March 2006

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March 24, 2006

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How to Use the Milan Metro

March 24, 2006

updated Oct 18, 2006 – prices could well be out of date by now! The Milan metro is moving to a smart card system for local passengers with monthly or annual passes. This is fine for the locals, but the authorities, in their infinite wisdom, have also removed the old ticket machines from most metro [...]

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La Buona Educazione: Good Manners in Italy

March 24, 2006

Italy has four or five of those freebie newspapers, you probably have them in your city as well. The one I read regularly is Metro, partly because it’s the best of a bad lot, partly because it’s the only one distributed at the Lecco railway station. It’s not serious news, just enough to keep up [...]

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Italian Slang and Swearwords

March 21, 2006

Italian Slang Dictionary: intro A B C D E F G I L M N O P Q R S T U V X Z Introduction to Italian Slang If you’re planning to live or travel in Italy, you might find it helpful to know what people are saying – much of which is not [...]

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Talking Back to Politicians: A Lesson in Modern Italian

March 17, 2006

Italy doesn’t yet have a large enough Internet population to spawn interesting multimedia political parodists like JibJab. But citizens nonetheless find ways of talking back to their politicians… Note: All these pictures were posted by readers on the site of Il Corriere della Sera (under “Elaborazioni fotografiche”). Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s party) have done a series [...]

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Italian Surnames: The Funny, Surprising, and Just Plain Weird

March 14, 2006

Death announcements in Lecco. Note the surnames Turba (“disturbs”) and Barbagelata (“frozen beard”) Il Corriere della Sera reports today that Italy has the largest number of surnames in the world: 350,000. The ten commonest surnames cover only 1% of the population. And, with many surnames, you can also tell something about its origins by its [...]

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Modern Italian Architecture: Long Past Its Glory Days

March 13, 2006

Italy is justly renowned for many centuries and styles of stunning architecture. Unfortunately, all the good stuff is at least a century old. Before and after our move to Lecco in 2003 (initially into a rented apartment), we spent over a year looking for a home to buy. Much of what we saw was of [...]

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In the News – Or Not

March 13, 2006

I was, unusually, in Milan yesterday (a Saturday), working at my office with Sean Carlos (who’s teaching me cool new website tricks, more on that later). We went out for lunch, and were just getting ready to leave the restaurant when three young guys came in, whom we noticed particularly because one had hair in [...]

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La Buona Educazione (Good Manners)

March 12, 2006

Italy has four or five of those freebie newspapers, you probably have them in your city as well. The one I read regularly is Metro, partly because it’s the best of a bad lot, partly because it’s the only one distributed at the Lecco railway station. It’s not serious news, just enough to keep up [...]

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Unusual Italian Baby Names

March 10, 2006

photo taken in Mantova Dino [DEEN-oh] is a common nickname for a number of names. This guy must have a sense of humor: “Dino Nosari” sounds like dinosauri – dinosaurs. photo taken in Mantova I’d never heard the name Modestino [mod-ess-TEEN-oh] (literally “little modest one”), but it’s rather sweet, especially in combination with his surname, [...]

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Mantova

March 6, 2006

Enrico and I went to Mantova for a weekend getaway. Friday afternoon we drove to Montecchio Maggiore to leave his mother with her cousin Nini’, and visit with some of Nini’s seven children and various grandchildren, including the irrepressible Claudia, now in her fourth and final year of a Fine Arts degree at the Accademia di [...]

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Travel Vlog: Mantova

March 6, 2006

Enrico and I went to Mantova for a weekend getaway. Friday afternoon we drove to Montecchio Maggiore to leave his mother with her cousin Nini’, and visit with some of Nini’s seven children and various grandchildren, including the irrepressible Claudia, now in her fourth and final year of a Fine Arts degree at the Accademia di [...]

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