Sarzano Castle

As castles go, this is not one of the largest, but it is the closest to my sister's house in Sarzano, Italy.

Guess to whom it belongs? No other than British actor Christopher Lee. His full name is Christopher Frank Carandini Lee and it's the Carandini line that ties him to the area. His mother was Marchesina Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano.

You may know him from his role as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings or Count Dooku in the Star Wars movies but he's actually been in 289 movies (and counting!). He was Dracula in all the early movies. Lee was named 2005's 'most marketable star in the world' in a USA Today newspaper poll, after three of the films he appeared in grossed $640m.

On July 21st 2004 he was given the honorary citizenship of the Italian city of Casina (Province of Reggio Emilia) where Sarzano, the castle of his ancestors is situated. He gave his speech of thanks in Italian. Pretty cool, huh?

The first two photos I took while in Italy this week. The second one shows my little friend Arthur, son of my friends Garry and Irene. Irene named him, believe it or not, after King Arthur, and doesn't he look regal in front of his castle?

The last two were taken by my sister when Christpher Lee was given his honorary citizenship in 2004.

Casina, Italy

Click the photo to enlarge it!!

This is the town of Casina in Italy, where my sister lives. I took this photo from the top of one of the hills, looking down on the town. No words or photographs can express the feeling of actually being there, but I hope this comes a little close.

The Beauty of Fog in Italy

You may want to click these photos to enlarge them. The fog nestled in the valleys near my sister with the mountains peaking look like islands on the ocean. They look surreal and beautiful to me.

Teaching English in Italy

My sister teaches English to various groups in Italy, including this group of advanced students at a company called Elletric80. A nicer group of folks you could not hope to meet! It was a lot of fun to help sis out on a couple of classes. I got to converse with these fine folks and got to know them better.

Nice-looking folks, don't you think?

The Mini-family Reunion

Here I am in Casina, Italy, with my sister and mother in the front row and my sister's husband on the far right. In the middle are my Uncle Attilio and two of his three kids, Edoardo and Arianna. I hadn't seen my uncle since 1999 and the kids sure have grown since then! In fact, they are now adults, just as mine have become adults during that time. It was wonderful to see them after all this time!

Caffe Macchiato with Class

Italians do everything with class, including coffee. This is not a cappuccino - it's a caffe macchiato. You may have ordered one at Starbucks without knowing that macchiato means "stained" in Italian - it's basically coffee stained with milk. Ah, but that wasn't enough for this young lady who made the coffee for me. She had to add a smiley face to help me smile on a cold winter day. Thank you, nice artist lady!

Monkey People in Milano

A series of beautiful photographs in Milano, Italy, along Via Dante, the Champs-Élysées of Milano, is marred by crazy tourists who can't help imitating what they see. Monkey see, monkey do?

Only kidding, of course. I put my friend Irene up to this! She's a good sport and looks nothing like the monkey in the photo. Well, maybe just a little.

La Galleria in Milano, Italy - Juxtaposition!

La Galleria is one of the earliest "malls". It's in an X shape and is enclosed except at the four entrances which are open, as you can see here.

The stores inside vary from the luxurious to the silly but nowhere is this more evident than smack in the middle, where four stores face toward the middle.

Here I present to you one of the silliest extremes to face each other. In one corner, Prada, the epitome of fashion and luxury. When you enter, there are more clerks than customers. The clerks dote on you hand and foot, flattering you and pointing you to those items that, once worn, will make people ooh and aah at you.

Directly facing Prada is the other extreme, McDonald's, the haven of hamburger-chomping and French Fry-nibbling American tourists and curious Italians, where there are many more customers than clerks, where the food and drinks will, once consumed, cause you to look less flattering, and will make people go oh-oh when they see your expanded gut.

Ah, the juxtaposition is simply...astounding!

My sister's artwork outside city hall

This is a carving that my sister made, commissioned by the city of Casina, Italy, to place at the entrance to the city hall. She is quite the artisan and quite the artist. Here she is next to her handiwork too.

The Great Duomo of Milano

The central figure in Milano is the cathedral. Cathedrals in Italian are called catedrale or duomo, so this is known as the Duomo of Milano. It was built in the Middle Ages over a 300-year period. It's magnificent, awe-inspirting, jaw-dropping.

OK, now to some fun stuff.

Inside the cathedral there were, of course, confessionals, where people go to confess their sins to the priest. The priest sits in the middle area, which you see in the second photo. I guess priests get hungry too, considering what the tin of cookies I see half hidden in there!

