Travel to Milan
[Writing from Milano, Italy]
Time flies when you have too much to do. I'll try to keep up with the blog in a slightly more timely fashion than I have recently.
I left Saturday evening during Bear's dance recital and drove up to Philadelphia to catch my flight. I was flying US Air from PHL to Munich, Germany, then Lufthansa from Munich to Milano. When I went to Hong Kong I flew United, and their business class was awesome. The US Air business class leaves a bit to be desired. The seats are only 2-way adjustable, which is somewhat lacking (United's 747-400 business class seats are 17-way adjustable). The biggest problem was that they had no power outlets on the seats. Excuse me? Business class with no seat power? Some of us have work to do. Unfortunately, this means I arrived in Europe 9 hours behind schedule, from
a work perspective.
The second problem was that they didn't load any filet mignon on the flight. It's the little things....
We arrived in Munich a bit late, possibly because of ground delays in Philly. Unfortunately, this means I had a 9 minute connection in Munich, with a stop in immigration. Now, the officer in immigration (Bundeswehr maybe?) was extremely polite. Possibly the nicest immigration officer I've encountered. He patiently smiled at my attempt to speak German (was ist nicht zehr gut).
Ok, well, even with running through the terminals, I still missed my flight from Munich to Milano. The very courteous young lady at the Lufthansa counter rebooked me, and at least I could hang out in the Business Class lounge, drink free drinks, and take advantage of the business services to charge my iPod and catch up on my e-mail. It was slightly irritating that Vodafone charges for high-bandwidth Internet in the lounge.... I mean, come on Lufthansa, we can do better than that, can't we? Besides 12,95 Euro for 2 hours of Internet is kind of steep, even if it's expensible.
I finally got down to the gate, after a four hour hangout in the Munich airport.
It was fun to be in Munich and listening to the announcements in German. I was surprised to find I understood most of the German. Maybe that's the one language that I'd be good at (other than English :-) The put us on a bus to take us out to the plane, which wasn't big enough to pull up to a jetway. It actually had jet engines, but it was parked next to planes with props, and I really wasn't sure until we pulled up. As we got off the bus to walk over to the plane (Canadair 100, in case you're wondering - I just know you are), the gent behind me noted to his friend, "hey, I feel good; I can see my bag on the truck there." I looked over and saw my bag, so I said, "I'm in good shape, too; my bag's on the truck next to yours." We laughed and got on the plane. Remember this material. You will see it again.
We flew south from Munich, over the Austrian Alps. I know the flight path because I had my GPS up against the window where I had satellite coverage. The handy GPSr said our top speed was 518.4 mph. Pretty cool. Anyway, I tried to take pictures of the Alps, but it was very hazy, and I was shooting into sun, so it just wouldn't work out.
When we arrived in Milano, the bus drove us to the terminal and in we walked. Before I even got to the luggage claim belt, I heard on the loudspeakers, "Italian Italian Italian Roberts Italian Moyer Italian Italian." Hmmmm. Not good. I went over to the information counter to inquire, where they politely told me that Munich had called and my bag was still there. Remember the Roberts name? He's the other guy who saw his luggage. WTF. Ok, so they promised to deliver my luggage in the middle of the night, direct to the hotel. When everything is outside of your control, there's just no point getting your tutu in a knot over it, so I said, "Grazzi," and headed for immigration.
Now, I know Italy is relaxed. I know I was arriving on a flight from another EU country. But I was somewhat surprised that the doors at immigration were proped open to the arrivals hall, and the area was totally unmanned. Everyone else was just walking out, so I followed them. I entered Italy without any official every glancing at my passport. Bummer - no Italy stamp in the Visas section.
At that point, there was nothing to do, so I wandered off to wait for my co-worker, Sue. She was flying in from the UK, and my delay made my arrival sufficiently close to hers that I could just hang out and we'd ride the train into Milano together. Her flight was delayed about 1/2 hour, so I had about an hour wait. "Hmmm," I thought to myself, "I wonder if there's any geocaches close by?"
I powered on the GPSr again, and walked out the front of the terminal to see where the nearest cache was hiding. 1.48 miles. Quick calculation - a reasonable pace is 3 miles per hour, that puts me at the cache in 1/2 hour. Half hour out, half hour back. If it happened to be an easy cache, it might work. Unfortunately, I didn't want Sue sitting there wondering what the heck had happened, so I went back inside, listened to my iPod, and read my handy little Italian pocket phrase book, looking for all the world like a tourist.
