Monthly Archives: November 2012

Millemiglia frequent flyer miles program about to restart

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Starting January 2013 the miles of the Alitalia frequent flyer program will be accumulated in a new program and will not add to the previous ones.
There it is still time to spend them until June 2013 according to the email I received.

I’ve decided to donate them to my preferred charity the Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus.
It’s as simple as sending an email to clubMilleMiglia.charity@alitalia.it (as long as you have at least 10.000 miles in your account) with the following data:
Your Millemiglia code
Your first name and last name
The amount of miles that you want to donate
The desired charity from the list available on the Alitalia site: Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus in my case.

If you live in Italy don’t forget Saturday November 24th to participate in the Colletta Alimentare Nazionale. I’ll be volunteering here most of the day if you are in the area just drop by.

Italians should learn to complain less about their country

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I’m working on a project in Germany for two weeks now and I’ll be here also next week.
I’ve found out that while Italians make a very good marketing of their products they make a fairly bad one of their own country.

A few examples from recent hands on experience.

3G coverage
I have a German 3G stick and on the train as soon as I’m 2km from the station the 3G signal is over and the 2G signal is not able to provide enough bandwidth for Skype chat.
In Italy it’s better even at my parent’s in law place and I consider that spot one of the worse.
Even with good 3G coverage at peak time it’s not better than a V.90 modem.
The colleagues told me this is normal.

Trains
Delay in the morning was the norm last week when I was getting in Hanover the high-speed train to Berlin.
On par or worse than the local train my wife takes to go to work.
A colleague confirmed that it was not a bad week. Today the same train was late too.

Highways
Traffic jams are there even in perfect weather condition and without road works: Italy has not an exclusive access to them.
Getting routed through 30 km of countryside roads to reach the highway to a major city happens here too.

Building standards
A colleague is having an experience very close to mine with a window not working well and water getting into the room on a recently built apartment.
Attorney and court fight is needed to get it right also in Germany.

Some colleagues had to commute 220 km (one way) each day this week as local hotels were not available and it was the most efficient way.
Like if for a project in Bologna a person had the hotel in Milano…

Berlin Tegel airport is connected only by a bus without a dedicated lane.
Traffic was heavy today: I was lucky taking an earlier train (that was late) that compensated the bus 🙂

Hyundai ix35 driving experience

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I was in Germany last week and  opted to get a car as the customer was 200km from the airport.

I had a compact car booked but it was not available when I landed so I got the ix35 for the same tariff.

Getting out of the parking was the first challenge as it was impossible for me to guess the external size of the car and the position of the wheels.

Consumption was quite relevant (521km with 59 liters of diesel) and the comfort at high-speed quite low due to high noise and significant vibration making cruise speeds over 120km/h very fatiguing. The car only had 24.000km.

Steering wheel with a very large dead zone and a high sensitivity to lateral wind.

Ok the bluetooth integration and the visibility in the rear mirrors.

At the end of the trip I was really happy to get back to the comfort of  my 92.000km Renault Laguna

My Nokia E7 died

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Early in the monday morning I picked up my E7 to use it for both phone calls and as a GPS for my trip in Germany and I’ve found a bad surprise.
For no apparent reason it was asking me to insert the USB cable and then to disconnect the device no matter if I had or not something connected.
Acknowledging it was not helping: in a few seconds it was back with one of the two requests.
I’ve tried all the possible combinations suggested in this thread on nokia.com, but nothing worked.
I hope to get it fixed under warranty 😦

December update: I got it back fixed under warranty. Horray!

Dinner @ Bar SU-shin in Hannover

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First of all the key message: you can safely skip this place.

I picked up the place based on the review on Tripadvisor and it turned out to be a bad decision.

The selection of sushi is fairly narrow and non everything in the menu was available.
The food tasted ok (better than oriental pseudo-sushi fast food), but nothing to write home about or to warrant another visit.

Getting the bill split correctly was a challenging task: I surrendered after the third failed attempt at getting the right amounts.

Visciolata del cardinale

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Yesterday I’ve opened a bottle that was waiting for me for a while.

Visciolata del cardinale is an alcoholic beverage of medium strength (14% vol.) made out of wine, visciole (Prunus cerasus) and sugar.
The scent recalls the german kirschwasser with a clear mark of cherry.
The taste is fruity and astringent.
The sourness of the visciole is strong yet balanced by the sugar.
It’s a great conclusion for a good dinner.

I discovered the visciolata during the summer holiday when I visited the grotte di Frasassi and the surroundings.
While the visit to the caves is great in itself I find always nice to have something good to bring home.