On the main door of the cathedral are many ornate figures, including the ones you see here. One of them has a very shiny leg. That's because for centuries people have seen that leg as lucky if you rub it. Irene is demonstrating how to rub the lucky leg.

In the next photo you can see that I decided that touching the leg wasn't enough luck for me. I had to kiss it. I didn't quite kiss it, though, because I was thinking about the millions of people that touched that leg before me. Who knows where those peoples' hands have been??

Inside the cathedral, I also saw an announcement that Jesus is now on the web. However, they didn't provide his blog site address, so I'll have to update that later when I figure it out.

I'm in Milano, Italy!

OK, well I was in Milano a couple of days ago. (Now I am visiting mom and sis south of there above Tuscany.) My friends Irene, Garry and their son Arthur, who's seven, met me up in Milan. They live near me in DC but they were on separate flights. We spent the day going around Milano. Here I am reclaiming my right to my castle. The locals call it Castello Sforzesco, named after the ruling family Sforza in the Middle Ages, but they like to conveniently forget that the Sforzas left me their castle in their will. I've had central heating installed, satellite TV large HDTVs in every room, and I had the walls painted from that garish Middle Ages gray brick to bright pastels!

People keep walking in and out of the castle as if they think it's a tourist attraction. Time to pull out the cannons again!

Speaking of nostalgia (were we?), see the bench that I'm sitting on? Well, a few years ago when my wife and I were not yet married, we used to sit on this park bench behind the Castello Sforzesco and...uhm...chatted. Well, we used our lips, anyway. OK, we kissed, all right? For hours on end! There, I said it, I'm a kisser.

I look lonely there, don't I? Soon I'll be back home and I'll be kissing some more!

Follow Up to the Balloon Trip Across the Ocean

Regular readers of my blog, both of you, will remember the story I related back in June about the balloon trip across the ocean. To refresh your memory, click here:

http://joeganci.blogspot.com/2007/07/balloon-trip-across-ocean.html

As I knew I'd be coming back to Italy this week, I let the school know and they insisted that I come visit them to spend lunch with the kids and dinner with the parents and administrators. I'm going next week on Friday! Last week I sent a request to many of my friends asking them if they could provide some messages to the children of Modena who had sent the balloons. 62 of you responded and I compiled them, printed them, and will bring a bound copy to the kids next week. You can be one of the first to see the messages, though, by clicking below. If I do this again and you didn't contribute last time, consider doing it next time. It only takes a few minutes and it's a way to reach out your hands to another part of the world.

http://www.joeganci.com/Modena/ModenaNoContacts.pdf

Vienna...Vienna...

I just arrived in Vienna (Austria, not Virginia) where I have a six-hour layover before flying to Milan, Italy, to visit family. I've settled into a coffee bar called Ikarus, recharging myself by drinking cappuccini while I recharge my laptop whose battery I drained on the flight over. I'm surrounded by smokers so my clothing is going to stink later but living a few hours less of life is a small price to pay for having a powered laptop and free wireless access. Besides, those hours will come at the very end of my life when I probably won't be feeling all that good, anyway.

Even though I have a six-hour layover, I was advised not to try to go into town and back because it really isn't enough time. I'd like to see Vienna, but I guess today is not the day.

This is the first airport I've seen that had an adult bookstore that advertises adult toys, videos, etc. If only the dollar wasn't so weak right now (haha)...

It's snowing outside, first snow I've seen this year. The guy sitting next to me on the plane, who appeared to Middle Eastern (the guy, not the plane), looked delighted to see snow. It may have been a long time since he'd seen it. The airport is playing American Christmas music. Is it really that time of year already? Apparently here it is.

Strange, a lot of German-speaking people around here. :-)

The 10 types of people in the world.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

(If you don't get it, you may ask.)

Some of my best friends...

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing my friends Tom and Carol again while in Kansas City. We had dinner at Figlio, a really good Italian restaurant. Figlio means Son in Italian.

Tom and I have been in the same field, e-learning, for quite some time. He organized an e-learning conference called TAAC back in 1995 in Snowbird, Utah, and asked me to be keynote speaker. He is a real stand-up guy, good to the core. His wife, Carol, is even gooder (uhm...better), and we are all dear, lifelong friends. Thank you, Tom and Carol, for making my life better!