It amazed me how many Italians were walking around with "England" football shirts, given that Liverpool beat AC Milan in the Championship finals.
Sue arrived, and we went downstairs to the train station, where we caught the next Malpensa Express train to central Milan. It was a fun ride in, and I did manage to take a few pictures. Not too many, though. It was an easy ride, since I didn't have any real luggage to deal with. Then we caught a taxi to the hotel.
Milan is interesting. Very, very old architecture. The city is also pretty dirty, even with attempts to pick up the litter. Imagine grafitti on every vertical surface, from sidewalk to about eight feet up. It's a little odd. The sidewalks are narrow. Well, about a car's width. The buildings go right up to the sidewalk, and then there's the street. Sometimes, when there aren't parking spots available, people will drive up on the sidewalk and just park there.
Traffic can be a problem, so motorbikes and scooters are very popular, and they're chained up all over the place (to prevent theft). More on that later.
After we checked in, Sue and I decided to walk to the office to check out where it is, then get something to eat. She had a map, I had the GPSr, so we figured we were in good shape. We wandered down the street in generally the right direction, and we'd stop every so often to compare street names (which, like Madrid, are on plates on the corners of the buildings) to the map. We found our way around the canal, and then over a pedestrian footbridge at the railroad station. When we got to the other side of the tracks, we looked around. We were in a dingy residential neighborhood. All the stores had steel gates closed over the fronts. It was not looking like the kind of neighborhood where we'd find our offices. We started walking, because over
here things can change pretty quickly. As we walked, the street changed from residential to warehouse-style industrial, and then we came around a corner to see an eight story glass wall ahead. That looked really promising, and, sure enough, that was our office. It's an eight story city block, with orange, yellow, black, and beige buildings, with a huge courtyard in the center, all covered by a curving glass pavillion structure. Beautiful modern construction. (It turns out that half of the block is Georgio Armani's offices - yeah, Mr. Armani works there.)
Having proudly found our offices after only 15 minutes of walking, we headed back towards the hotel. Along the way was a pizzaria. Now, understand, this is Italy. As I write this, I've had three meals here - pizza, calzone, and spaghetti. I wil not be able to order poor Papa John's or Dominos when I get home. The pizzas here are just incredible! But the first night I had a calzone with house tomato sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, and genoa salami. It was almost indescribably good. Sue and I split a bottle of red wine. We ordered a glass, really, but no parlo Italiane.... At least not much! Fortunately, between a really fun waiter who spoke a few words of English, our few words of Italian, and pointing at the menu, we got by, other than getting a bottle of wine instead of a glass of wine. A calzone, a pizza, two bottles of mineral water, and a bottle of nice wine (really nice) came to only 33 Euros, which is roughly 40 bucks. This is a very reasonable price considering how much food you get for that!
After a long day of travel, a walk, and dinner with wine, Sue and I decided it was time to turn in, so we headed back to the hotel.
The room is an economy room in a neighborhood hotel, so it's not Americanized at all. It's 10 feet wide and 25 feet long (with the door and window at opposite ends, along the narrow sides), includin the bathroom. Shower only. Not a lot of room, but we're not spending much time in our rooms. It's clean and has good environmental controls. And the shower's good (those of you who know me know how important this is).
I had a bad dream, right before my alarm went off. It was a horrible dream, and I woke up in a cold sweat, shaking, only to have the alarm go off. There was no going back to sleep to get rid of the dream, and it stuck with me most of the day, which put me in a homesick, cranky mood. In the dream, it was snowing hard, and the family was supposed to go somewhere with Loretta's grandma. They were all climbing into a golf cart/pickup combination (don't ask me - it was a dream), and my son climbed in back. As they backed up, he fell out on the road and was run over by the next car.
I ran out onto the road screaming for help and for someone to call 911. I can still see him lying in the snow with a pool of blood under his head, and writing about it is making me sick to my stomach. I guess the emotion of the dream is still with me. Needless to say, this did not make for the best day.
Absolutely 100 percent awake, and still shaking, I pulled on my dirty clothes from yesterday and went down to the desk. Thankfully, there was my bag. Inside the bag was a nice note from the TSA, saying they'd randomly selected my bag for searching, and if it was locked they'd have to break the locks, sorry, but they're not liable for any damage, but have a nice day anyway. Fortunately, I don't bother to lock my
luggage, since you never know when our police state will need to search your belongings. They weren't very neat about it. Note to self - start packing in individual clear plastic travel bags in the suitcase, so they don't have to rummage around and mess up everything.
