Tuesday, 29 September 2009

CathDaq trading statement for Milan

After a slow start the CathDaq took off towards the end of the trading period.

Five monks from three different order (or at least three different types of robes) taking the index higher.

Priest in a sports car in Bergamo took the index lower for a while before a flotilla of Gucci Nuns by the Duomo sent stocks soaring.

Milan trading closed up over 100 points.

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If it wasn’t for the internet

As I was leaving Santa Maria delle Grazie having taken in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, it struck me how much of a leveller the internet has been to enable people to see things they otherwise might not have been able to.

To get to see the mural you have to book in advance (the signs out today showed that it was fully booked until November!). Prior to the real take off of the Internet you would have had to have phoned up the booking line to book tickets. This requires two important things

1 – the ability to make (or pay for) a long international call, or make a call whilst in Italy
2 – a firm grasp of the Italian language to make the booking in (making sure you don’t get dates and times muddled up)

Alternatively, you could have booked a guide, or paid one of the tour companies through the nose (€50 I saw being advertised in a lot of places) to get you in on an organised tour.

Now, you can go online in advance, in a choice of languages, and book your ticket in advance for a time and date that you stipulate, not a tour company.

It’s the same with the Hypogeum in Malta, again booked on line in advance (though there the language barrier as an English speaker wouldn’t have existed)

Access to the sites has to be limited to prevent damage (The Last Supper only allows around 850 people a day in, in groups no larger than 25, thought that’s positively heaving compared to The Hypogeum’s maximum of 80 per day), and the internet allows the sites protectors to balance the needs to protect the site with the needs to get the tourists money to pay for its upkeep.

It might only be a small way, but the internet is helping to preserve these sites, and create a level playing field for access.

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Monday, 28 September 2009

Monday saw two major events taking place in Milan.

The prime minister, gaff-proneSilvio (as I believe his first name is now pronounced) Berlusconi was in town to speak to his followers.

There was also an exhibition on at the fair ground that appeared (by the posters) to have something to do with scantily clad young ladies (though in Italy it could have been an accountants fair and they would still have advertised it with scantily clad young ladies, there not quite there yet with the Gender Equality.)

Now it would be very wrong (and likely to lead to a law writ being issued) to suggest that the timing of the two events, or that Silvios decision to visit Milan this week, was anything other than coincidental, and that Mr Berlusconi is anything other than a thoroughly respectable statesman

See for example BBC News

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More thoughts on the police – an update

A minor correction to my comments regarding police vehicles.

Of course the Italian government would never allow their police to drive around in German Audi’s. The police were, of course, in an Italian Alfa Romeo.

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Sunday, 27 September 2009

Things you wish you hadn’t seen

Milan is a vibrant city, the powerhouse of Italy’s economy; it’s a modern Finance driven city. Perhaps not in the same league as London, Tokyo, New York and Frankfurt. But it’s up there in the next league with the Hong Kong’s, Brussels’ and Shanghai’s.

Which makes it all the more surprising in a city that combines the best of Northern European capitalism with Southern European style and elegance they have decided, in places, to take their queues from the very wrong area.

I would like to bring you attention, as every must do eventually, to the issue of toilets.

Milan, home of style, elegance, and the point where the hole in the floor starts, and in the case of one particularly unpleasant version in a visitor attraction which will remain nameless, last used by someone who was very ill, and didn’t know how to flush (or aim!)

Of course, they also go in the opposite direction.

My hotel room has, as one would expect, a bidet.

Now these are a contraption that I’ve never really been able to get my head around. But the hotel has added a whole extra level of complexity and bewilderment into the mix.

Next to the bidet, is a little, what can only be described as, soap dish. And resting on this soap dish is a small bottle of shampoo.

It’s not that it’s been misplaced, no there is one of those small bottles of shampoo on the vanity unit by the sink, it genuinely appears to be a bottle of shampoo available for use whilst you are making use of the bidet.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the Milanese

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Wound Spotting IV

Another edition of the informative guide to what injuries are “in” this season.

Bergamo (and Milan as well) appear to have had a spate of lower arm/wrist injuries, with at least four people seen wandering around sporting slings.

