The Padova Chronicles

Alitalia - Off to a Rocky Start

For those wondering what has become of the "new Alitalia", it can best be described as hurtling down the runway, but not gaining a lot of altitude.  The "sale" has been closed, although there is still a lot of union activity going on that's quite disruptive - apparently a number of people missed their Christmas flights, which can't have put them in a good mood about using Alitalia's services in the future.

The other big, open issues facing Alitalia are 1) finding a foreign partner, and 2) figuring out what to do about the Malpensa airport, in Lombardy, near Milan.

Apparently, a deal is all but signed with Air France, which the French have been crowing about:

«Air France-Alitalia? Merci Silvio»

With good reason too.  As the article points out, with Prodi's plan, they would have had to shell out 1.2 billion euros, and assume the debts of the entire company.  With the current plan, they get a quarter of the company for 300 million Euro, and no mountain of debts, which Berlusconi conveniently passed off to the Italian taxpayer.  Also, as part of the deal, Italian routes have been consolidated, because AirOne, the other carrier with a lot of Italian routes is being folded into the new Alitalia.  The deal received a "get out of jail free" card from the antitrust authority as a further sweetener from Berlusconi. Air France probably get even more of the company as the group that got gang-pressed into buying up Alitalia heads for the doors at an opportune time, which makes something of a mockery of Berlusconi's insistence that Alitalia stay "Italian".

The other big wrinkle in the proceedings is the Malpensa airport, which was a fairly important hub for Alitalia, that served Milan and northern Italy in terms of long haul international flights.  The Lega Nord, or "Northern League", part of the governing coalition, wants, at all costs, to keep Malpensa operative and important, and as is pretty much par for the course for a government of any stripe in Italy, don't seem to believe much in the idea of a free market for the available slots, where companies will step in to service the large number of business customers that are in the area.

With the government putting its full weight, and a large dollop of public money, behind the new Alitalia, it will likely manage to struggle aloft, but for the time being, I still would avoid flying on it, as the strikes don't look to come to a quick end.  Eventually, it will probably be folded into Air France, who, I might add, are a bunch of theiving bastards, having stolen/"lost" my baggage seven years ago, with only a pittance in compensation.  Before things go further big changes, though, they'll probably settle down to some semblance of normal for a while, so it's unlikely there will be much to talk about in the near future.  I'll be sure to write if things heat up, though.

Visiting the Veneto: The Mountains

As if the Veneto didn't contain enough variety in the towns between Verona and Venice, it also has a stunning set of mountains: the Dolomites, and reaches as far as a short section of border with Austria.

The "Queen of the Dolomites" is Cortina d'Ampezzo, an expensive ski town that hosted the 1956 winter olympics and is still a very popular destination for both winter and summer outdoor sports, and continues to be a place to see and be seen, for those interested in that kind of thing.

One of the things that makes Cortina such a beautiful setting is its geography - rather than being at the bottom of a deep alpine valley, Cortina lays in an open bowl, surrounded by mountains, which turn various pretty shades of pink and red as the sun sets.  From Cortina, various mountain passes open up to the north, west, and east, as well as the valley that rises up towards Cortina from the south.  The area has a wide array of options in terms of outdoor sports, from mountain biking to skiing and mountaineering.

I am not that excited about seeing movie stars, dropping huge amounts of money on boutique shopping, or that sort of thing, so that aspect of Cortina is a bit of a negative for me.  There's no getting around that it's an expensive area, although even for the budget-minded, there are options.  We usually stay in a campground (described [here](http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2004/08/19/il-camping)), which for me is a pleasant experience, bringing back memories of my youth in Oregon, despite how crowded the campground is.

Even if it deserves the moniker "Queen of the Dolomites", Cortina is by no means the only beautiful place in the mountains of the Veneto.  Other popular locations include Falcade and other towns in the "Agordo" area, as well as Sappada, barely on this side of the border with Austria.

Indeed, one of the interesting things about the Dolomites, both in the Veneto, as well as the neighboring regions of Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli is the cultural mix.  The area is now part of Italy, but, for instance, Cortina was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire - you can still see where the old border was several kilometers down the valley leading to the town.  The architectural influence is clearly visible, with houses being built in the same style common here in Tirol.  Until the advent of skiing, and the idea of vacations, something that has only taken hold and been available to most people very recently, the high mountains were often seen as something of a backwater, unimportant compared to the big, industrial cities of the plains, as economically not much took place high up, other than the cutting of lumber and some mining.  Also, many of the towns up there are difficult to get to, and must have been especially so one, two, or three hundred years ago.  This isolation led to some very interesting cultural and linguistic oddities.  Besides being the area where German and Italian meet head on, the locals have a series of dialects all their own, which are recognized as a language, [Ladin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin), which is pretty much incomprehensible to anyone not born speaking it.

