Dearest LapLap, I was born and lived 2/3 of my life about 60km away from Malpensa and my honest and serene opinion is this: spend that extra cash and go straight ahead to Milan if that's where you're going. Or see below for other options.

What follows might be a tad harsh, but I know those places. Though I was blessed to having been born in the mountains I had to go to Novara, Rovasenda, Carpignano Sesia, Ghemme, Santhià, Trecate, Magenta, Vanzaghello, Oleggio, Fara, Alice Castello, Lonate, Olgiate Olona and many more for work or other reasons. Once I had to overnight in Gallarate. I even used to go clubbing in Cigliano back when the Due was a big gabber place, or Le Cave in Romagnano and many other places in Garlasco, Trofarello and so on. The regions change, but the villages and towns in the Po valley don't. Seen one, seen all.

The weather is sh*te. In winter it's so damn foggy that the mayor of Cigliano had to kit out the local prostitutes with hi-viz tabards so they would stop being run over. In summer, which starts in a couple of weeks and ends, well, at the end of September, you'll have a thing called "afa" (think of humidity, a sky that's no longer blue but white, no wind and just heat) and mosquitoes. So many mosquitoes that car wash have a specific setting to clean the bodies of the critters off. Trains have their front black due to them.

The towns themselves are totally unremarkable. Now, I do understand the fascination of being in small hamlet somewhere 'exotic' (I enjoyed being in a rather tiny city like Johana in Japan, for instance) but these places are charmless. The old towns are reminders of what these places use to be, i.e. places of miserable poverty where pellagra was endemic - my granny remembered malnutrition caused by overdependence on polenta - and the newest bits are either 1970s condominiums or villas hidden behind fences and tall laurel hedges with "beware of the dog" signs. Often there's no sidewalks.

The populace is so strange that it's not uncommon to see second generation immigrants - whether from the South or elsewhere - voting Lega Nord. The first black Mayor in Italy, and the first black Senator, both came from places like these and both were elected under the Lega.

I don't want to sound like a snob, I've once spent a whole day waiting for a train in Kyzylorda, southern Kazakhstan, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but if my parents dragged me to Ferno or any other such places to shave off a few quids from a train ticket to Milan I'd have set fire to their bed. If you really want to split up the journey and save a few bobs, which is understandable, go to Varese - it's a rather charmy town - or game the system. But don't waste your time there.

I'd also consider the bus, in all honesty. Your Bergamo bus experience is actually a fringe case, but it's also not that representative because the BGY-Milan route takes you across an incredibly busy corner of NW Italy, with the densest amount of factories and industry, and the A4 only has 3 lanes there. Going towards Malpensa is aided by the fact that there's two motorways to choose from - the A4 westbound with 4 lanes and the A8 going to Varese and Switzerland - and, with the exception of a chokepoint between Certosa and Rho-Fiera, traffic flows quite freely.

Another option is not to go to Milan altogether, but that's a different can of worms. Maybe Turin's more to your liking, or Bologna? I'd rather go to either than to Milan. Genoa too, to say nothing of Trieste, a city that ought to have 20x the amount of visitors it gets. Anywhere but the small towns of the Po valley, please.