Given the cobble stones everywhere part of me suspects that it’s the leathal combination of marble cobles and rain, but it could just be that everyone wants to show of their Louis Vuitton sling.

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Saturday, 26 September 2009

More thoughts on the Police

This topic is giving me a rich vein of thought and observation.

Walking through the Piazza Duomo this evening I noticed that there were three separate police cars parked up.

There was a very smart modern 4 by 4 with Carabinieri painted down the side. Inside the officer was preening himself in his rear view mirror. I do have to wander are the Carabinieri actually the fashion police, because all they appear to ever do is strut around in their smart uniforms looking at themselves in windows!

Next to that was a modern Audi painted in a not particularly pleasent shade of blue with Polizia painted in big letters down the side. One officer was sitting on the bonnet talking to his female colleague, whilst they scanned the crowd.

Finally parked up at the end, in a garish Green and White paint scheme with Polizia di Milano painted on it was a pretty elderly looking beaten up fiat.

I think I know where all the money goes...

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Oh no, there’s more

Before I had even gotten onto the tram this morning I had already seen my sixth type of police, these were the Polizia di Milano, who were in a completely different uniform to all the other ones I had seen yesterday.

The sublime finally gave way to the ridiculous though when I walked into the main courtyard of the castle.

There, laid out as a family open day, were the tents of at least 20 different “Emergency Services”, there were fire brigade divers, police divers, mountain rescue (probably mountain rescue police divers, but I didn’t spot them).

It did leave me to wonder, how the Italian version of the AA markets itself, “were the 29th emergency service?”

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Friday, 25 September 2009

Italian Police Bingo

How many different types of police does one country need.

In the space of a couple of minutes this evening, I think I saw the full set, but I could be wrong, there could be more types floating around.

First to be spotted were the Milan Vigilantes, or at least that’s how my very dodgy Italian translated what was painted on their cars.

Then walking in front of me, in full regalia, including massive swords, were two Carabinieri, looking very smart (and preening themselves in a shop window.)

Walking past them were two city police who appeared to be completely Carabinieri blind, neither group acknowledged each other existence, I was starting to get worried that a turf war between police forces was about to break out, so I hurried on.

Just around the corner, having stern words with someone touting “real” D&G bags for €5, were the grey uniformed scare division, the Financial Police.

By now I was starting to think I was walking through some kind of recruitment video – Italy’s police force, a uniform for all tastes – when I walked past the final set of police, dressed in what looked like riot gear.

Except they were congregating around the outside of La Scala opera house – obviously Italian Opera lovers are a more boisterous bunch than their English counterparts (I don’t go past the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden that often, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single policeman outside.)

So that’s five different types of police, can there be any more (probably, but it doesn’t do your brain any good to think about it!)

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Wednesday, 8 October 2008

A tenuous link


So from Venice a city that’s sinking, it’s onto the next destination, the birth place of the ship involved in the most infamous sinking.

From the Piazza San Marco to the cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyard, the next stop is Belfast.

For all the years of my childhood, and into my adulthood, a byword for violence. Today Belfast is a resurgent city, and, having only ever travelled in the Republic, it will be interesting to see how different, and how similar the city is.

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Tuesday, 30 September 2008

It wouldn’t be Italy without it


So far on my trip the public transport had behaved itself admirably, every boat on time, every route running correctly. It felt almost Swiss.

Then today, the transport system disintegrated. I’m not certain why, it’s a Tuesday, so its not as if it is the weekend, or the start of the working week. The weather, whilst not being as great as the previous few days, was still OK, the lagoon no choppier and the canals not noticeably higher or lower. There didn’t appear to be any more tourists that there had been yesterday, and yet everything stopped working.

The “next boat” boards which had previously been happily displaying the times of the next services were now all replaced with a message “Servizio Irregolare”, queues were building up at all the stops, and none of the boats appeared to be going to where they said they would.

It was so refreshingly like the Italy of my childhood, and the everyday occurrences of life in London!

Perhaps the transport authorities in the UK could learn from this. Rather than having information systems which keep displaying trains that either left or were cancelled two hours ago, or having everything flashing “Delayed”. Perhaps, in Italian style, when the service goes wrong, just bring out the Gelati, crack open the Chianti and put up “Servizio Irregolare” on the indicator boards.

