Italy here I come!

sbkelley · Joined: 20 Feb 2007 Posts: 284 Location: Tempe, AZ

Yeah, Tim, what happened to Coors Light??

Now he's a wine connesuier AND a balloon-fiesta fan...
_________________
Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization. - Ed Abbey

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

It's not softball season, Coors Light is still the beer of choice for that. As for being a wine expert, that is definitely not true. Pretty much only drink sweet wines which make up about 1/10th of the wine out there, Moscato being our wine of choice.

tibber · Joined: 16 Feb 2004 Posts: 247 Location: Phoenix

Really great scenery. I liked the vineyard in the foreground of the snowy mountains and the street scenes where you can also see the snowy mtns.

Looks Freezing

though.
_________________
Angela from N Phoenix

GTG · Posted: 11/11/2009, 10:41 am Post subject:

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

Coors is a highly sought after product that any beer drinker would enjoy! I don't know a single friend or co-worker that would turn one down.

The ski resort is supposed to open next week......hope to learn to ski soon Smile

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

Well we had a 4 Day weekend over Thanksgiving so we decided to skid the dinner (on Thanksgiving anyway) and make good use of it. Couldn't really decide where we wanted to go so I just looked at a map and picked a few cities.

First we went to Vienna, the capital of Austria.

Next was an hour drive to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

Then drove another 3.5 hours to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.

Last we stopped off in Munich Germany and toured the BMW Museum to break up the 9 hour drive home.

It was a fun weekend and it sure felt like I had hiked 20 miles by the time it was over. Vienna was great! Bratislava was a little interesting at first, definitely felt like we were in the soviet union. But it grew on us a bit, I want to go back for a pub crawl because everywhere had 1/2 liter beers for about 1.50 Euro. Prague was the busiest and driving was a pain there, will definitely stay in the center of town and park the car for the weekend next time. Munich and the BMW museum was just a quick stop to break up the 9 hour drive home. I still can't get used to being the "Slow" one on the road when I'm doing 100mph and cars are still flying past me. I think we'll stay in Italy for a while as $8 a gallon for gas gets expensive on a 1200 mile road trip, even for the Honda.

I finally got all the pictures uploaded on facebook and fotki, enjoy! http://public.fotki.com/Davis2001r6/italy-2010/

-TIM-

desertgirl · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 3350 Location: Chandler, AZ

Looks to be a great trip -- WOW cool to stop by the BMW museum -- What did you think of little cars you have in you photo set! Sure would stretch that 8$ gas a bit further! Wink

BTW: Your pictures are great Very Happy

_________________
Photos: http://www.pbase.com/desertgirl/galleries
Life is but a dream ...there is no end to what you can dream!

Shawn · Posted: 12/2/2009, 5:09 pm Post subject:

Why is the sign out front in English?
_________________
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

Museum is same in German. Although outside of Italy, I'm amazed at the amount of people who speak English. The US is severely lacking in teaching foreign languages IMO.

azbackpackr · Posted: 12/3/2009, 12:51 pm Post subject:

Erock · Joined: 07 Aug 2006 Posts: 87 Location: Taylor

I think the multilingual difference between Europe and the States has a lot to do with culture. Many Europeans speak multiple languages out of necessity. Belgium, for example, has three official languages (French, Dutch and German) and the Belgians are required to study English in school as well. This isn't out of the desire of the government to turn their citizens into polyglots, it has to do with their geographic location, size and history. The different cultures and languages have intermingled for so long on the continent that language really isn't determined by national borders.

The States have a different culture. I think even though we are a country made up of immigrants their desire has been mostly to integrate into and become a part of the American culture; and that included learning English. For an American, English is part of their national identity. And it really hasn't been a matter of necessity for America to be multilingual. I think that will change as Spanish becomes a more pervasive language not only in the southwest, but elsewhere. In my opinion Spanish should have been made an official language in Arizona a long time ago.

I wonder if the British are as multilingual as other Europeans . . . or did their relative isolation from the Continent serve to keep English as the dominant language?

One last observation. The Japanese, despite their educational system, are as fluent in other languages as Americans are (at least in Hokkaidou, I can't speak for the rest of the country). They are required to study English through almost all of grade school, I think, yet very few Japanese I talked with knew any English beyond a few sentences and words. Like the Americans, their language is very closely tied to their national identity and there is no pressing need for them to speak another language.

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

I can see the geographic location argument, after all going from country to country here is like going state to state in the US. It just amazed me while traveling the amount of people that do speak English, from restaurant and hotel staff to people on the street. You right though many of them do speak 3 or 4 languages. I just wish it was a more active part in our schooling systems.

Got to do a small bit of skiing today. We had a good snow about a month ago but it since had mostly melted away, earlier this week we got another little dumping. So I headed up the mountain after work while it was raining, my judgment worked as that turned into snow half way up, three quarter of the way I need to put the snow chains on to get the rest of the way up there. There wasn't as much snow as before and the cover wasn't the greatest so I couldn't go cross country skiing but did try a little downhill on one of the easy runs. The resort isn't open yet but they have been grooming the runs. Looks like it hadn't been done in a few weeks but the couple inches of fresh snow made it manageable.

I didn't enjoy climbing the run in my ski boots but got used to it slowly. Fell 3 times on the way down, was trying to work on slowing down and coming to a stop. Going straight and turning I'm fine, just gather too much speed and my pizza ski stopping technique needs a lot of work. So go to fast and crash and start over again. Will hopefully get to take a lesson one of these days. I'm working nights now (11pm to 7am), so that is nice that I have the option of heading to the ski resort 30 minutes from work. That's part of the reason I asked for the shift. Hope to get up there again this weekend for a longer session or my x-country, finally got a set for Jen.

azbackpackr · Posted: 12/4/2009, 6:06 am Post subject:

Sounds fun!

Davis2001R6 · Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 5591 Location: Italy

We took a quick day trip to Milan on Saturday, here is Jen's blog about it.

http://jdombinitaly.blogspot.com/2010/01/milan.html

Always nice to be able to see lots of new things within a couple hour drive.

-TIM-

wanderingsoul · Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 2285 Location: Gilbert AZ

Very Nice Tim, sounds like you enjoyed the trip. Nice pics too. Glad you are taking in all that you are able to while there. Nice place to visit and explore
_________________
Wanderingsoul (Michelle)

Positive Thinking Is the Spark that Makes Dreams Happen~~~Unknown