After unpacking and a really good-feeling shower, we were back off to the office.
As usual, I won't say anything about work, other than to note that the people we're working with are very fun and pleasant.
Mid-way through the morning, our host, Adriano, suggested we go for coffee. He took us across the street to the cafe, where there are no tables. Everyone stands at an elbow-high marble counter. They make the coffee, or, in my case, cappuchino, and bring it over to you. People stand and chat while drinking their midmorning coffee. And it was quite good.
At lunch, we went with Adriano to a "kind of touristy" place. It was very comfortable. I had a pizza with ham, mozzarella, and a soft-cooked egg in the middle. It wasn't as good as the calzone from last night, but it was very, very tasty. I didn't quite finish it, because I didn't want to have a nap in the middle of the afternoon!
We worked until about 7:15, then walked back to the hotel. We changed into jeans and went back to the pizzaria we found last night. This time we skipped the wine. We both had spaghetti, made with fresh cherry tomatoes. Very good, but next time I'll take the phrase book and spend some more time translating the menu. We also had dessert. Sue had Tiramisu and I had a chocolate walnut torte. That was just a bit too much.
We headed back to the hotel, and Sue noticed a store across the canal. It said "Triumph" on the side. She said, "I bet that's a motorbike store." Needing the walk, we went down a few blocks, crossed the canal, and came back up to see. Along the way, I found a cool-looking clothing store. I'll drop in Wednesday morning and pick up some socks (which I cleverly forgot to pack). When we got to the Triumph store, sure enough, it was a motorbike store. Oh my. There was this beautiful blue Triumph Sprint bike. It was gorgeous. I was immediately in lust with it. 1050cc. Unfortunately, it's 11.000,00 Euro (about 16,000 US dollars). I may have a no-limit credit card in my pocket, but I can't figure out a way to justify the expense.
Sigh. It's still a beautiful bike. Maybe I'll find a link and post it so you all can see.
Now it's almost midnight. I won't get this loaded up until tomorrow, since I don't have Internet access in the hotel. I have an alarm set on my phone, with the intention of getting up and going geocaching in the morning before work. We'll see. I'm pretty tired. I should get more pictures tomorrow, since tomorrow's task list involves, well, taking some pictures. I wonder what kind of wonderful food I'll find tomorrow.....
Time flies when you have too much to do. I'll try to keep up with the blog in a slightly more timely fashion than I have recently.
I left Saturday evening during Bear's dance recital and drove up to Philadelphia to catch my flight. I was flying US Air from PHL to Munich, Germany, then Lufthansa from Munich to Milano. When I went to Hong Kong I flew United, and their business class was awesome. The US Air business class leaves a bit to be desired. The seats are only 2-way adjustable, which is somewhat lacking (United's 747-400 business class seats are 17-way adjustable). The biggest problem was that they had no power outlets on the seats. Excuse me? Business class with no seat power? Some of us have work to do. Unfortunately, this means I arrived in Europe 9 hours behind schedule, from
a work perspective.
The second problem was that they didn't load any filet mignon on the flight. It's the little things....
We arrived in Munich a bit late, possibly because of ground delays in Philly. Unfortunately, this means I had a 9 minute connection in Munich, with a stop in immigration. Now, the officer in immigration (Bundeswehr maybe?) was extremely polite. Possibly the nicest immigration officer I've encountered. He patiently smiled at my attempt to speak German (was ist nicht zehr gut).
Ok, well, even with running through the terminals, I still missed my flight from Munich to Milano. The very courteous young lady at the Lufthansa counter rebooked me, and at least I could hang out in the Business Class lounge, drink free drinks, and take advantage of the business services to charge my iPod and catch up on my e-mail. It was slightly irritating that Vodafone charges for high-bandwidth Internet in the lounge.... I mean, come on Lufthansa, we can do better than that, can't we? Besides 12,95 Euro for 2 hours of Internet is kind of steep, even if it's expensible.
I finally got down to the gate, after a four hour hangout in the Munich airport.
It was fun to be in Munich and listening to the announcements in German. I was surprised to find I understood most of the German. Maybe that's the one language that I'd be good at (other than English :-) The put us on a bus to take us out to the plane, which wasn't big enough to pull up to a jetway. It actually had jet engines, but it was parked next to planes with props, and I really wasn't sure until we pulled up. As we got off the bus to walk over to the plane (Canadair 100, in case you're wondering - I just know you are), the gent behind me noted to his friend, "hey, I feel good; I can see my bag on the truck there." I looked over and saw my bag, so I said, "I'm in good shape, too; my bag's on the truck next to yours." We laughed and got on the plane. Remember this material. You will see it again.
