I see that an airport scanner operator in the UK has been given a warning for harrassment after apparently ogling at a co-worker through a newly installed body scanner. I suppose it was bound to happen. Also I read up on Schengen and it does indeed impose an obliogation on particpating countries to check passports for those leaving the area too. I couldn't understand why this was being done - after all we're leaving so why do they care - but apparently it's to make sure that the passport holder hasn't overstayed their visa either in Italy or another Schengen country. You learn something new......
Can't help but think that all of this could have been sorted out by way of private messaging. Do we really need to know if someone is having trouble logging on to some other site? Or what the solution is? The effect of this can only be to reignite smouldering animosities and to turn people off participating in sharing their love of Italy through forums such as these. There's sensitivities on many sides about the previous history of Italymag Forum and people need to take that into account. I'm not suggesting censorship but, overall, positivity should be encouraged over negativity and therefore sometimes there are topics and tone that should rightly be avoided so that everyone has the chance to move on. Can we just park this boring rivalry and all enjoy la bella italia and a bit of friendly banter? PS: Lisa - I don't doubt for a moment your honourable motives.
A fitting and worthy first post in this group. Facinating stuff. It's true that there has always been more of an emphasis on the campaigns in France and we don't get to hear half enough about the campaign in Italy. Tours of the battlefields and cemeteries in France are common but I don't know if similar tours are done in Italy. The usual mention of the war and how it affected Abruzzo in the guide books generally relates to the damage done to towns and cities and the dismay at the modern rebuilding done after the war.Would love to hear more individual stories.
Not entirely on point but anyway....reputed to be true! Franco lay in a fever in his palace in Madrid. He was slipping in and out of consciousness and it was clear that he wouldn't last much longer. He had been administered the last rites and his family were gathered around his bed in vigil watching the dictator's slow demise. Outside the palace word had spread that Franco was nearing death and many of his supporters had gathered outside the gates of the palace to offer support. The windows of the palace bedroom were open and a soft chant could be heard wafting over the air from outside the gates; "Franco, Franco", they cried. Suddenly the old man with difficulty raised himself up in his bed and cocked his ear of the sound wafting in. He turned to his daughter and asked "What is that sound?". She replied "It is the people of Spain, Papa, they have come to say goodbye." The old man thought for a moment and then replied:- "Why, ....where are they going?"
Some of you may already know this story but I thought it worth repeating:-In September 1943, a crack unit of the German Air Force Paratroop Regiment directed by Lieutenant Count Otto von Berlepsch crashed their gliders into the mountains around the Campo Imperatore and the Gran Sasso, the highest peak in the Apennines. Their mission known, as Operation Eiche (Operation Oak), was to rescue Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who was being held captive in the Campo Imperatore Hotel.On 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted to depose Mussolini and replace him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and Mussolini was subsequently arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III. After his arrest, Mussolini was transported to various locations around Italy by his captors. Otto Skorzeny, selected personally by Hitler to carry out the rescue mission, tracked him to the isolated hideaway. Mussolini was brought to the Hotel by way of rickety cable car (which is still on display at the modern cable car station there) and was said to have blanched at the prospect of the journey up the mountain.Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used his own reconnaissance to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at the Hotel, a ski resort high in the Apennine Mountains. On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny joined the team, led by Major Harald Mors, to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk mission.The commandos crashed their gliders into the nearby mountains and having approached the Hotel managed to overwhelm Mussolini's captors without a single shot being fired. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment, and formally greeted Mussolini with "Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!" to which Mussolini was said to reply "I knew that my friend would not forsake me!" Mussolini was first flown from Campo Imperatore in a tiny Luftwaffe Fieseler Fi 156 Storch STOL liaison aircraft, initially flown in by Captain Walter Gerlach, then taking off with Mussolini and Skorzeny. Mussolini, terrified, was jammed in at the pilot’s feet and the extra weight of the passengers destabilized the tiny pane and almost caused it to crash on take off. Mussolini was transported to Vienna, where he stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial and was given a hero's welcome and from there he was taken to Berlin.The operation granted a rare late-war public relations opportunity to Hermann Göring and Nazi propaganda hailed the operation for months. Mussolini was forced to return to power as a puppet of the Nazi Regime in the German-occupied portion of Italy (the Italian Social Republic), informally known as the Salò Republic because of its administration from the town of Salò. Otto Skorzeny gained a large amount of success from this mission; he received a promotion to Major, the award of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and fame that led to his "most dangerous man in Europe" image.In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain, only to be captured and summarily executed with his mistress Clara Petacci near Lake Como by Italian partisans. On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3 a.m., they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazza Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there on the Axis powers.After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a petrol station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse.After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in the municipal cemetery to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by neo-Fascists. Making off with their hero, they left a message on the open grave: "Finally, O Duce, you are with us. We will cover you with roses, but the smell of your virtue will overpower the smell of those roses."On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—Il Duce's body was finally 'recaptured' in August 1946, hidden in a small trunk in a town just outside Milan. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, Mussolini’s birth place.Otto Skorzeny fled Germany after the war and travelled to various countries around the world including Argentina where he was for a time an advisor to Juan Peron (who subsequently had his own issues with a disappearing corpse).Like thousands of other former Nazis, he was declared denazified in absentia in 1952 by a West German government arbitration board, which now meant he could travel into other Western countries. He spent part of his time between 1959 and 1969 in Ireland, where he bought Martinstown House, a 200-acre farm in County Kildare in 1959. He also had property in Mallorca. He finally succumbed to cancer on July 7th, 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.
