Discovering Italy

Yesterday was my first full day in Milan! I woke up quite late in the morning - only me and Anabella were at Via Andora, all the rest went to WENA PM. So I was chatting whole morning (and actually whole day- all the time when I connected to internet) with people, telling about my first impressions, the team, etc.
Then we were cooking lunch for delegates - around 60 sandiches, we made a nice sandivch production line, I'd say! :) Then we had a lovely trip with Anabella in the centre of Milan - we saw Castello Sfozesco, Arca della Pace, Duomo. Everything was so beautiful! Especially I was amazed by Duomo, as it was written it served as a symbol of Milan since 1387.
The story of Duomo is Here , I'd say that this is one of the most gorgeous and majestic places I've ever seen! These are some pictures of Duomo











Piazza del Duomo (a square in front of Duomo) is really crowded, you can see lots of tourists there. It brings you this feeling of internationalism, it's something that I have a chance to experience only abroad, unfortunately it never happened in Ukraine.
In the center there are a lot of people, foreigners mainly, selling different stuff - bags and wallets from "Dolce Gabbana, Cavalli" and lots of other falsifications.
We came back home tired, but happy! It was my first Get to Know Milan and I liked it a lot;)))
Today was the first real transition day, by real transition I mean physical one - it was even better then the virtual one that we had with Federico before!:)
Then I volunteered to go to Bonolla (a big shopping centre where we do shopping for a week). I went there with Cisco (current MCP) and I think I looked quite strange, because I was staring like wild person to lots of things ;)) Of course I didn't remember everything what was new for me - my biggest impressions so far are: the whole line with different kinds of pasta ( we took at least 4 different ones and I'm going to try the rest till the end of the year!), different sauces to pasta, 4 or 5 types of salads etc. What amazed me apart from prices (prices are really - really high) was the thing that people use gloves when they take fruits and vegetables (they put on gloves because some other people were touching this bananas or whatever). So by the end of our shopping tour I decided that next time I go for it as well, because I'm sure that there are lots of other things to discover!:)
Then we had dinner.. at 9 pm, was quite strange for me to eat so late. but seems like I'll have to get used to meals here - Italians have very light breakfasts, normal lunches and heavy dinners that usually start at 8.30 - 9 pm. A big room for changing and weight gaining:)))
The last but for sure not the least what I'd like to mention are people. Of course 2 days are far not enough to draw any kind of colnlusions , but here a lot of my stereotypes about Italians are broken. So far they show really good professional approach to evertything we do connected to work. And the same with personal approach and relations that they have. I really started to feel like home here (Anabella, you were completely right), I love this friendly atmosphere that is created here. I really envy, in a good way, to current team Cisco, Stuart, Cinzia, Gege, Laura and Carolina Boromero (Matteo will forgive this wrong spelling of his nickname:)) to the relations that they have within the team, it really seems like they value each other a lot, they know each other a lot, the way they make fun from each other. They are really like brothers and sisters here and I really hope that we can have same realtions and attitude to each other next year in the new team:)
So, maybe it's how the honeymoon stage of cultural shock looks like but I fully enjoy it for now!
And I feel happy, really happy!