I travelled via Belgium last week and decided to stay overnight at Dinant, where I have stayed previously and found to be marginally less bad than most towns in Belgium.To anyone contemplating a similar stop - don't.The whole of the town is being
At La Dolce Vita exhibition at Olympia this year I bought a jar of garlic cloves preserved in a pizzaiola type oil and vinegar mixture.It is just amazing for snacking, the whole cloves are really crunchy with a fairly mild flavour of the garlic an
I need to buy a tyre for my car. I googled all the usual words but came up with nothing. Back in UK I would simply go to Kwikfit, or ATS etc and it would be done on the spot.
Does anybody have a contact for a sun blind maker?Think of a conventional, rather old-fashioned roller blind with the roller fixed at the top of the window and the blind hanging vertically down.
Can't agree about expatsinitaly.com - surely it's the most dreary of them all. It's quite a lot like Yahoo Answers in fact - "I wanna live in Iddly, how do I go about doing that?"
I don't really care what format is used, but the problem seems to be that all of the regular people are looking for somewhere else to go. And if it's just like Yahoo answers, there won't be any regulars as once a question has been asked and answered, that's it, job done, why come back on any regular basis for general interest.Not to mention that in most cases the quality of the questions asked and the answers given clearly demonstrates that Yahoo is populated with complete knobs.I am another who has joined Facebook and left (twice!) as I really, really didn't like it.I'm guessing that they simply want rid of this forum and want to stick to a traditional magazine approach with advertising. Perhaps they feel the forum doesn't draw enough footfall to the site to attract advertising revenue?
No internet forum is ever going to rank very high on my list of Most Important Things In My Life - and I probably don't feel the need to use any "features" like Groups and stuff, but for the life of me I can't see what the fuss is about.I do agree with the concept of "if it aint broke, don't fix it", but they have "fixed" it so let's just get on with it.It's not exactly life-threatening is it?
I have MB cover for 3 years on my main car, which I did have to use when I got a bad misfire in Germany (a software problem for heavens sake). They were bloody awful as it's all done via a London call centre. For my Italian car I have Green Flag, only used it once (needed new battery) and they were very good. I do the personal cover which covers me wherever I am and applies no matter what car I'm driving so I guess I'm fully covered, possibly excessively.
Can't advise on prevention but you can get relief from the bites if you hit them with a piezo zapper as they occur. Amazon do them for very little money and they are really effective.
I'm guessing that Italy have similar residency qualification criteria and for most cases, actual tax residency will be easy to determine, whether one has taken Italian residency with the comune or not. The problems arise in borderline cases, possibly like the OP, where each authority can "prove" that you are tax-resident in their country so as to extract tax from you. How you get them to agree is the tricky bit. In which case, taking up Italian anagrafe residency may swing the argument towards Italian tax-residency; the converse may equally apply.
Possibly one of the cheapest - though not as community-spirited as bunterboy's suggestion - is to use Pneus Online. They are based in France but have made arrangements with local people to fit the tyres. Way it works is you choose and buy online, then select a local guy for them to deliver to. You contact the local guy and he calls you when the tyres arrive for him to fit them. I had one done, for which he charged me about €10 for fitting and balancing. Great service. TK
Colmar is indeed a great stop - also, just a couple of kms up the road, is Riquewihr - a real gem and you'd hardly know it was there. Well worth checking out. Alan, I really sympathise with your Basel problems - did you find out what caused the holdup? Being in the tunnel going south implies some problem on the road itself - roadworks? I have seen queues of lorries heading south at the border but clearly you wouldn't have reached the tunnels until beyond the border. I doubt there would be any issue with the border if you were coming north at the time, as they don't check you coming out at all - no money to be made out of it.
Mont Blanc is a good way to go as it's not a bad drive and there are good places to stop. We always used to go that way because our timings meant that Chamonix was a perfect distance for overnighting, and it is a really nice town with good bars and food options. Latterly, I've chosen to stop in Burgundy (I've been on a Pinot Noir quest these last couple of years) and Beaune is another great stopover. Other than that, I usually go via Gotthard as being the quickest, cheapest and most convenient, but like to ring the changes as I do the trip several times a year. I must have stayed in nearly all of the main towns/cities down that route over the years. The only thing I have absolutely never done is the Basel by-pass, quite simply because Basel is the easiest city to get through - all urban motorway - and I have never ever witnessed any kind of hold-up there. For lorries, yes, but never for cars. And it's a nice place to stopover, too.
