The latest: Last week, Berlusconi announced that now there are talks with a “foreign firm”, about an “alliance”. Obviously there were no actual details, just the same vague declarations that have been forthcoming since last spring. Why anyone would want to partner with Alitalia is a good question… it would be sort of like dancing…

I spend a lot of time thinking about the differences between the cultures of the countries I’ve lived in, but once in a while, it’s fun to relax and enjoy one of the more puerile aspects of living abroad: laughing at inadvertently funny names. For instance, here in Innsbruck, and Austria: Mega Putz: http://www.voelser-wirtschaft.at/neues_archiv/neues_archiv5.htm#putz –…

Today’s news in the ongoing Alitalia saga: It appears as though it will be necessary to fire 5000 people from Alitalia, according to the Berlusconi plan, significantly more than the Air France plan called for. However, he said, the unions are pretty much faced with a “take it or leave it” offer – leave it…

One of my “guilty pleasures” in life is reading cowboy books by authors like Zane Gray and Louius L’Amour, about a fictional and romanticized “old west”, and I have to admit that it makes for nice daydreams. Where I grew up in the rainy, green, fertile Willamette valley of western Oregon isn’t really “the west”,…

Forget “The Sopranos”, the Alitalia saga is just as exciting, and despite seeming too strange to believe at times, isn’t fiction. Alitalia is Italy’s national airline, created in an era when everyone, even tiny Belgium, had their own airline. Today, it teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, as Italy’s politicians shovel wads of cash at…

The new mayor of Rome, Alemanno, says that the previous administration is responsible for inflicting “ethnic food” on school children. Apparently, the children refused to eat it, and those that did had “stomach aches”! It sounds funny, but I can envision it being a serious issue in Italy, where plenty of people have never had…

When you move somewhere new, and aren’t really that “integrated”, one of the nice things initially is that you concentrate more on just living your life and tend to ignore stuff that you can’t do much about. That’s actually been one of the nicer aspects of living in Austria for us – it’s a nice,…

As an enthusiast of outdoor sports, and cycling in particular, it’s important to have an idea of what the weather might be like while you’re out and about, in order to plan ahead in terms of clothing to wear and bring. Get stuck in a cold rainstorm under dressed, and two hours from home, and…

It’s an exciting time to be in Innsbruck: the town is hosting some games in the early rounds of the European soccer championships, and it would be impossible not to notice: Large swaths of the downtown area have been gated in order to be able to control crowds. There are a number of viewing areas…

Things are slowly falling into a rhythm, and we’re getting a handle on caring for Helen. It’s hard to imagine doing much else in our lives, as busy as it keeps us, but so far we’re coping, and naturally we think she’s the cutest thing ever. In order to share pictures of her with those…