We flew south from Munich, over the Austrian Alps. I know the flight path because I had my GPS up against the window where I had satellite coverage. The handy GPSr said our top speed was 518.4 mph. Pretty cool. Anyway, I tried to take pictures of the Alps, but it was very hazy, and I was shooting into sun, so it just wouldn't work out.
When we arrived in Milano, the bus drove us to the terminal and in we walked. Before I even got to the luggage claim belt, I heard on the loudspeakers, "Italian Italian Italian Roberts Italian Moyer Italian Italian." Hmmmm. Not good. I went over to the information counter to inquire, where they politely told me that Munich had called and my bag was still there. Remember the Roberts name? He's the other guy who saw his luggage. WTF. Ok, so they promised to deliver my luggage in the middle of the night, direct to the hotel. When everything is outside of your control, there's just no point getting your tutu in a knot over it, so I said, "Grazzi," and headed for immigration.
Now, I know Italy is relaxed. I know I was arriving on a flight from another EU country. But I was somewhat surprised that the doors at immigration were proped open to the arrivals hall, and the area was totally unmanned. Everyone else was just walking out, so I followed them. I entered Italy without any official every glancing at my passport. Bummer - no Italy stamp in the Visas section.
At that point, there was nothing to do, so I wandered off to wait for my co-worker, Sue. She was flying in from the UK, and my delay made my arrival sufficiently close to hers that I could just hang out and we'd ride the train into Milano together. Her flight was delayed about 1/2 hour, so I had about an hour wait. "Hmmm," I thought to myself, "I wonder if there's any geocaches close by?"
I powered on the GPSr again, and walked out the front of the terminal to see where the nearest cache was hiding. 1.48 miles. Quick calculation - a reasonable pace is 3 miles per hour, that puts me at the cache in 1/2 hour. Half hour out, half hour back. If it happened to be an easy cache, it might work. Unfortunately, I didn't want Sue sitting there wondering what the heck had happened, so I went back inside, listened to my iPod, and read my handy little Italian pocket phrase book, looking for all the world like a tourist.
It amazed me how many Italians were walking around with "England" football shirts, given that Liverpool beat AC Milan in the Championship finals.
Sue arrived, and we went downstairs to the train station, where we caught the next Malpensa Express train to central Milan. It was a fun ride in, and I did manage to take a few pictures. Not too many, though. It was an easy ride, since I didn't have any real luggage to deal with. Then we caught a taxi to the hotel.
Milan is interesting. Very, very old architecture. The city is also pretty dirty, even with attempts to pick up the litter. Imagine grafitti on every vertical surface, from sidewalk to about eight feet up. It's a little odd. The sidewalks are narrow. Well, about a car's width. The buildings go right up to the sidewalk, and then there's the street. Sometimes, when there aren't parking spots available, people will drive up on the sidewalk and just park there.
Traffic can be a problem, so motorbikes and scooters are very popular, and they're chained up all over the place (to prevent theft). More on that later.
After we checked in, Sue and I decided to walk to the office to check out where it is, then get something to eat. She had a map, I had the GPSr, so we figured we were in good shape. We wandered down the street in generally the right direction, and we'd stop every so often to compare street names (which, like Madrid, are on plates on the corners of the buildings) to the map. We found our way around the canal, and then over a pedestrian footbridge at the railroad station. When we got to the other side of the tracks, we looked around. We were in a dingy residential neighborhood. All the stores had steel gates closed over the fronts. It was not looking like the kind of neighborhood where we'd find our offices. We started walking, because over
here things can change pretty quickly. As we walked, the street changed from residential to warehouse-style industrial, and then we came around a corner to see an eight story glass wall ahead. That looked really promising, and, sure enough, that was our office. It's an eight story city block, with orange, yellow, black, and beige buildings, with a huge courtyard in the center, all covered by a curving glass pavillion structure. Beautiful modern construction. (It turns out that half of the block is Georgio Armani's offices - yeah, Mr. Armani works there.)
