MY PICKLE IN PESCALLO AND MORE

MY PICKLE IN PESCALLO

"John, stop! YouÂ’re going to scrap the side of the car," yelled my wife at me as I drove our small, four-seat Fiat Panda into a narrowing cobblestone passageway in Pescallo, a small fishing town on the Lecca branch of Lake Como, where the concierge at La Perla Panorama, our hotel of the day, said we would find a good seafood restaurant.

We had just walked through the beautiful lakeside town of Bellagio, located at the dividing point where Lake Como splits into a wishbone; one arm reaching to the city of Como close to Switzerland and the other to Lecca, about 35 miles north of Milano, theHurleyy burly capital of the province of Lombard.

After walking up and down the terraced town steps full of shops that served as the model behind Bellagio, the now-famous casino in Las Vegas with a giant oval shaped lake in front of it that features a choreographed lightshow, we thought weÂ’d explore the tiny fishing village of Pescallo.

The road along the lakeside from Lecca to Bellagio was narrow and windy. At one point on our route, I followed an Italian driver who scooted between two trucks stopped in a standoff because the road was not wide enough for both to pass. One of the truck drivers had to back off. One truck, the smaller one, started backing up. But while other cars were stopped awaiting the outcome of the maneuvers, I took my cue from the driver in front of me who had just passed me because I was going too slow. Barely slowing down from passing me, he threaded the needle caused by the awkward traffic puzzle and I followed despite my wifeÂ’s protestations not to. Driving from Bergamo airport east of Milan where we landed on Ryanair from Amsterdam earlier that day, I felt comfortable jumping into the flow of Italian traffic as
Kathy helped navigate using a combination of our Michelin driving directions (see earlier post on travel planning) and Italian road signs, which by and large are pretty good.

The sun was setting over the Italian Alps, which are to Lake Como like the Rockies are to Estes Park, Colorado, big and impressive. We followed the traffic signs to Pescallo. Although I knew the roads in this area were narrow and had observed cars, vans and even some buses make their way slowly through Bellagio, I was unprepared for the surprise awaiting me in Pescallo.

Spotting the first sign I saw pointing the way to Pescallo, I darted our small car in that direction. Thinking this was the main road, I flashed by two young boys kicking a soccer ball to each other as I drove along a stone pavement that lead into a shadowy passageway.

The roadway narrowed. Slowing down to better negotiate the path before me, I soon came to a point of checkmate where I thought I would wedge the car in and be unable to remove it from the impending situation of stomach-sinking proportions.

I heard scrapping noises and thought I had damaged the sides of car on the vertical canyon walls of the tiny village with only a handful of streets. When I reached a slightly larger square that connected to an equally narrow street through a small archway, it hit me like a punch in the gut that I would not be able to make the turn and continue forward. I had driven us into an untenable situation. The scrapping noise I heard came from the side-view mirrors on each side of the car being pushed toward the car by the walls of the buildings that were now only a couple of inches on each side of the car.

To make the situation even worse [or funnier on hindsight], a very large unleashed dog barking forcefully at us was standing on the bottom step of a stone stairway leading into the small square.

Dusk had arrived and I cherished the remaining minutes of light we had left to us to figure a way out of our emerging dilemma. Other than the two boys we had seen a few minutes earlier, we saw no one to whom we might appeal for help. We were clearly up a creek in Pescallo.

Our five-gear Fiat Panda crept forward by inches. Working the gas and the clutch when every inch counts focuses the mind becausedidn'tidnÂ’t want the car to drift backward into one of the buildings causing more damage to the carcouldn'tuldnÂ’t turn right and with my side mirrors out of commissicouldn'touldnÂ’t back up either.

"Way to go, John. Now what are you going to do?" I said to myself, feeling deservedly panicked. "Not only have you gotten a small Italian rental car stuck in a small Italian village, which will surely eat up your $250 security deposit, but no one is here to help you. Being in a remote part of Italy, god only knows how youÂ’re going to get help at this time of night and how much that help will cost. YouÂ’ll be the funny story villagers will talk about for decades to come as they laugh about the night the stupid American got his car stcouldn'td couldnÂ’t get out."

