OUR TRIP TO MILAN, ITALY

In August 2009 Elder and Sister Howlett attended the 75th IFLA “World Librarians’ Conference” which was held in Milan, Italy. Our assignment was to prepare and take a part of the FamilySearch display, three computers, monitors, keyboards, and two printers along with all that would be needed to put them into operation in the conditions that were to be provided by the conference organization.
We were able to get all of the necessary materials prepared, load them in the car, and be ready to leave by 06:00 on Saturday, 22 August. We drove south through

Germany to Basel Switzerland without problem, but at Basil we ran into serious traffic delays. It took us more than an hour to move through the first five or so kilometers into Switzerland. We finally got moving again and tried to move on in such a way we didn’t lose any more time, but our GPS system confused us so we got onto a wrong road and lost a little more time. Eventually we made it almost through Switzerland, but found ourselves again in a long line of extremely slow traffic waiting to get through the 17 Kilometer long tunnel that goes through rather than around the Swiss Alps along the border with Italy. Again we lost time, so we were a little more than an hour late getting to the Milan Conference center, but those we were to meet and work with were there and ready to help. We were able to complete the setup and testing of the computers and display materials, and satisfy ourselves we could be ready for the opening which was to be on Sunday early afternoon (14:00).
We did not feel we could leave the computers and printers there overnight, so we repacked them and put them back into the car together with the cases, etc. for all of the other stuff we had taken. The workgroup then went to a Pizzaria for something to eat before going to the hotel to get checked in and get some rest for the opening day on Sunday. We weren’t favorably impressed with the Pizza we got.
Sunday we attended Church in the Milano First Ward. It was the last day of summer vacation, and the chapel wasn’t even half full, though they reported that it was normally almost fully filled. A sister in the ward volunteered to translate the talks into English, so we had a very pleasant sacrament meeting. From there, we went back to the convention center to get ready for the opening of the conference.
With a nice FamilySearch backdrop behind us, we setup a table near the front of the 10 foot x 10 foot area assigned to us.

The laptop computers were setup to be accessed by our people on the backside of the table. The visitors could sit on the other side and see a flat-screen monitor and use a mouse and keyboard to access FamilySearch programs. The usual activity was for the visitor to do a search to see if there were any records available for someone in their own ancestry. Occasionally, according to the visitors’ interests, we could show them some other programs and services to help them become acquainted with the on-line way of doing genealogy research.
The conference was open Sunday from 1400 to 1800, but the last two hours were to be a time of social meeting of the presenters and whoever else was there. This social and snacking was to be held right next to our booth, however, so we had a constant group of people there throughout the time, and it was very interesting to watch and learn from the representatives that had come from Salt Lake City. At first it seemed to us to be somewhat aggressive, but we learned to participate and had very few people act like they didn’t want to talk with us.
One interesting thing is that the Salt Lake presenters suggested that we dress casually for working in the booth, and not wear our missionary tags, because more people would come up to our booth if they did not feel like they were being proselyted to our church. Luckily we both brought some casual clothing, though not as many as our formal missionary wear. So our daily outfits were basically the same.
The Italian Customs Office had not allowed the Salt Lake visitors, Paul Smart and Paul Nauta, to bring in all of the materials they had brought with them yet, so one of the tasks of the day was to keep the printer going printing the handouts that were needed. Luckily we never ran out. After the day ended we again packed up the computers and printers, and took them to the hotel. I setup one of the systems to print more of the handouts, and though the printer was slow, we got ahead enough so that we had no difficulties keeping up on Monday. It wasn’t until after 16:00 that we finally got the boxes of stuff that had been shipped from Salt Lake.
We followed the same routine each day. We had to be there at least a half hour early to get the computers setup and the booth ready for the opening. We then met the visitors throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. Other representatives came for a period of time in the afternoon, but we had to be there before closing time so we could lock things up and pack the computers and printers and take them out of the building for the night. Back at the hotel we took these things to our room, and our car was taken to a secure parking area by a hotel representative.
Sister Howlett had left her scriptures in the chapel on Sunday, but by making a few telephone calls we were able to get the missionaries, who lived very close to the convention center, to pick them up and deliver them to her just outside the center.
We found the Italian saints to be very pleasant people to associate with. We learned to appreciate the pleasantness of the sound of the language. The mode of dress of the normal Italian women wasn’t as pleasing, and the manners on the road took some getting used to. The GPS in the car couldn’t provide the needed detail for areas outside of Germany, so another one was provided for us to use by our gracious Italian LDS contact, Walter Zafarana. The problem was that when we first started in the morning we were in among tall buildings, so it had trouble capturing the satellite signals. Often we would drive to an area where there weren’t so many buildings and we’d park for a few minutes until it finally began to provide directions. We always made it back and forth, but sometimes we had trouble following the directions of this different type of GPS, so we took several unscheduled site-seeing tours. But we were always able to setup the booth and be ready when opening time arrived. We almost always had two or three or more people we were talking too from the opening to the closing of the day.

