In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
Generally, I wholeheartedly endorse the "sod the French" attitude, but we did spend a few quid on a pair of breathalisers on the ferry the last time we returned home via France. I have no intentions of ever giving the flics any reason to stop me, but I only pick fights when I have some prospect of winning. My understanding is that the law is a cost-cutting exercise. If so, it seems pretty pathetic. Given that you can buy the things for around a Euro each retail, how many were the gendarmes getting through in a year? Do they just routinely give you a test whenever you're stopped for anything? Al
I haven't spent a lot of time researching but, if I were you, I'd be a tiny bit concerned that the TV you're considering apparently is not sold on Amazon's Italian site. That doesn't mean it won't be compatible here, of course; there are lots of reasons why Amazon might not sell the model in Italy. While I think the odds are pretty good that just about any DTT capable TV would work here as well as in Britain, personally, I'd want to see that model on sale somewhere in Italy before I hauled it over. Al
The technical quality of the programmes you'll receive on a digital TV in Italy should be as good as what you see in Britain but, as sagraiasolar says, the quality in the widest sense is a matter of opinion. Two things to consider, though: First, just about any exposure to people speaking Italian is a Good Thing if you're trying to learn the language or develop your skills. Second, if your brain starts to hurt from that effort after a while, it is possible to get some programmes in their original language if you've set your television correctly. I've seen at least one American cop series with the dialogue in English rather than, as is the norm, dubbed into Italian by actors who, to my ears, sound very unconvincing and sometimes wildly melodramatic. Al
Supposedly, Digital Terrestrial Television (what's called "Freeview" in Britain) should be available everywhere in Italy by the end of this year. (Or so the Wikipedia article says. It also points out that the deadline has been pushed back previously...) If you're buying a new flatscreen TV, it should have a digital television decoder built in. My experience of five different flatscreen televisions with DTT is that you select the country you're in as part of the set-up, so it should be the case that a new television bought in Britain will work in Italy. The other thing to consider is the aerial. First, you might need to get a larger, more efficient aerial than the one currently on your house in order to receive DTT. While an analogue television was watchable to some degree with a fuzzy picture due to poor reception, with DTT it's generally the case that you either have a good signal at the television or it's unwatchable. You can get "High Gain" aerials both in Italy and in Britain. I've seen virtually identical models for just about the same price in Asda and OBI. Aiming the aerial directly at the transmitter is important with DTT, particularly so if you live in a rural area some distance from the transmitter. Again, you'll either have a good signal or the TV will be unwatchable. If you want to do the installation of the aerial yourself, probably the easiest thing to do is take your cue from the aerials you see around you and point yours in the same direction. Alternatively, if you don't fancy fiddling around on the roof, there will be companies in your area who will sell you the aerial and install it for you. Finally, just in case you weren't aware of it, Italian law requires anyone with a television to buy a licence. Al
Using a hot water syphon (erm... I think that's the right term...) would be an excellent idea if it wasn't the case that the only room above our cordwood stove is the roof space! We already create quite enough spectacularly huge icicles as it is. However, the medium term plan is to move the wood-burner to the ground floor as part of restructuring, so I'll certainly keep your idea in mind. I can see how it might be very useful if we had a lengthy power cut in cold weather; running the generator constantly is not sensible if it's only to power a central heating pump. I have looked at the UPS idea and sort of got some way towards a solution, but it has slipped back down the list of priorities. Thanks for the tips about the diesel and the Coleman lanterns. When I was a kid, you had to buy cans of special fuel for the "White Gas" lamps, but I see from the Coleman website that at least some of their modern lanterns can use lead-free petrol. I'm sure that would be a lot cheaper to run that a light with Camping Gaz cylinders. Probably go some way towards keeping the house warm, too. Al
Angie and Robert are certainly right about listening to your neighbours. I regularly check the official weather forecast websites, but many of the locals have spent a lifetime living here and they're generally pretty good at predicting very local changes and threats. I think they're not too great at predicting exceptional events like the long, very cold period we had last February, but that's where the official meteorolgists are good. I also generally agree with all the other supplies listed, although I'm not sure about the diesel additive. I thought that fuel companies changed their formulations in the winter these days? I've certainly not had any problems running our diesel car in the five winters I've spent here. Also, I don't recall seeing a petrol-fueled Coleman lamp in literally decades. Not since I lived in the States, actually. Are they sold in Italy? All three of our central heating sources - GPL boiler, pellet stuffa and cordwood stove - require mains electricity in order to function properly. Even the woodstove can't be used without electricty since the water jacket soon starts to boil if central heating water isn't circulating. While ENEL does an amazing job keeping the lights on during the worst winter weather, we are quite vulnerable since