Chopper, Chopper

Here's something you don't see every day. While driving on 435, the beltway around Kansas City, I came upon this scene. I did a double-take, then whipped out my camera. I then sped up: it was fun to be able to pass a helicopter with my car!

I Flew, I Flew! In a Hot Air Balloon!

Yesterday was another first for me. Thanks to a dear friend who gave me a belated birthday present, I got to go up in a hot air balloon! The weather was gorgeous, which was a lucky thing because you never know what DC weather will be at this time of year (late October). The wind, however, was iffy, a little too strong to go up until the last minute when our pilot decided it was safe to go up, primarily because there happened to be a hot air balloon festival not far from us and our pilot could see that other balloon pilots had already taken off.

We got to participate in prepping the balloon. In the first photo, you can see the balloon pulled out of its bag and elongated on the ground. In the second photo, we see the balloon being filled with air from two large fans. At a certain point, we had to pile into the basket quickly. There were ten of us, including the pilot.

We took off so gently, I wasn't immediately aware that we had left the ground. There was no sound whatsoever except when the pilot added lift by activating the propane tanks for a few seconds at a time (see photo 5). That was loud and the heat of the flames would make our heads warm.

While the pilot's wife followed us in their truck (on the ground, naturally), we let the wind push us in the direction it wanted. The pilot is able to control the height of the balloon but has very little control over the direction we go. However, after decades of piloting balloons, he already knew the best landing spots.

We aimed for some school grounds and made it with a landing that was just slightly jarring (but fun). On the way there, to slow us down the pilot actually had us skim the tops of some trees! That was a bit of a thrill, especially because he hadn't let us in on his plan so we were wondering if we were going to crash. On the way down, we also flew just slightly above some home rooftops. I'm sure the residents of those homes have learned to keep their blinds closed!

As the sun set, we landed and piled out, securing the basket while the pilot got the balloon all the way down. After that, he pulled out the champagne and soda and we toasted a successful flight!

Is it The End of Time? At Least As Far as AT&T in LA are Concerned!

Time of day calling it quits at AT&T
From the Los Angeles Times
David Lazarus

August 29, 2007

It's the end of time, at least as far as AT&T is concerned.

The brief note in customers' bills hardly does justice to the momentousness of the decision. "Service withdrawal," it blandly declares. "Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued."

What that means is that people throughout Southern California will no longer be able to call 853-1212 to hear a woman's recorded voice state that "at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . ." with the recording automatically updating at 10-second intervals.

"Times change," said John Britton, an AT&T spokesman. "In today's world, there are just too many other ways to get this information. You can look at your cellphone or your computer. You no longer have to pick up the telephone."

Indeed, time already has stopped in 48 other states, he said. California and Nevada are the two remaining holdouts.

Interesting Facts About Spiders

This is very funny! However, language is not for the kids, so go lock them in the closet for a while! (Joking, don't lock your kids in closets. They can make a mess in there.)

Fun Halloween Hangman Game

Cute stuff:
http://www.dedge.com/flash/hangman/hangman.swf

Italian Meetup at Il Fornaio

Tonight we had our Italian meetup for the first time at Il Fornaio restaurant in Reston. I had not been there since the blessing of the ovens before they opened. (See my August 22 blog.)

There were nine of us there that night, including Daria and Chris and me (in the photo). This was Daria's first time. She's from Rome. Chris is American but speaks Italian like a native because he's lived most of his life there. We both attended the American School of Milano, Italy, but at different times, so we didn't know each other there. Chris and I met last year during our high school reunion in NYC. Yes, we went to high school in Milano but the reunion was held in NYC because most alumni are here in the States or elsewhere in the world. It was the first ever reunion and included any alumni who wanted to come. It was a great success with about 300 attendees. There will be another one next May in Miami.

Anyway, back to the meetup. Thank you to David, the Il Fornaio manager, for treating us so well! He got us a table in the private room, which was a lot more quiet than the rest of the restaurant. He also gave us free pizza appetizers (yum).

More photos can be seen here.

I met President Carter!

OK, so this was a couple of years ago. Notice the funny backdrop they put behind him - oh, right, that's real. This was in our local Sam's Club, where President Carter was signing copies of his latest book. He was surrounded by secret service men, like the guys you see here. Funny thing is, they weren't so secret. I could see them clearly!

Three Continents!

I bought this as a gift for my brother-in-law. This toolkit is of European Design with an American Attitude...but it's made in China!

I wonder how it might be different if it were designed in China, had a European attitude and was made in America?

Strange, Wonderful Pumpkins