During our break time on Monday afternoon, we tried to find the Metro (subway) station in the area, and ended up walking all around the convention center. There is a lot of construction going on, so that walk was close to 5 kilometers long, and left us pretty tired on a hot day. Luckily, however the weather had changed just before we arrived, and it was not as hot as it had been just a few days before. In the satellite picture above, the total convention center is white and shaped like a key, and our walk was all around it.

On Tuesday, during our afternoon break, this time we caught a shuttle bus to the Metro, took a subway train into the heart of the city, and had a chance to see the Milan Cathedral and the area around it. Coming up the stairs from the subway we got our first view of the "DUOMO"(Cathedral - the seat of a Catholic bishop). After looking all around the outside, we went inside. There were quite a few stained glass windows, but they were hard to photograph. Only one picture is worth sharing, and it shows in individual window panes several events, some from the life of Christ, and others from the apostles and later disciples.The building is in an old Gothic style, and is made all of stone. Inside the vaulted ceiling is extremely high. There are lots of echoes in such a building, and that was an influence in the styles of music that would sound good.
After viewing the inside, we took an elevator up to the roof level on the sides of the building. This was only about 3/4 of the way to the top of the roof, but from this level we got an excellent view of the decorative stone work on the sides of the cathedral. We then climbed a few more stairs and got to walk on the roof in the center of the building. From here we took a panorama of pictures showing the old center of Milan. This was very interesting. The view over the city was lovely. When we got as high as we could go we were standing on the peak of the roof. Even the roof was made of stone - fitted marble slabs fitted so closely that they didn't leak. While walking on the peak of the roof we met a family who were trying to take a family portrait. It was obvious they needed help, so we took their camera and helped them get the whole family together. They told us that they had been at this spot years earlier when they became engaged, and they were now back to the spot with their children to relive that time. After taking their picture, we asked them to take a picture of us, and this is what we looked like sitting on one of the stones on the roof with the tallest steeple behind us.
Back on the ground we had lunch and looked at some of the business there. Milan is world famous for fashion, and some stores there by the cathedral sold very expensive clothing (more than $2000 for a single dress). It was surprising that something that covered so little would cost so much.


Back at the conference center, we had a little time to walk around and look at the other displays. Much of the emphasis of the conference was on using the modern means of communication offered by the Internet to facilitate the business of libraries. Much was shown about how the old books could be digitalized, and some of the vendors were showing their book scanners.

This one could hold a book in such a way the pages remained pretty flat, and take pictures of both pages at once. A vacuum mechanism then turned the page for the next shot. Another sccanner could do only one page at a time, but the pages could be full newspaper size.

Wednesday the conference officially ended at 1400, and we then had to pack up everything and load it into the car again. We had had visitors to our booth from every continent in the world and enjoyed working with people from so many countries. Of course, Europe supplied the most visitors, but there were astonishing numbers from Eastern Europe and Africa.. The official language of the conference was English, but it really helped to have someone at the booth who spoke Italian. Paul Nauta had served his mission in Italy so he could converse very well. We never had to use German except when one of the computers started to display prompts and menus in that language.
It had been a long day, and we were glad we could rest the night in the hotel before starting our return journey. As you drive North and slightly West from Milan you climb up into the Alps. These are a natural barrier between Italy and Switzerland. Milan is the second largest city in Italy, and it is situated in the Northern Plain that extends from Austria to these Alps. The local people speak Italian, but many of them also speak Lombardy, which is native to this plain. Historically this area has at times been under Austrian rule, so they are quite different from the Italians in the peninsula (like Rome). Surprisingly, tomatoes aren’t used very much in this area, so the tomato sauces we think of as being typical of Italian foods must all come from the southern parts.
We decided to count the tunnels we went through on the way home. The longest one is through one of the mountains in the Alps, and it was 17 kilometers (about 10 miles) long. There were 42 more tunnels on our trip home. The drive through the Alps was very reminiscent of a drive in the mountains in Utah. They looked very similar, though these probably are not as tall. Very few went above the timber line. The sides of these mountains are very steep, however, so they look impressive. As we saw this church up on the mountainside - all alone and not even a road leading up to it - we wondered how people got to church on Sunday.

With the pressure off, we decided to stop in Berne, Switzerland and visit the temple. Our GPS couldn’t direct us – couldn’t even find the part of the city where the temple is located, so we had to stop and ask questions along the way.
This made us a half hour late for the first endowment session of the afternoon, but we used up the time until the next session with a nap in the waiting room. The later session was quite full, mostly with Italians. I had been in this temple earlier, at the end of my first mission, and then there were very few people on the session. The missionary work in Italy started while I was serving in Germany, and now they had enough Italians there to make a good session. This evidence of progress was very gratifying.
After the temple session, we got back on the road, and this time we didn’t have slow-downs along the way. We arrived home just a little after ten at night. It was a wonderful trip with lots of learning and joyful meeting of so many cultures and peoples. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Milan, Italy.