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Monday, 29 September 2008

Don’t bother with the signs


In work there have been numerous occasions where I have felt that the signs I have put up have had little or no effect. This was hammered home in true style today.

Visiting the Cathedral of San Marco is one of the “Must Do” things of any trip to Venice, every guide book, every guided tour, every recommendation is always to have a look around, and in every one I have seen there has always been the message that the cathedral doesn’t allow people to come in with bags, they have to be left in the cloakroom which is located about a minutes walk away from the cathedral.

To add to the information signs are displayed in Italian, English, German and French fully explaining. There are even signs which have images of a piece of rolling luggage with a line through it, a backpack with line through it and a shopping bag with a line through it.

In the process of queuing for the cathedral you pass at least three of these signs.

You would have thought that people would get the message, but no, at least one in ten visitors get to the front of the queue and get sent away to drop their bag off, and in a queue that can take the best part of an hour to get to the head off, that’s quite a serious issue.

About four people in front of me in the queue had a bag, we passed all the signs, no flicker, we passed the big visual one with lots of pictures of bags with crosses through them and a sign pointing to the luggage office, not a flicker, we get to the front of the queue and she is stopped by the cathedral staff on the door, after an initial attempt in Italian the, clearly weary, member of staff said “no bags” to which the woman erupted into a self defence saying that nobody had told her and they should put signage up to that effect if they wanted to enforce such a stupid rule. With a simple hand gesture the member of staff signalled to the line of signs, and the big colourful one. The response “you could have made it more obvious”

Perhaps she would have liked one posted the entire height of the bell tower which flashes in 25 different languages no bags with clear symbols, perhaps she wanted someone to spend their working life walking up and down the queue announcing, in every possible language, that bags have to be left in the office. Perhaps, she, like the countless thousand other tourists this year that will have missed the signs, needs to get to an optician sooner rather than later.

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Sunday, 28 September 2008

A childhood revisited


I went on a wander around the northern part of the Lagoon today, and in the process brought all the memories of family holidays flooding back.

At least twice (though in the clouded depths of my mind it might as well have been every year) as children my parents took my sister and I on holiday to Jésolo. It’s a beach resort on the Veneto coast, about 25Km North-East of the Lagoon and filled with the nameless hotels that make up a package holiday resort. The kind of place where the Germans, Swedish and Brits all head to in the summer, and attempt under no circumstance to mingle with anyone other than their own nationality (and the Brits make comments about sun loungers, Germans and their towels!)

On several occasions my parents, trying to instil some culture and appreciation of history and the arts in me and my sister, took us into Venice. I can still vividly recall at the time complaining that there were too many steps and bridges and that it wasn’t the beach. The only reason I liked going was the journey. From Jésolo it was a long bus ride to the ferry on the kind of bumpy and rattley bus that would have made anyone else sick. I however was different, the more a bus rattled and bumped the more I enjoyed the journey and I didn’t feel ill. Put me on a luxury air-conditioned coach with perfect suspension that behaved as though it was flying over air and I would be spectacularly and copiously sick (usually over my poor mum!). Then there was the long ferry journey across to Venice, which was also an adventure, before we finally arrived where the art was, which was where it got boring, until the time came to come home again and to repeat the journey in reverse.

In my memory the journey always took hours, but I can now categorically confirm that my memory lies. The journey to Burano and Torcello required catching the ferry across the Lagoon which stops at Punta Sabbioni, the part of the mainland which forms the top of the lagoon, and the place where the buses to Jésolo depart from. In fact as the ferry arrived, just over 40 minutes after leaving Venice, there were two busses parked up with Jésolo as their destination. According to the map it’s less than 20Km to Jésolo so the entire journey from start to finish couldn’t have been much more than an hour.

As we approached the landing stage, all of a sudden I stopped being a 30 year old man, I was an 8-year-old boy again, the bus was in the same place as it always was (albeit a little more modern than they were 22 years ago, though as the ferry I was on had a manufacture date of 1981 proudly being displayed it was almost certainly the ferry had I had caught previously.), the ferry was docking at the same landing stage, the same small café, the same battered ticket office, and I really had to remind myself that I wasn’t getting off to get the bus back to Jésolo!

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