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…

Having covered Venice and Verona, the two biggest tourist draws in the Veneto, and the larger towns that are centers of business, industry, and home to a decent portion of people in the Veneto, it’s time to move on to some of my favorite places: the smaller towns that aren’t the target of so many…

There’s still no deal, no collapse, nothing certain, but since one more union signed up to the deal offered by the “courageous entrepreneurs” of CAI, Alitalia is still flying, despite having had Thursday as a “deadline”. There are a few more unions still holding out: pilots, flight assistants and a few others. The new deadline…

Well, if not her, Berlusconi is still talking up a storm. The latest “deadline” is supposed to be tomorrow, Thursday, after which Alitalia will stop flying. Of course, these “deadlines” don’t have much credibility, but sooner or later there will be a real one, and this one looks to have some force behind it. As…

Despite its problems, there are still a lot of things that Italy gets right. One of them is the attitude towards alcohol. Put simply, it’s not such a "Big Deal" like it is in the US. It’s a normal part of life, rather than the forbidden fruit it has turned into for those under the…

Today’s Alitalia news: As mentioned yesterday, Alitalia has finally gone ahead and started trying to sell off the good bits in something akin to an auction, something that should have happened a long time ago. At this point, it’s going to be pretty dicey to put much together, as the deadline is the 30th of…