Near the airport of Malpensa, just underneath you as your plane approaches landing in Milan, there is an ecomuseum. It’s in the middle of a small forest, close to where planespotters take position and from there, one can see the underbellies of planes flying in every two minutes right above the tree tops overhead.
The ecomuseum is a surreal place. A strip of land that used to be the wartime military runway or some kind of air force training grounds or an open-air warehouse… not sure exactly what it was during WWII but it laid abandoned for some decades afterwards. Until someone local decided to overtake this strip with the most moving open air display of old time land-working tools. I’ll post about it some other time, you just have to believe me for now how gorgeous these installations are. Then, a few years ago the strip was cleared, compacted and made walkable and has now become a connecting walking avenue between Malpensa and the former Austro-Hungarian Customs, a historic building in the town of Tornavento nearby.
The most moving part is where the caring hand has written, then nailed to a roadside tree, an invective directed to all the unbelievers who “put an obstacle in the fight” for the creation of that forest walk. Complete with a photo from 1993, showing the before of the current after. It’s an “I told you so”, but instead for a dream come true.
It’s heartbreaking.
Notes from Chronotopia 