Hi David and Maria, I can't help you with your query but you might get more of a response to it if you start a new thread about it. This thread is about a specific issue in Le Marche.
There's only two encouraging things I can mention. First is that we got a whopper of a gas bill at one stage (when we weren't even in the property and the gas was turned off!) but it turned out that it was only an estimated reading and that when we complained they took an actual reading and subsequently sent us out a refund cheque. Maybe that's an issue in your case.The second thing I'd say is that although you may be using lots of heat etc. now that will change very soon and you'll be down to minimal use for the summer. Hopefully things over the year will average out ok. Either that or warm your self by a candle!
Thanks for the info on your experience. This was the report I'd seen (ANSA) - Rome, March 4 - There have already been 120,000 to 130,000 reservations made for flights on Alitalia's budget carrier Air One, which begins service March 28 from Milan's Malpensa airport, the airline's CEO said on Thursday. Speaking on a morning radio program, Rocco Sabelli recalled how Air One tickets start at 25 euros for domestic flights and 60-70 euros for international destinations. Compared to other budget carriers, Sabelli observed, Air One allows passengers to book their seats and does not charge extra for luggage. Air One was originally Italy's biggest private airline until Alitalia, then Italy's national carrier, went bankrupt in 2008 and spun off and sold its flight operations. These were acquired by a group of Italian investors, Compagnia Aerea Italiana (CAI), who included the owner of Air One, Carlo Toto. CAI then created the new airline, keeping the Alitalia name, through the merger of the former national carrier's flight division and Air One. The new, private airline took off in January of last year and Air France-KLM was then chosen as its strategic partner and was sold 25% of Alitalia. In order to meet competition from budget carriers, Alitalia decided to create its own "price friendly" airline using the Air One marque which will operate from Malpensa to smaller airports with smaller planes.
Comments posted
I see that an airport scanner operator in the UK has been given a warning for harrassment after apparently ogling at a co-worker through a newly installed body scanner. I suppose it was bound to happen. Also I read up on Schengen and it does indeed impose an obliogation on particpating countries to check passports for those leaving the area too. I couldn't understand why this was being done - after all we're leaving so why do they care - but apparently it's to make sure that the passport holder hasn't overstayed their visa either in Italy or another Schengen country. You learn something new......
Can't help but think that all of this could have been sorted out by way of private messaging. Do we really need to know if someone is having trouble logging on to some other site? Or what the solution is? The effect of this can only be to reignite smouldering animosities and to turn people off participating in sharing their love of Italy through forums such as these. There's sensitivities on many sides about the previous history of Italymag Forum and people need to take that into account. I'm not suggesting censorship but, overall, positivity should be encouraged over negativity and therefore sometimes there are topics and tone that should rightly be avoided so that everyone has the chance to move on. Can we just park this boring rivalry and all enjoy la bella italia and a bit of friendly banter? PS: Lisa - I don't doubt for a moment your honourable motives.
Why not just open a new group called - "Buy and Sell" or something and people could post items there?
A fitting and worthy first post in this group. Facinating stuff. It's true that there has always been more of an emphasis on the campaigns in France and we don't get to hear half enough about the campaign in Italy. Tours of the battlefields and cemeteries in France are common but I don't know if similar tours are done in Italy. The usual mention of the war and how it affected Abruzzo in the guide books generally relates to the damage done to towns and cities and the dismay at the modern rebuilding done after the war.Would love to hear more individual stories.
Not entirely on point but anyway....reputed to be true! Franco lay in a fever in his palace in Madrid. He was slipping in and out of consciousness and it was clear that he wouldn't last much longer. He had been administered the last rites and his family were gathered around his bed in vigil watching the dictator's slow demise. Outside the palace word had spread that Franco was nearing death and many of his supporters had gathered outside the gates of the palace to offer support. The windows of the palace bedroom were open and a soft chant could be heard wafting over the air from outside the gates; "Franco, Franco", they cried. Suddenly the old man with difficulty raised himself up in his bed and cocked his ear of the sound wafting in. He turned to his daughter and asked "What is that sound?". She replied "It is the people of Spain, Papa, they have come to say goodbye." The old man thought for a moment and then replied:- "Why, ....where are they going?"
