I’ve long dreamed of living and working in Italy, with The Beloved being of good Calabrese stock and as the relatives are not getting any younger, I am conscious of time marching on.
I also think it’d be a fantastic legacy for mia moglie e La Regina to take up their rights to Italian citizenship ‘jure [...]

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I have been struggling over the last week with getting up on time in the morning, and hauling myself to work at a reasonable hour. So, in the spirit of being sempre in ritardo, I stumbled across this fabulous story in italiannotebook.com, about the perils of italian bus travel, told with wonderful humor and [...]

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I was touched by the amazing floods in Venice last week. My wife (descended from Decollatura, Catanzaro, Calabria) said that the images of Venice in flood were like nothing she has ever seen in her lifetime.
The simple numbers are stunning - even for a city that floods regularly; driven by strong winds from the Adriatic, [...]

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I’m a little bit blue this week.  Classes are finished for the year and with low numbers, it doesn’t look likely that the school will continue the class in 2009.  Very sad.
I love the study.  It’s r-e-a-l-l-y hard work and I keep feeling like I’m wading through some sort of interminable swamp, but then every now and then I [...]

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Here’s a great blog about the joys of eating chestnuts during autumn!  My favorite is to roast them in the open fire (or the oven…) and eat them hot. 
Remember to prick them with a fork before you put them in the fire, or else they will burst.  The best idea is to keep them moving, so if [...]

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Check out this story in the Italian media - too funny!
Cartolina recapitata dopo 29 anni: dalla Svizzera a Palermo i saluti di un’alunna alla sua prof

A now-retired high school language teacher in Palermo gets a postcard from one of her students…written in 1979.
Now that’s slick - 29 years to deliver a postcard from Switzerland to [...]

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A great story in the Corriere della Sera newspaper this week.
Following passenger complaints about arriving at their destination infested with insect bites,  Trenitalia (the Italian railways group) has introduced a series of “anti-tick” measures to improve the hygiene on train carriages.
Blaming the bug problem on pets, Trenitalia has announced that from October 1, passengers will no longer be [...]

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Looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa is no longer the ‘leaningest’ tower in Europe!
Retired geometrician Jacob van Dijk has measured the 118-foot church tower of Walfridus in the Dutch town of Bedum and believes that it is now leaning more than the Tower of Pisa.
Pisa’s 183-foot tower has undergone restoration works and now tilts [...]

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I received my local council rates notice last week (*grrr*).
After choking on my crostili and musing, yet again, on the nefarious black art of working out j-u-s-t how far one can load up our rates burden without triggering civil unrest, I started to think about how Local Government works in Italy.
And so off I ventured [...]

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I’ve never been one for the annual holiday in the same park, staying in the same lot, at the same time, seeing the same people…over ‘n over.
But I’ve got to ask, how cool would it be to have a holiday home in Italy?
It wouldn’t need to be a picture book country villa, or an overpriced [...]

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