our house is rural and at the end of the line, as it were. If the wires supplying just our house were to go down in a storm, I'm sure fixing them would be low on ENEL's list of priorities since so few people are affected. For several years, we had a cheap, no-brand, Chinese-made petrol generator. It worked fairly well over a few fairly lengthy blackouts, but filling it up every couple hours was a nusiance and its voltage regulation was not good, so lights flickered and I was a bit worried about using it to power electronic equipment. As the bad weather of last February approached, I decided to make sure it was working. After an extremely annoying hour fighting with it, I decided that there was something fundamentally wrong -- either with the machine, of with my technique. In any case, I didn't want to have to face a similar hassle under pressure in a blizzard, so we went off and bought a new electric-start, GPL-powered generator which could be connected to our bombola. Fortunately, our power stayed on all through the three weeks that we had very deep snow and very cold temperatures here, but it was nice knowing that we could, since the gas tank was nearly full, have supplied all our electrical needs for several weeks if we had needed to. That definitely would not have been cheap, but it would certainly have been preferable to hypothermia. So, what I would add to your list is a generator and fuel and, if you already have one, a regular check to make sure it's still working. Our machine is an expensive monster and definitely not sutiable for someone living in, say, a city flat, but there are small, quiet machines which could be put on a balcony and are sufficient for powering a central heating boiler, mobile phone charger, a light or two and perhaps a television or laptop. If you visit a market, you'll often see these little machines purring away behind the stalls or vans. You can, if you want to do things properly, get in an electrician to wire up switches and circuits which connect the generator to the household electrics. My approach is a lot more rough and ready (and potentially dangerous, if you're not careful). We have a cord with male plugs on both ends which can reach from the generator's socket to one of the house's power sockets. When the power goes off, I flick off the circuit breaker for the outlets (not the lights), start up the generator and then connect the cord from the generator to the household socket, thus supplying power to everything on that circuit. Since the light circuit is still connected to the ENEL line, they will come on when power is restored. When that happens, the generator is switched off, the jumper cord removed and the circuit breaker put back to normal position. When I was young, blackouts were a bit exciting, but at my present age and in our current situation, they're an adventure I can do without. Al
Jane, when I read your post about the shed and obnxious neighbours, I felt sorry for you and glad that our place is about a kilometre from the nearest village and a couple hundred metres from our nearest neighbours (who are very nice people). Reading your post above almost made me regret that we don't live in a village with a neighbour like Franco. For the little it's worth, my advice is that you continue to make yourself a part of your community, get yourself a little pre-fab shed on wheels to cover the motorcycle and then strive to very pointedly ignore the prats next door. If you do it correctly - and I suspect we northern Europeans might find it a lot easier than many Italians - the fact that you obviously just don't care about the self-important gits will probably irritate them far more than anything else you might do. Al
"For lovers of all things Italian" is a nice tag line for a magazine or a forum, but does anyone love everything Italian? I love my wife very much, but that doesn't mean she doesn't annoy me occasionally. I love our daughter more than life itself, but she still drives me up the wall now and then. I love our home in Italy a great deal, but I still have "What the hell am I doing here?" moments and I now and then wonder what planet some Italians were born on. While I most definitely do not think that everything about Italy and Italians is absolutely, bloomin' marvelous, I wouldn't have just passed my sixth anniversary of arriving permanently in Italy if I didn't think there was more good than bad about the place and the people. Unfortunately, it seems that some people are desperate to believe that Italy is paradise on earth and all Italians are paragons. In fact, it seems that some of those people are thrown into an existential crisis and feel profoundly threatened by anyone who suggests that Italy, Italians, the Italian political class, the Catholic church, the weather in Italy or anything else about the country is anything less than perfect, the result of which can be personal insults: "If you hate it here so much, why don't you just go home, loser!!!!" These comments do not, by the way, relate to anything said by anyone about posts made by the Judecas character. I didn't read any of those, but I do know there are people who feel bitter and disappointed by whatever country and culture they find themselves in. If you take a sour, embittered, negative Brit (or Yank, Aussie, Italian, etc) and dump them in a different country, it's unlikely that they will be immediate transformed into someone with a sunny, positive outlook. I can relate to Ram's points above. Forums - although not so much this one, these days - are important to me as a source of information but also as a way of simply connecting with someone - however virtually - in a language which I can use with some skill. As for the personal spats, most of it flies straight over my head since I find it so hard to keep the personalities straight. A few people I recognise by their style even if they change names, but I find it difficult enough to remember people in real life; trying to keep a personality attached to a forum handle is beyond me. As for Pat's original musings about whether the internet enhances communication or just allows people to more deeply entrench their positions, Justin Webb, a former North American editor for the BBC, wrote a piece a couple days ago which touches on just these points. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19667384 Al