The town of Sappada, just below the Austrian border, high up on the ridge north of town, is classified as a "linguistic island" of German speakers, which in many ways is more closely connected to the nearby region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  The wooden houses would fit right in Heidi or some other tale from the Germanic side of the Alps.  Places like this, where cultures mix, are one of the things that make Italy, and Europe in general so fascinating.

Public transportation isn't as good in the middle of the mountains as it is in the plains, but it's still quite possible to get to most places if you're patient and plan ahead.  However, renting a car might be a good way to ensure that you're free to explore some of the mountain passes and remote valleys on your own.

 

Rodeling

Many Austrians seemingly know how to ski before they can walk.  In this part of Austria, with all its lofty peaks, skiing is practically the national sport, and it seems that ever other little mountain town has its own ski run.  Unfortunately, I don't know how to ski, and don't have the time or money to invest in becoming proficient at it.  As luck would have it, though, there's another great winter downhill snow activity that pretty much anyone can take part in: "rodeling".

A "Rodel" is a sled - the real ones, made with a wooden frame and runners, not the plastic things that are fun for zipping down short hills.  And for some reason, the word works quite well, even for someone like me with very limited German skills, "Rodeling" just works well to describe it, so everyone I know uses the German word even when speaking English.

Generally, it's pretty simple: there are a number of Rodel tracks located in the mountains.  Some of them are near ski areas, but others are simply roads that have been converted to winter use as Rodel tracks.  So you drive out to the Rodel track, and walk your sled up the hill.  More often than not, up on top, there is an 'Alm', or mountain hut, where you can come in from the cold, and eat some hearty Tirolean fare (and I do mean hearty: sausages, potatoes, eggs and cheese are all fairly standard ingredients, usually in large portions), prior to going back down the hill.  Going down is easy - just shift your weight to steer, and stick out your feet to brake and steer as needed.  You can go as fast or as slow as you like, but as long as you're on a track that's not too steep, it's fairly safe, and lots of fun!

Here's Ilenia cruising down a hill with Helen:

 An amusing note: Helen, our baby, tends to fall asleep when we go rodeling.

 

Trick or... wait, what?!

The doorbell rang, which was odd - we weren't expecting anyone, and mail and that type of thing shows up in the morning.  We click on the speakerphone to see if it's someone outside.  Nothing, so I open the door and look out.  You can imagine my surprise when I saw the individuals in this photo:

 

My first reaction was along the lines of "sorry folks, but Halloween's been over for a while", so I called my wife to come have a look and see if she could figure out what the heck it was.  She recognized the motley crew as a tradition they have in Italy too, and the leader of what Ilenia explained were the "three wise men, plus shepherd" caught on that I'm "not from around here" and explained in English that they're collecting money for some good cause.  Apparently, you give them money and they sing, so we did, and they did - and weren't half bad, either.  I took a quick snap of them with my phone camera, with Helen and Ilenia in the foreground.

Bizarre.

 

Innsbruck Fireworks

Sometimes, something just strikes you as neat or interesting even if it's not really anything special in the grand scheme of things.  For some reason, I really enjoyed New Year's Eve here in Innsbruck.  We were in good company, having gone to our friends' place for dinner, but I also really enjoyed the fireworks.

Innsbruck in the heart of winter is a pretty good place to light off a bunch of fireworks - far better than the tinderbox that is the western US on the 4th of July.  Here, it's way too cold and damp to set much of anything on fire at this time of year.  Whereas, with good reason, most really good fireworks are illegal back home in Oregon, here you can buy some pretty serious artillery, stuff that shoots hundreds of feet in the air and gives off quite a show.  This makes for a very "democratic" fireworks show: instead of being stuck with nothing but sparklers and forced to watch some sort of "official" fireworks show, put on by whoever, there are lots of smaller shows all over the place, with a few larger shows taking place at the same time.  Our favorite, of these, was at the Seegrube, most of the way up the Nordkette mountain range.  They shot off some pretty big fireworks, but what really made them unique was how they were reflected off the snow of the mountain, illuminating the whole mountain with red or green.  No photos, unfortunately!

In any case, for someone who is not a big fan of New Year's Eve celebrations, I was quite happy with how things turned out in Innsbruck.