Happy birthday to me!!!

Today is my borthday, now turning 28. So, happy birthday to me.

Moreover, I'm going to have a fantastic dinner with my girlfriend Francesca.

So, more than happy!

:-)

Not always beautiful, sometimes it's still Italy...

When I talk about Le Marche, one may think that everything is perfect, but actually it's not. I'm very serious in complaining about something which could be better with a very low effort. For instance, what has happened last weekend. A colder weather (10° C below the average), some snow and rains have caused some floodings, rivers inundating houses, garages, fields and so on. Is it so terrible? Why is it so? Well, if we go beyond the surface, we can see that the policies for building and agriculture are conceived for a very plain and dry area, rather than a hilly and rich-of-water one. So, trees are less and less (and so landslides are becoming more and more frequent), agriculture is 99% chemistry (and the acidity of the ground encourage the landslides), houses are build 10 metres next to the rivers (which doesn't have he room to flood "quietly"), and plants are built in a bad way (there still are public funds, insurances and natural disaster aids to pay the damage).

Last year, a meter of snow in January seemed to be a disaster for the agriculture (I've never heard about the danger of the snow in January...), and all the roofs of the plants crashed under the load of the snow (... you know, how could you imagine snowing in the middle of the mountains??? In January???), while the earthwuake, in 1997, destroyed the "brand-new" roofs, which were built in the "modern" way. Yes, but first, one may also check if the walls can substain such a roof...

These are some of the things one should know while considering living in Italy. Among the others, much more beautiful, of course!

A friend of mine

Now I'd like to introduce you a friend of mine, who's really appreciated in the web. His name is Marc Millon, and lives in a corner of Heaven, in Devon, UK. I spoke about him while telling about my trip in Devon, last April.
Now I'd like to advice you about his new-founded club, Vino, which is selling some beautiful boxes. For those of you living in UK, it's a great deal. Some of those wines were those I discovered and showed Marc. One more reason to buy them.

ps.: this is a spontaneous advertising. It's a couple months I don't hear from Marc. And I would like to.

Ciao Marc!

It's the wi-fi, baby!

One of the best (and worst!) news I read recently is how Internet is (not) spread in Le Marche, like, after all, in Italy. In most of the tours I led, I saw a lot of people from US and Canada with their Blackberry, wi-fi labtop and tablet Pc, surfing on the web during the free-time. This doesn't sound new neither to me (I myself have a labtop, from which I'm writing), nor to the Hotel Duchi della Rovere, which has a Tin.it hot spot, so that you can surf on a wi-fi LAN for free.

But in Le Marche's countryside, the broadband is still a dream. Unfortunately, the territory is full of hills, and the people concentration is so low that it's unprofitable for the ICT companies to set DSL connections.

This is the bad news.

The good news is that the wi-fi is coming little by little, so that we may expect to have, within less than a year, the broadband in places like Corinaldo or Castelleone di Suasa. Which is good for those of you who like Le Marche but also like to work o have fun through the WWW. And it's also good to maintain that aspect of tradition + modernity which is typical of this beautiful region.

In New York, now available

Hey there! Just to inform you that right now, in New York, the Spaghetti alla Giuseppe Peppinello are available!!! It's a creation of David Pasternak, dedicated to the day out at sea he had with us.

WOW!!!!!