Consumer protection? In Italy? Is the concept even known here? The only think I know of that vaguely resembles consumer protection applies in the event of the consumer being powerful and well enough connected to make the rip-off retailer's life a misery. Al
My understanding is that the satellite currently being used by the traditional British broadcasters (Astra 1N) is a temporary replacement for one of the Astra 2 satellites which started to fail earlier than expected. I believe there were also commercial considerations at play since, if I recall correctly, the BBC wanted to get away from paying Sky to transmit it's channels via satellite and some sort of deal with Astra was done. Astra 1N was never intended to be at 28°E and was never designed to transmit signals tightly-focused on the British Isles. This means that BBC, ITV, C4 and 5 signals are currently being transmitted in a wider pattern than normal and this makes them more easily received in southern and eastern Europe. I understand that Astra is planning to launch a replacement satellite which has transmitters that are tightly focused on Britain at the end of 2012 or early in 2013. However, building satellites is a process which has lots of scope for delay, satellite launches are never-risk free and I understand it is never known for certain how well a focused transmitting array will work until the satellite is in position and operating. Frankly, I am not certain that our dish will work once the BBC etc. transfer over to the new satellite. I think that the worst that could happen is that we loose all the traditional broadcasters and end up having to start paying that lovely Mr Murdoch again. Even if this should occur, I hope it might be the case that we'd at least be able to get more Sky channels by using the big dish. Al
Comments posted
Generally, I wholeheartedly endorse the "sod the French" attitude, but we did spend a few quid on a pair of breathalisers on the ferry the last time we returned home via France. I have no intentions of ever giving the flics any reason to stop me, but I only pick fights when I have some prospect of winning. My understanding is that the law is a cost-cutting exercise. If so, it seems pretty pathetic. Given that you can buy the things for around a Euro each retail, how many were the gendarmes getting through in a year? Do they just routinely give you a test whenever you're stopped for anything? Al
I haven't spent a lot of time researching but, if I were you, I'd be a tiny bit concerned that the TV you're considering apparently is not sold on Amazon's Italian site. That doesn't mean it won't be compatible here, of course; there are lots of reasons why Amazon might not sell the model in Italy. While I think the odds are pretty good that just about any DTT capable TV would work here as well as in Britain, personally, I'd want to see that model on sale somewhere in Italy before I hauled it over. Al
The technical quality of the programmes you'll receive on a digital TV in Italy should be as good as what you see in Britain but, as sagraiasolar says, the quality in the widest sense is a matter of opinion. Two things to consider, though: First, just about any exposure to people speaking Italian is a Good Thing if you're trying to learn the language or develop your skills. Second, if your brain starts to hurt from that effort after a while, it is possible to get some programmes in their original language if you've set your television correctly. I've seen at least one American cop series with the dialogue in English rather than, as is the norm, dubbed into Italian by actors who, to my ears, sound very unconvincing and sometimes wildly melodramatic. Al
Supposedly, Digital Terrestrial Television (what's called "Freeview" in Britain) should be available everywhere in Italy by the end of this year. (Or so the Wikipedia article says. It also points out that the deadline has been pushed back previously...) If you're buying a new flatscreen TV, it should have a digital television decoder built in. My experience of five different flatscreen televisions with DTT is that you select the country you're in as part of the set-up, so it should be the case that a new television bought in Britain will work in Italy. The other thing to consider is the aerial. First, you might need to get a larger, more efficient aerial than the one currently on your house in order to receive DTT. While an analogue television was watchable to some degree with a fuzzy picture due to poor reception, with DTT it's generally the case that you either have a good signal at the television or it's unwatchable. You can get "High Gain" aerials both in Italy and in Britain. I've seen virtually identical models for just about the same price in Asda and OBI. Aiming the aerial directly at the transmitter is important with DTT, particularly so if you live in a rural area some distance from the transmitter. Again, you'll either have a good signal or the TV will be unwatchable. If you want to do the installation of the aerial yourself, probably the easiest thing to do is take your cue from the aerials you see around you and point yours in the same direction. Alternatively, if you don't fancy fiddling around on the roof, there will be companies in your area who will sell you the aerial and install it for you. Finally, just in case you weren't aware of it, Italian law requires anyone with a television to buy a licence. Al
Using a hot water syphon (erm... I think that's the right term...) would be an excellent idea if it wasn't the case that the only room above our cordwood stove is the roof space! We already create quite enough spectacularly huge icicles as it is.