Comments posted
Can't agree about expatsinitaly.com - surely it's the most dreary of them all. It's quite a lot like Yahoo Answers in fact - "I wanna live in Iddly, how do I go about doing that?"
I don't really care what format is used, but the problem seems to be that all of the regular people are looking for somewhere else to go. And if it's just like Yahoo answers, there won't be any regulars as once a question has been asked and answered, that's it, job done, why come back on any regular basis for general interest.Not to mention that in most cases the quality of the questions asked and the answers given clearly demonstrates that Yahoo is populated with complete knobs.I am another who has joined Facebook and left (twice!) as I really, really didn't like it.I'm guessing that they simply want rid of this forum and want to stick to a traditional magazine approach with advertising. Perhaps they feel the forum doesn't draw enough footfall to the site to attract advertising revenue?
No internet forum is ever going to rank very high on my list of Most Important Things In My Life - and I probably don't feel the need to use any "features" like Groups and stuff, but for the life of me I can't see what the fuss is about.I do agree with the concept of "if it aint broke, don't fix it", but they have "fixed" it so let's just get on with it.It's not exactly life-threatening is it?
I have MB cover for 3 years on my main car, which I did have to use when I got a bad misfire in Germany (a software problem for heavens sake). They were bloody awful as it's all done via a London call centre. For my Italian car I have Green Flag, only used it once (needed new battery) and they were very good. I do the personal cover which covers me wherever I am and applies no matter what car I'm driving so I guess I'm fully covered, possibly excessively.
Can't advise on prevention but you can get relief from the bites if you hit them with a piezo zapper as they occur. Amazon do them for very little money and they are really effective.
Indeed, there are no problems on any of the motorways, it's only if, like me, one had fancied stopping the night at Dinant. So, still don't.
I'm guessing that Italy have similar residency qualification criteria and for most cases, actual tax residency will be easy to determine, whether one has taken Italian residency with the comune or not. The problems arise in borderline cases, possibly like the OP, where each authority can "prove" that you are tax-resident in their country so as to extract tax from you. How you get them to agree is the tricky bit. In which case, taking up Italian anagrafe residency may swing the argument towards Italian tax-residency; the converse may equally apply.
Possibly one of the cheapest - though not as community-spirited as bunterboy's suggestion - is to use Pneus Online. They are based in France but have made arrangements with local people to fit the tyres. Way it works is you choose and buy online, then select a local guy for them to deliver to. You contact the local guy and he calls you when the tyres arrive for him to fit them. I had one done, for which he charged me about €10 for fitting and balancing. Great service. TK
Colmar is indeed a great stop - also, just a couple of kms up the road, is Riquewihr - a real gem and you'd hardly know it was there. Well worth checking out. Alan, I really sympathise with your Basel problems - did you find out what caused the holdup? Being in the tunnel going south implies some problem on the road itself - roadworks? I have seen queues of lorries heading south at the border but clearly you wouldn't have reached the tunnels until beyond the border. I doubt there would be any issue with the border if you were coming north at the time, as they don't check you coming out at all - no money to be made out of it.
Mont Blanc is a good way to go as it's not a bad drive and there are good places to stop. We always used to go that way because our timings meant that Chamonix was a perfect distance for overnighting, and it is a really nice town with good bars and food options. Latterly, I've chosen to stop in Burgundy (I've been on a Pinot Noir quest these last couple of years) and Beaune is another great stopover. Other than that, I usually go via Gotthard as being the quickest, cheapest and most convenient, but like to ring the changes as I do the trip several times a year. I must have stayed in nearly all of the main towns/cities down that route over the years. The only thing I have absolutely never done is the Basel by-pass, quite simply because Basel is the easiest city to get through - all urban motorway - and I have never ever witnessed any kind of hold-up there. For lorries, yes, but never for cars. And it's a nice place to stopover, too.