Salone del Mobile Milano

I remember from the childhood, the granny started to fuss a month before Christmas or Easter. Because it is necessary to clean and cook everything in time. That huge freezer is still standing at her place because it is vital to buy all the products in advance so that the pre-holiday speculators couldn’t profit from doubled prices.

Those fun times are long gone, and the ongoing era or AirBnB, low-cost airlines, and supermarkets with promotional stickers won’t let you save a dime. If you want to fly to Milan, then kindly pay 150 euro for the tickets to and fro, if you’re going to fly with luggage, then 30 euro on top, and if during the Salone del Mobile period, then be prepared to pay all 300. There’s an impression that nothing else is going on for the rest of the year: there’s the preparation for an exhibition, the exhibition, and then everybody packs their bags and leaves to prepare parmesan and sun-dry the pork.

You arrive at the airport, which is also the local landfill of solid household waste, this is how dirty it is; you find out that it will be cheaper to buy out your rented car that to pay off the insurance, and then you thank the Lord that by some coincidence, they managed to give you the car at 23:55, although all the offices work till 19:00.

It’s kinda weird that in the era of total availability, all the signboards are duplicated in all sorts of Italian dialects rather than in English. And then, you nonetheless get into the holy of the saints of global design: into the dark, musty hangars of Salone del Mobile. There’s also an option to go to the downtown to appreciate the solo exhibitions, as well as the works of young designers, but in the epoch of globalization  the name doesn’t mean a thing, the brands are being valued: Minotti, Poliform, Bugatti, Turri, Fendi, and many others that nobody has ever heard of but for the designers.

And so, when your eyes start to tear off from the constant darkness, in which the separate products are illuminated with a stroboscope, and your breath is being taken away not from the beauty but from the three hundred Chinese who are photographing each screw from the morning, you understand that there have passed only 15 minutes of the most anticipated horror of the year. You start looking for the familiar faces, find those, share the impressions, analyze, plan the route one more time, and go ahead running around.

The stitch on the couch for 20k euro is crooked, the kitchen for 30k euro has a twisted facade, the kitchen hood for 2k euro has the performance of a toy fan, you understand that you made it to the department of novelties, you need to spend time more efficiently, let’s better go to the section of proved manufacturers. And there the disappointment again, everything is just the way you expected: the same fabrics, the same level stitches, the same well-crafted stone and wood (at home nobody can do that - no equipment -  it’s too expensive), the same minimalistic design as it was 2 and 5 years ago. The colors have slightly changed though.

A random wardrobe in Zara jacket will remind you of "no photo." Got tired, leave to take some rest, will continue tomorrow. It does not matter that it's only 7:10 pm. Everything apart from the large supermarkets is closed a long time ago. All the workers have got into their Fiats to prevent you from getting to your house, rented though. And there, you're already sitting on the porch with a glass of wine and chatting with the owner of the villa.

It turns out that not only Milan lacks coziness and beauty. The business capital of Italy - this is the thought of an average Italian about Milan - it doesn’t have to be pretty, business requires convenience. That is why most of the Milan dwellers try to settle in the suburb, and that is why the traffic jams are so severe.

The second day is much more interesting - you already know what stands where, solve specific tasks: here is the sofa for the apartment B, there are the garden furniture pieces for the house K, the chairs for the office M… a sandwich with a cup of coffee… familiar faces! Where else the people from Lviv could meet if not in Milan. Now, it is possible to finish the review of new products. An interesting exhibition of the company from Kyiv. The quality is worse than in Poliform, but the guys know what they do.

The third day is the best! We’ve decided to find the most beautiful thing that there is in Milan, a road pointed to the Lake Como, and then headed there. It doesn’t matter that not a single cafe opens until 2:00 pm, you forget about the hunger once having passed by an awfully tasteless house of George Clooney, and incredible landscape of the lake reveals in front of you. Probably, the mafia at their time worked on a city-planning concept in those regions. Overwhelmed with the emotions from an incredible landscape, we had enough strengths to normally react on the boorishness of airport security, an unpleasant flight on Ukraine Idiotic Airlines, and even a full working Friday after a sleepless night.

If you are very interested in the novelties of the world's interior design, you've never been to Milan, and if the love to everything beautiful can serve you as food and water, then go to the Como Lake in May and for saved money, get yourself a smartphone and sign up on facebook. The road surrounding the Lake Como is the most beautiful thing we've seen during the Milano exhibition.