However, the medium term plan is to move the wood-burner to the ground floor as part of restructuring, so I'll certainly keep your idea in mind. I can see how it might be very useful if we had a lengthy power cut in cold weather; running the generator constantly is not sensible if it's only to power a central heating pump. I have looked at the UPS idea and sort of got some way towards a solution, but it has slipped back down the list of priorities. Thanks for the tips about the diesel and the Coleman lanterns. When I was a kid, you had to buy cans of special fuel for the "White Gas" lamps, but I see from the Coleman website that at least some of their modern lanterns can use lead-free petrol. I'm sure that would be a lot cheaper to run that a light with Camping Gaz cylinders. Probably go some way towards keeping the house warm, too. Al
Angie and Robert are certainly right about listening to your neighbours. I regularly check the official weather forecast websites, but many of the locals have spent a lifetime living here and they're generally pretty good at predicting very local changes and threats. I think they're not too great at predicting exceptional events like the long, very cold period we had last February, but that's where the official meteorolgists are good. I also generally agree with all the other supplies listed, although I'm not sure about the diesel additive. I thought that fuel companies changed their formulations in the winter these days? I've certainly not had any problems running our diesel car in the five winters I've spent here. Also, I don't recall seeing a petrol-fueled Coleman lamp in literally decades. Not since I lived in the States, actually. Are they sold in Italy? All three of our central heating sources - GPL boiler, pellet stuffa and cordwood stove - require mains electricity in order to function properly. Even the woodstove can't be used without electricty since the water jacket soon starts to boil if central heating water isn't circulating. While ENEL does an amazing job keeping the lights on during the worst winter weather, we are quite vulnerable since our house is rural and at the end of the line, as it were. If the wires supplying just our house were to go down in a storm, I'm sure fixing them would be low on ENEL's list of priorities since so few people are affected. For several years, we had a cheap, no-brand, Chinese-made petrol generator. It worked fairly well over a few fairly lengthy blackouts, but filling it up every couple hours was a nusiance and its voltage regulation was not good, so lights flickered and I was a bit worried about using it to power electronic equipment. As the bad weather of last February approached, I decided to make sure it was working. After an extremely annoying hour fighting with it, I decided that there was something fundamentally wrong -- either with the machine, of with my technique. In any case, I didn't want to have to face a similar hassle under pressure in a blizzard, so we went off and bought a new electric-start, GPL-powered generator which could be connected to our bombola. Fortunately, our power stayed on all through the three weeks that we had very deep snow and very cold temperatures here, but it was nice knowing that we could, since the gas tank was nearly full, have supplied all our electrical needs for several weeks if we had needed to. That definitely would not have been cheap, but it would certainly have been preferable to hypothermia. So, what I would add to your list is a generator and fuel and, if you already have one, a regular check to make sure it's still working. Our machine is an expensive monster and definitely not sutiable for someone living in, say, a city flat, but there are small, quiet machines which could be put on a balcony and are sufficient for powering a central heating boiler, mobile phone charger, a light or two and perhaps a television or laptop. If you visit a market, you'll often see these little machines purring away behind the stalls or vans. You can, if you want to do things properly, get in an electrician to wire up switches and circuits which connect the generator to the household electrics. My approach is a lot more rough and ready (and potentially dangerous, if you're not careful). We have a cord with male plugs on both ends which can reach from the generator's socket to one of the house's power sockets. When the power goes off, I flick off the circuit breaker for the outlets (not the lights), start up the generator and then connect the cord from the generator to the household socket, thus supplying power to everything on that circuit. Since the light circuit is still connected to the ENEL line, they will come on when power is restored. When that happens, the generator is switched off, the jumper cord removed and the circuit breaker put back to normal position. When I was young, blackouts were a bit exciting, but at my present age and in our current situation, they're an adventure I can do without. Al
