And now? The way back to the hotel when it was dark! Always an adventure when you can barely remember where you came from, so like proper sheep we just followed the masses, expecting them to head to the same subway station we came from. Aaaaand…that turned out not to be the case. After asking for directions “djust go-a straight on-ah!” we found our way back. Genius brother had lost his subway ticket so had to buy a new one, and what do you know, he wasn’t the only one! What surprised me was there were actually people walking around there assisting everyone. I’ve never, ever seen that anywhere, who knew the world could learn something from the Italians when it comes to organizing a concert (Pay attention Dzjermans!). We found our way back to the hotel, no bags still so we went back to bed.

The next morning 7:30, barely awake, the brother was wide awake trying to locate our bags. “YEAH NOT NOW MAYBE LATER” and I went back to sleep. This ritual followed 3 times up until the point that he got slightly frustrated with my lack of engagement to finding our bags. I got dressed and went downstairs to the lobby to ask the receptionist to make a phone call for us in Italian. And what do you know? They picked up the phone within a minute, and after a 5 minute phone call he received the number of the courier, he made another call, and the bags would be here in just an hour. I went back to the hotel room to bring the news to the brother who jumped up for joy, then jumped in the shower, and we resorted to getting ready as we had to check out by now. After waiting in the lobby for 30 minutes our luggage finally arrived and we freshened ourselves up, and within 45 minutes we raced ourselves to Milan Central Station to get on the train to Torino. Well done, only a 3 hour delay after our bags had been delivered a whopping 48 hours later than planned. More on the compensation later.

Torino’s a relatively small city, half a day’s work walking around a bit and you’re done. There is one major attraction if you like you’re a petrol head like me though; it houses the Museo dell'Automobile, one of the worlds oldest car musea, and, according to The Times, one of the 50 best musea in the world. What not many people know, is that Turin has been of great importance to car history. Fiat originates from Turin, but also Lancia and Bertone and Pininfarina, the latter two being design houses who have designed cars for Lamborghini and Ferrari. The museum obviously showcases a lot of Italian cars which have been of great importance to the history of the car…according to the Italians, while the truth is that Italian cars to this day represent both speed, but mostly unreliability, despite quality being much better than it was in the eighties and early nineties. It’s pointless to point out all the highlights located here but the museum indeed is beautiful. Not a car buff? That shouldn’t stop you from visiting, my brother doesn’t give a shit about cars but he enjoyed it nearly as much as I did. What was remarkable to see was the difference between the American and European car industry. Where Europeans kept trying to find a way to make cars lighter and faster, the Americans kept making cars heavy and slow. A thing that, a few years ago, has meant the end of the American car industry as American cars are hard to sell over here, while European and Japanese cars are much wanted over there now that gas prices are going up this much. To illustrate this, I’ll post two cars from roughly the same area, yet the differences are obvious nonetheless. Whether one is more beautiful is up to you though…

A Mercedes-Benz 500 K from Europe. Smaller engine, bigger weight, higher top speed…



And a Packard Super-Eight 1501 from America. Bigger engine, lower weight, lower top speed…



The museum took about 2 hours and we then walked past the river Po back to the city center. The weather was absolutely gorgeous so we both got our tan on again. First thing was the Polytechnic University of Turin, one of the most important engineering universities in the world. It’s no surprise many Italian car factories originate from Turin with an engineering university located in the same city; no shortage of employees. The building on the photo houses the architecture division of the university. And to be fair, it’s not too shabby looking for a university either;



With us being later in Turin than planned and it being a Sunday most restaurants and shops were closed by the time we were getting to the city center. The plus side of this was it not being so crowded. The downside was, well, the hunger really. After a quick bite to eat at a nice little restaurant located in a small street we continued our stroll. Turin is a beautiful city to just walk through. There’s not many interesting sights here, but the general atmosphere in the city was great, and I in fact liked it more than Milan, probably due to most tourists always going to Milan, another reason why visiting other cities pays off.

Onwards to Piazza Castello, which as it turned out really is the only piazza worth visiting in Turin. And you won’t believe it, but Piazza Castello is named after…the castle in the middle of the piazza. It wasn’t particularly interesting, the rearside of the castle houses the museum of ancient art. Didn’t bother with this one, but the building looked nice enough for a picture.



And located on the left is this:



The Royal Palace of Turin. I don’t think anyone would complain if I’d turn up the volume of my amp a bit too much. After this we headed back to the ho2el as it was getting late already and we were supposed to get on the train to Genova the next morning. Like I said, Turin doesn’t offer many sights but is a nice city to walk through;