be one of the few ways to slow and stretch time. 

For dinner, we end up in a cosy restaurant where they only speak Italian. Yes yes, I know. But still, it’s something that in my own narrow travelling experience is rare enough to be worth a mention. Luckily, Jade grew up in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish, so she does a better job at understanding and communicating in Italian than I ever could. Halfway through our starter, a group of five men with musical instruments bustle in off the street, briefly announce themselves, and burst into a merry jazz number. 

Thursday 28th December

We have tickets to board the Bernina Express at 2:45pm. We wake up early, and my goodness, something that I really had not appreciated yesterday in the murky half-light of the winter evening was THE ALPS. Now that it’s morning, their outline is sharp and striking against the sky. I’ve never seen anything quite like it –  however dramatic and beautiful I was expecting the mountains to be, it pales in comparison to the reality. It’s astonishing. Almost like glimpsing a fourth dimension. 

But we can’t stand gasping at natural wonders all day because a baser desire needs satisfying, and that is the desire for coffee. And maybe some sort of fancy Italian pastry, who knows. 

We end up in a light, airy café called Caffé Novecento, have the most perfect coffee and pastry for one eighth of the price of Starbucks, and discuss what to do next. Obviously the Bernina Express weighs heavy on my mind. The idea of being on it seems too good to be true, and I’m afraid that something will happen between now and then, and I’ll somehow be prevented from getting on it like in one of those maddening dreams where everything goes wrong –  but there’s no point worrying about it now, because we’ve got four hours to kill, and I don’t think either of us wants to spend that time staring at an empty train platform wringing our hands and waiting.

Tirano in the daytime is very different to the dark, ancient place of the previous night. For a start, there’s the mountains always in view, but then there’s also cars, dogs, traffic lights, locals going about their working day: all the same mundane sights as you’d find in any other town.

We visit the Santuario della Madonna di Tirano, a cathedral built at the behest of the Virgin Mary herself during an apparition to a nobleman in 1504. I don’t remember that much about the cathedral itself, and only have a couple of blurry photos to show for the visit, but the story behind it is certainly eventful. Apparently, the nobleman was lifted up and deposited in an orchard outside the walls of Tirano, before Mary revealed herself as the architect of his relocation with the words “know that I am the glorious Virgin Mary!” Then, she told him that unless he promptly began construction of a church in her honour, a large portion of the Tirano populace would die terrible deaths.

But that’s enough history for the insane. FINALLY, it’s time for the Bernina Express. (Part two to come!)