Berlusconi today really outdid himself.  First, he said he would be available to "give Obama advice"…  yeah right!  But what really caught people’s attention was this phrase, commenting on Obama, saying that he’s   bello, giovane e abbronzato   In other words, he’s "good looking, young, and has a nice sun tan".  I think no…

As most of the news reports say, the rest of the world is pretty happy about Obama being the president elect.  A lot of people here asked about the election and my thoughts about it.  I don’t want to get into the details, but I did want to describe the experience abroad: people are really…

There are things that jump out at you about any place, that are obvious to even the most oblivious of tourists.  Other things are subtler and take a while to notice, and while perhaps not of great import, can tell you a little about a place. One of the ‘little things’ we’ve noticed here in…

So far, it’s not that exciting for me because it doesn’t cover "my" part of Italy (Milano, Firenze, Roma, and along the shores of Lake Como are covered so far, as well as some roads that the Tour de France went over last summer), but the Google street view guys are starting to cover Italy:…

It’s election season in the US again, and as always, I get lots of questions and comments from my European friends.  Here are some common ones, and my answers.  In terms of the election itself, this map pretty much says it all in terms of what people throughout the world think about who they’d like…

The name "Friday" that is. Or rather, Venerdì, the Italian word for Friday. The court found against parents that wanted to name their son "Friday", saying that the name would subject the child to scorn and ridicule. The case was apparently brought to court after the registrar refused to write down Venerdì as per the…

As the Norwegian Air Shuttle 737 dropped out of the clouds, a scant 100 meters above the ground, and bounced and rattled its way down to the runway, I got my first glimpse of Norway. Lead gray skies, wind whipped evergreen trees, and misty rain made for a foreboding landscape indeed. One in which it…

This part of the Veneto is special to me, because it was in Bassano del Grappa (or more accurately, at the Albergo dalla Mena in Romano d’Ezzelino) that I spent my first days in Italy, in 1994. But let’s go back a few years before that: Like Montagnana, Cittadella (which, as can be inferred, means…

I discovered some nice web cams run by the Tirolean government. The images today are particularly pretty, as it was very cold yesterday and snowed up in the mountains. Clicking on the images opens larger versions. These, and a few more, may be found at the following link: Looking down at Innsbruck from the Patscherkofel…

The latest this weekend was the news that the pilots’ union signed up, leaving only the flight attendants to sign the agreement, which at this point seems highly likely (Update: they signed). The only big question left is: who will be the foreign partner in the deal, Lufthansa or Air France? So it looks as…