Crepuscolo is the Italian word for twilight or dusk. I never knew that til I asked google translate just now. Just like ‘calice’, it’s not a word in my Italian vocabulary.

Right now I’m sitting out the front of my hotel in Treviso enjoying the crepuscolo. You need to be a certain distance away from the equator to experience twilight- we get it in Melbourne but not in Brisbane, nor in Sydney or Perth. I’m sinking a beer whilst I wait for the hotel buffet to open and thinking that my work here is done, soon I will be home enjoying the dusk on my front porch in Avondale Heights.

At moments like this, I am reminded that life is good.

I’ve now been abroad and on the road for over three weeks and I am starting to feel pretty tired and homesick. Not counting day trips to Asti and Magenta, Treviso is my ninth stop on this trip. I’ve seen as much new stuff as I can handle for a while and I am getting tired of all the pasta and pizza, and need some old fashioned Australian junk food.

After walking around great distances each day I am footsore and weary. I still have a day left on my euro rail pass but I can’t find the energy to use it to hop on a train to Venice from Treviso station.

Two more sleeps and I’m on a plane home. I find I’m looking forward to it.

As an aside, I brought eight books over with me in my luggage to read on the train or in those hours when my legs will not carry me any further and it is still too early for dinner (that is, the restaurants are yet to open). I’ve read and jettisoned all eight, so today, just when my weariness means I need books more, I have had to go and buy from the limited English language selection at the bookshop at Treviso station (I’m not going to bother making the effort to read in Italian unless it’s Moravia or Calvino).

Last night I did dinner with a legion of my cousins and their families at Charlott, a Charlie Chaplin themed pizza restaurant which is in the centre of Cusignana, my father’s home village (and therefore my own ancestral home).

Great to see my cousins again, and to meet one of the latest additions to the extended family.

What impressed me about Charlott is that it has the largest pizza menu, in terms of different pizzas to choose, I have ever seen anywhere. I was too busy catching up with the kinfolk to count them, but there surely were over a hundred options on the menu. Like wow, and in my own village too!

The province of Treviso is my ancestral homeland, on my father’s side. The medieval city with its walls, moat and canals has a unique charm. I spent three hours this morning walking through the city.

The Gate of St Thomas on the north side of the city was completed in 1518, and the cathedral is the latest version of something going back to late Roman times. The restaurant I lunched in yesterday is in a building from the 1400s. And for a while there, Treviso was an independent city state before it voluntarily chose to join the Venetian republic.

This really is a world away from Melbourne suburbia, where finding a horseshoe from a milk cart buried under 50 years of bitumen is the most historically significant encounter you are likely to have.

Not far from my hotel in Milan is an area filled with well designed new skyscrapers. This 25 storey building has been designed as an urban vertical forest, covered in shrubs and bushes equal to what would cover an entire hectare of land.

Aside from this, a lot of other buildings appear to have enormous rooftop gardens. Milan seems to attract the best talent and ideas in design and innovation.

Magenta is a town on the railway line just outside Milan. It is also the location of the Wallaby Australian Pub.

I visited yesterday and had a beer and a chat with the owner, an Italian chap who has owned it since 2007 (it’s been there since 1994) and has fond memories of drinking Guinness at the Hero of Waterloo whilst in Sydney on a holiday many years ago.

The beer was a Coopers Red label, and he mentioned that some of the locals dislike the yeast precipitate in the bottle. I suggested he adopt the Australian practice of rolling the stubby, as is traditional with Coopers. He said it was impossible to get Fosters anymore and I said I did not mind because Coopers was now the only major Australian brewery not owned by Asahi or Kirin.

As you can see, there were outlines of kangaroos or wallabies around the place, and he had made a sincere attempt to get other paraphernalia like a slouch hat, a didgeridoo and a big picture of the Olgas.

Kangaroo burger is also on the menu.

Compared to what I saw in Rome, this is a far more committed attempt at an Australian Bar. And it has a nice pub atmosphere too.

But as Milan is so like Melbourne, could I expect less here? Milan is an excellent choice as s sister city.

This is my third day in Milan and I must say that I love this place. It is a living city, where the modern sits perfectly with the past, ie the fascist era, Risorgimento, renaissance and medieval buildings.

In many ways, it is similar to but classier than my home city Melbourne, which has a lot of grand Victorian buildings amidst Art Deco and contemporary skyscrapers etc, combined with grand parks. Milan is also the sporting capital of Italy and is criss crossed by an extensive tram network.

But the level of sophistication and quality of style and design – quite apart from the history – lifts it to another level.

The only thing missing is ready access to the sea.

When I was 6, my grade one class went on an excursion to Montsalvat, the artist colony in Eltham which looks rather medieval. I’ve never been back, although I occasionally ponder it – they probably have luthiers there but not coopers, and I have more need for a cooper than a luthier.

I did not expect to find something along those lines in Italy, ie a faux medieval village, but here we are. The Borgo Medievale is in Valentino Park on the banks of the Po, and is a late 19th recreation of what a fortified medieval Piedmontese village would look like.

I’m not surprised to find this in the city of the Savoys. I found a fantastic old quarter in Salerno a few days ago, but the Savoys demolished almost everything old in Turin, leaving a crass Risorgimento era city. That they would have paid to create a fake medieval village on the grounds of what was one of their palaces is not exactly surprising.

It’s very well done, and looks beautiful, but it’s just an imitation of what has been destroyed, paid for by the people who did the destruction – it is just as well the Savoy family did not rule in the age of the bulldozer and modern demolition charges.

As a side note, the woman at the desk in my hotel told me that it was the real medieval heart of Turin. This just shows how out of touch with history many people are, probably most people. This is dangerous as it makes us all much easier to fool, and on more important things than this….

I went to Oktoberfest this evening in Valentino park. Whilst it was meant to start around 6.30pm (this is me giving benefit of the doubt as I suspect the advertising said 6pm but am not certain), the beer did not start flowing til after some inauguration ceremony featuring a band and some people addressed up like extras from Amadeus.

By then, it was 7.15pm and people had started walking out in droves. As the event had wasted at least 45 minutes of my time, I stayed for one beer in a plastic cup and went back to my hotel. It struck me as a particularly joyless event with hardly anyone in attendance.

In Valentino Park today, I saw squirrels! This is quite cool as I have never seen squirrels before. Sadly I think these are American grey squirrels, an invasive species. This is a positive mark on the ledger for Turin.