Daily Archives: January 20, 2013

Auditorium Hotel near Madrid

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Last week I’ve spent 5 days in this hotel.
While the bed linen were showing some indication of excessive use the experience overall was positive:
1) fairly comfortable bed
2) fairly large room with no carpet (uncommon, but great to keep under control dust mites and related allergy)
3) fairly good food in the restaurant buffet
In several occasions the wi-fi bandwidth was insufficient for a voice-only Skype call, but a huge conference was ongoing hence is understandable even if it was unpleasant nonetheless.

The hotel is far from the city center (about 45 minutes by public transportation, 7€ round trip to plaza del Sol) and has a free shuttle bus to the airport every 30 minutes. Cab is about 20€ to the airport.

Given the price paid (90€/day with breakfast) it was a good deal.

Dalla parte dei vinti by Piero Buscaroli

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In Italy WWII history was written by the winners, as it’s usually the case everywhere in the world when a war is over.

At school I was taught that the good guys (US+GB) saved my country from the bad guys (the Germans and the fascist government of the time).
In the study books it looked like it was a nice and peaceful process for the population and that only minor civilian casualties happened in Italy.

After over 60 years a few voices can be heard that describe what happened in a less manichean way.
Piero Buscaroli is one of those voices: you may feel a strong sense of discomfort when reading this book as it could shatter the a comfortable system of believes that was built over time.
Like other books that go against years of propaganda (Solzhenitsyn‘s Archipelagos Gulag comes to my mind as the most relevant example) this is a must read to develop a better understanding of human and political dynamics and of history.