Up at 7ish, to take in another quick stroll around Milan before departing for the airport. The streets are quiet, and already being slowly warmed by the sun. The creeping light on the old walls is a pale gold, as the various statues, structures, lettering and ornamentation in the stone begin to wake up, slowly emerging in relief from the shadows.
An espresso, almond croissant, orange juice and La Gazzetta dello Sport, obsessing about whether Mourinho's Inter compares to the greats.
Inter shirts themselves begin to emerge by 9am.
The hotel calls a taxi for me, but nothing appears for almost 20 minutes. The porter stands outside near me, pretending to look earnestly for the taxi and carefully not catching my eye. It seems a stereotypically Italian scenario, as if the hotel manager's phone had not actually been connected to anything, his request for a cab just disappearing into the air around the reception desk.
Eventually, a big black people-carrier screeches extravagantly to a halt outside the hotel, and it's off to Malpensa. Which is a very long way. It feels like i'm retracing most of my steps back to Turin. Once we're past the technology parks on the edge of the city, the Alps slowly begin to appear on the horizon, framing the flat, rich agricultural lands either side of the smooth motorway.
The airport is fine, and full of Inter fans heading off to Madrid to the final. I buy a replica Samuel Eto'o Inter shirt for Ollie. The mood is good-natured and optimistic, but not half as ecstatic as they would be later, after Inter's impressive win. 100,000 fans would later converge on the centre of Milan to celebrate.
Still, by that point, I'm in a bar in Helsinki, watching the final with three Ghanaians.
City of Sound 
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