Having proudly found our offices after only 15 minutes of walking, we headed back towards the hotel. Along the way was a pizzaria. Now, understand, this is Italy. As I write this, I've had three meals here - pizza, calzone, and spaghetti. I wil not be able to order poor Papa John's or Dominos when I get home. The pizzas here are just incredible! But the first night I had a calzone with house tomato sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, and genoa salami. It was almost indescribably good. Sue and I split a bottle of red wine. We ordered a glass, really, but no parlo Italiane.... At least not much! Fortunately, between a really fun waiter who spoke a few words of English, our few words of Italian, and pointing at the menu, we got by, other than getting a bottle of wine instead of a glass of wine. A calzone, a pizza, two bottles of mineral water, and a bottle of nice wine (really nice) came to only 33 Euros, which is roughly 40 bucks. This is a very reasonable price considering how much food you get for that!
After a long day of travel, a walk, and dinner with wine, Sue and I decided it was time to turn in, so we headed back to the hotel.
The room is an economy room in a neighborhood hotel, so it's not Americanized at all. It's 10 feet wide and 25 feet long (with the door and window at opposite ends, along the narrow sides), includin the bathroom. Shower only. Not a lot of room, but we're not spending much time in our rooms. It's clean and has good environmental controls. And the shower's good (those of you who know me know how important this is).
I had a bad dream, right before my alarm went off. It was a horrible dream, and I woke up in a cold sweat, shaking, only to have the alarm go off. There was no going back to sleep to get rid of the dream, and it stuck with me most of the day, which put me in a homesick, cranky mood. In the dream, it was snowing hard, and the family was supposed to go somewhere with Loretta's grandma. They were all climbing into a golf cart/pickup combination (don't ask me - it was a dream), and my son climbed in back. As they backed up, he fell out on the road and was run over by the next car.
I ran out onto the road screaming for help and for someone to call 911. I can still see him lying in the snow with a pool of blood under his head, and writing about it is making me sick to my stomach. I guess the emotion of the dream is still with me. Needless to say, this did not make for the best day.
Absolutely 100 percent awake, and still shaking, I pulled on my dirty clothes from yesterday and went down to the desk. Thankfully, there was my bag. Inside the bag was a nice note from the TSA, saying they'd randomly selected my bag for searching, and if it was locked they'd have to break the locks, sorry, but they're not liable for any damage, but have a nice day anyway. Fortunately, I don't bother to lock my
luggage, since you never know when our police state will need to search your belongings. They weren't very neat about it. Note to self - start packing in individual clear plastic travel bags in the suitcase, so they don't have to rummage around and mess up everything.
After unpacking and a really good-feeling shower, we were back off to the office.
As usual, I won't say anything about work, other than to note that the people we're working with are very fun and pleasant.
Mid-way through the morning, our host, Adriano, suggested we go for coffee. He took us across the street to the cafe, where there are no tables. Everyone stands at an elbow-high marble counter. They make the coffee, or, in my case, cappuchino, and bring it over to you. People stand and chat while drinking their midmorning coffee. And it was quite good.
At lunch, we went with Adriano to a "kind of touristy" place. It was very comfortable. I had a pizza with ham, mozzarella, and a soft-cooked egg in the middle. It wasn't as good as the calzone from last night, but it was very, very tasty. I didn't quite finish it, because I didn't want to have a nap in the middle of the afternoon!
We worked until about 7:15, then walked back to the hotel. We changed into jeans and went back to the pizzaria we found last night. This time we skipped the wine. We both had spaghetti, made with fresh cherry tomatoes. Very good, but next time I'll take the phrase book and spend some more time translating the menu. We also had dessert. Sue had Tiramisu and I had a chocolate walnut torte. That was just a bit too much.
We headed back to the hotel, and Sue noticed a store across the canal. It said "Triumph" on the side. She said, "I bet that's a motorbike store." Needing the walk, we went down a few blocks, crossed the canal, and came back up to see. Along the way, I found a cool-looking clothing store. I'll drop in Wednesday morning and pick up some socks (which I cleverly forgot to pack). When we got to the Triumph store, sure enough, it was a motorbike store. Oh my. There was this beautiful blue Triumph Sprint bike. It was gorgeous. I was immediately in lust with it. 1050cc. Unfortunately, it's 11.000,00 Euro (about 16,000 US dollars). I may have a no-limit credit card in my pocket, but I can't figure out a way to justify the expense.
Sigh. It's still a beautiful bike. Maybe I'll find a link and post it so you all can see.
Now it's almost midnight. I won't get this loaded up until tomorrow, since I don't have Internet access in the hotel. I have an alarm set on my phone, with the intention of getting up and going geocaching in the morning before work. We'll see. I'm pretty tired. I should get more pictures tomorrow, since tomorrow's task list involves, well, taking some pictures. I wonder what kind of wonderful food I'll find tomorrow.....
posted by Unknown at 2:30 AM
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