Some of you may already know this story but I thought it worth repeating:-In September 1943, a crack unit of the German Air Force Paratroop Regiment directed by Lieutenant Count Otto von Berlepsch crashed their gliders into the mountains around the Campo Imperatore and the Gran Sasso, the highest peak in the Apennines. Their mission known, as Operation Eiche (Operation Oak), was to rescue Italian dictator Benito Mussolini who was being held captive in the Campo Imperatore Hotel.On 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted to depose Mussolini and replace him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and Mussolini was subsequently arrested on the orders of King Victor Emmanuel III. After his arrest, Mussolini was transported to various locations around Italy by his captors. Otto Skorzeny, selected personally by Hitler to carry out the rescue mission, tracked him to the isolated hideaway. Mussolini was brought to the Hotel by way of rickety cable car (which is still on display at the modern cable car station there) and was said to have blanched at the prospect of the journey up the mountain.Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used his own reconnaissance to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at the Hotel, a ski resort high in the Apennine Mountains. On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny joined the team, led by Major Harald Mors, to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk mission.The commandos crashed their gliders into the nearby mountains and having approached the Hotel managed to overwhelm Mussolini's captors without a single shot being fired. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment, and formally greeted Mussolini with "Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!" to which Mussolini was said to reply "I knew that my friend would not forsake me!" Mussolini was first flown from Campo Imperatore in a tiny Luftwaffe Fieseler Fi 156 Storch STOL liaison aircraft, initially flown in by Captain Walter Gerlach, then taking off with Mussolini and Skorzeny. Mussolini, terrified, was jammed in at the pilot’s feet and the extra weight of the passengers destabilized the tiny pane and almost caused it to crash on take off. Mussolini was transported to Vienna, where he stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial and was given a hero's welcome and from there he was taken to Berlin.The operation granted a rare late-war public relations opportunity to Hermann Göring and Nazi propaganda hailed the operation for months. Mussolini was forced to return to power as a puppet of the Nazi Regime in the German-occupied portion of Italy (the Italian Social Republic), informally known as the Salò Republic because of its administration from the town of Salò. Otto Skorzeny gained a large amount of success from this mission; he received a promotion to Major, the award of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and fame that led to his "most dangerous man in Europe" image.In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland to board a plane to escape to Spain, only to be captured and summarily executed with his mistress Clara Petacci near Lake Como by Italian partisans. On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3 a.m., they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazza Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there on the Axis powers.After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a petrol station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse.After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in the municipal cemetery to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by neo-Fascists. Making off with their hero, they left a message on the open grave: "Finally, O Duce, you are with us. We will cover you with roses, but the smell of your virtue will overpower the smell of those roses."On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—Il Duce's body was finally 'recaptured' in August 1946, hidden in a small trunk in a town just outside Milan. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, Mussolini’s birth place.Otto Skorzeny fled Germany after the war and travelled to various countries around the world including Argentina where he was for a time an advisor to Juan Peron (who subsequently had his own issues with a disappearing corpse).Like thousands of other former Nazis, he was declared denazified in absentia in 1952 by a West German government arbitration board, which now meant he could travel into other Western countries. He spent part of his time between 1959 and 1969 in Ireland, where he bought Martinstown House, a 200-acre farm in County Kildare in 1959. He also had property in Mallorca. He finally succumbed to cancer on July 7th, 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.
Hi David and Maria, I can't help you with your query but you might get more of a response to it if you start a new thread about it. This thread is about a specific issue in Le Marche.
Non e possible = it's not possibleNon posso = I can'tMaybe both apply to you and your Gas Bill, RIMCN!
There's only two encouraging things I can mention. First is that we got a whopper of a gas bill at one stage (when we weren't even in the property and the gas was turned off!) but it turned out that it was only an estimated reading and that when we complained they took an actual reading and subsequently sent us out a refund cheque. Maybe that's an issue in your case.The second thing I'd say is that although you may be using lots of heat etc. now that will change very soon and you'll be down to minimal use for the summer. Hopefully things over the year will average out ok. Either that or warm your self by a candle!
Thanks for the info on your experience. This was the report I'd seen (ANSA) - Rome, March 4 - There have already been 120,000 to 130,000 reservations made for flights on Alitalia's budget carrier Air One, which begins service March 28 from Milan's Malpensa airport, the airline's CEO said on Thursday. Speaking on a morning radio program, Rocco Sabelli recalled how Air One tickets start at 25 euros for domestic flights and 60-70 euros for international destinations. Compared to other budget carriers, Sabelli observed, Air One allows passengers to book their seats and does not charge extra for luggage. Air One was originally Italy's biggest private airline until Alitalia, then Italy's national carrier, went bankrupt in 2008 and spun off and sold its flight operations. These were acquired by a group of Italian investors, Compagnia Aerea Italiana (CAI), who included the owner of Air One, Carlo Toto. CAI then created the new airline, keeping the Alitalia name, through the merger of the former national carrier's flight division and Air One. The new, private airline took off in January of last year and Air France-KLM was then chosen as its strategic partner and was sold 25% of Alitalia. In order to meet competition from budget carriers, Alitalia decided to create its own "price friendly" airline using the Air One marque which will operate from Malpensa to smaller airports with smaller planes.