Jane, when I read your post about the shed and obnxious neighbours, I felt sorry for you and glad that our place is about a kilometre from the nearest village and a couple hundred metres from our nearest neighbours (who are very nice people). Reading your post above almost made me regret that we don't live in a village with a neighbour like Franco. For the little it's worth, my advice is that you continue to make yourself a part of your community, get yourself a little pre-fab shed on wheels to cover the motorcycle and then strive to very pointedly ignore the prats next door. If you do it correctly - and I suspect we northern Europeans might find it a lot easier than many Italians - the fact that you obviously just don't care about the self-important gits will probably irritate them far more than anything else you might do. Al
"For lovers of all things Italian" is a nice tag line for a magazine or a forum, but does anyone love everything Italian? I love my wife very much, but that doesn't mean she doesn't annoy me occasionally. I love our daughter more than life itself, but she still drives me up the wall now and then. I love our home in Italy a great deal, but I still have "What the hell am I doing here?" moments and I now and then wonder what planet some Italians were born on. While I most definitely do not think that everything about Italy and Italians is absolutely, bloomin' marvelous, I wouldn't have just passed my sixth anniversary of arriving permanently in Italy if I didn't think there was more good than bad about the place and the people. Unfortunately, it seems that some people are desperate to believe that Italy is paradise on earth and all Italians are paragons. In fact, it seems that some of those people are thrown into an existential crisis and feel profoundly threatened by anyone who suggests that Italy, Italians, the Italian political class, the Catholic church, the weather in Italy or anything else about the country is anything less than perfect, the result of which can be personal insults: "If you hate it here so much, why don't you just go home, loser!!!!" These comments do not, by the way, relate to anything said by anyone about posts made by the Judecas character. I didn't read any of those, but I do know there are people who feel bitter and disappointed by whatever country and culture they find themselves in. If you take a sour, embittered, negative Brit (or Yank, Aussie, Italian, etc) and dump them in a different country, it's unlikely that they will be immediate transformed into someone with a sunny, positive outlook. I can relate to Ram's points above. Forums - although not so much this one, these days - are important to me as a source of information but also as a way of simply connecting with someone - however virtually - in a language which I can use with some skill. As for the personal spats, most of it flies straight over my head since I find it so hard to keep the personalities straight. A few people I recognise by their style even if they change names, but I find it difficult enough to remember people in real life; trying to keep a personality attached to a forum handle is beyond me. As for Pat's original musings about whether the internet enhances communication or just allows people to more deeply entrench their positions, Justin Webb, a former North American editor for the BBC, wrote a piece a couple days ago which touches on just these points. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19667384 Al
Consumer protection? In Italy? Is the concept even known here? The only think I know of that vaguely resembles consumer protection applies in the event of the consumer being powerful and well enough connected to make the rip-off retailer's life a misery. Al
My understanding is that the satellite currently being used by the traditional British broadcasters (Astra 1N) is a temporary replacement for one of the Astra 2 satellites which started to fail earlier than expected. I believe there were also commercial considerations at play since, if I recall correctly, the BBC wanted to get away from paying Sky to transmit it's channels via satellite and some sort of deal with Astra was done. Astra 1N was never intended to be at 28°E and was never designed to transmit signals tightly-focused on the British Isles. This means that BBC, ITV, C4 and 5 signals are currently being transmitted in a wider pattern than normal and this makes them more easily received in southern and eastern Europe. I understand that Astra is planning to launch a replacement satellite which has transmitters that are tightly focused on Britain at the end of 2012 or early in 2013. However, building satellites is a process which has lots of scope for delay, satellite launches are never-risk free and I understand it is never known for certain how well a focused transmitting array will work until the satellite is in position and operating. Frankly, I am not certain that our dish will work once the BBC etc. transfer over to the new satellite. I think that the worst that could happen is that we loose all the traditional broadcasters and end up having to start paying that lovely Mr Murdoch again. Even if this should occur, I hope it might be the case that we'd at least be able to get more Sky channels by using the big dish. Al