A few days earlier in Amsterdam I saw "The Da Vinci Code." Recalling the scene where Sophie Neuve and Robert Langdon escape the Paris police by driving her Smart Car backwards through oncoming cars and onto the sidewalk and then finally through a slit of space between two trucks, I said to myself, "If she could do it, so can you. This car is nearly as small as hers. Concentrate and slowly back out the same way you came in," I advised myself calmly.

Without the aid of my mirrors to allow me to see exactly how much room I had, my confidence left as quickly as it had arrived

"KathyÂ…get out of the car and tell me how close I am to the buildings," I pleaded to my wife seated next to me.

"Get out? No way with that dog standing there barking at us," she snapped back.

With cold sweat forming on my brow, I measured in my mind the size of my car and the proportions of the slightly larger square in front of us and came to the only plausible strategy available to me. "Could I pull into the square and turn the car around so I could head out front first and escape as we had come in?" It was a HobsonÂ’s choice of monumental proportididn't If it didnÂ’t work IÂ’d be in even worse shape, if that possible.

I inched forward into the square, turning the steering wheel right until the nose of the car was up against the stone archway. Reversing the car, I moved back until I saw clearly the outline of the red taillight, which told me there was no more room left. The dog was still there barking. I was probably the highlight of his day. As IÂ’ve grown older my paranoia of dogs, especially like the large one barking at me from just a few feet away, has increased.

Forward then reverse; again and again I moved the car until a ray of daylight and hope shown through the darkening skies. Finally, much to my amazement, I had achieved what only a few minutes earlier I thought was the impossible dream.

Now pointing in the right direction, I moved forward slowly. Both of us, with our windows rolled down so we could stick our heads our as far as we could without hitting the buildings but enough to see the distance between the carÂ’s bumper and the walls, called to the other with advise and pronouncements of progress.

With only inches to spare, we threaded the needle of Pescallo. The car cleared the dangerous squeeze and moved into a widening passage that would lead us to the highway we had exited a quarter hour earlier.

I stopped the car to survey the damages. The bad news was that the side view mirrors had indeed been scraped, but ever so slightly as to be virtually unnoticed. The good news was that the body of the car itself was untouched. We both looked at each other in wonderment of what had just happened.

Putting Pescallo in the review mirror, we headed up the hill in the dark past our hotel to stop at a restaurant, Trattoria Busconi, where we had a drink and savored the sweetness of escaping the pickle in Pescallo.

MINGLING AND MIGRANES IN MILANO

Unlike the morning drive from Bellagio to Milano that was bumper to bumper, stop-and-go from Como to Milano despite paying two tolls [1.60 and 1.20 Euros respectively] to be on the Autostrada, ItalyÂ’s multi-lane freeway where cars can zip by at impressive speeds, the drive from Milano in Lombardy to Lucca in Tuscany was free of traffic problems.

Even with a stop at an autogrill on the Autostrada so Kathy could make a scheduled call to our rental agent in Lucca, the intact medieval walled city where we would stay for five days and a stop for gasoline [in Italy it is called Benzine and costs 1.37 Euros per litre], our driving time was about three and one-half hours.

We would have cut an hour off the trip but for our adventure in leaving MilanoÂ’s historic center. It took us nearly an hour to find our way out of the center of Milano, where we had beginnerÂ’s luck in finding a parking garage with an open space [around the corner from The Duomo, the huge gothic cathedral first started to mark the uniting of the powerful Visconti and Sforza families. The ornate cathedral, which dominates a huge square and is next to the Vittorio Emanuel shopping arcade, an immensely impressive glass domed cross-shaped shopping mall, took upwards of five hundred years to build.

As happened in 1999 when I first visited Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, The Duomo was undergoing a giant restoration. The entire front façade was hidden by scaffolding and a giant veil. The shopping arcade, however, was open and bustling with tourists and Milanese eating and drinking during their midday break. Our lunch in Milano consisted of three fresh "salsicce" found at an open food market full of wonderfully tasteful offerings – like one vendor who was slicing off meat from two roasted pigs for panini sandwiches and the stall selling fried rise balls with interiors of spinach, pomodore or cheese.

Having escaped the pickle in Pescallo the night before, we had another tourist moment at the parking garage in Milano. Expecting to see a ticket taker who would total our time and take our payment, we naively followed an exiting car down the spiraled road to the exit. The driver of the car in front of us put his ticket in a machine and the gate rose and the car zipped into the street. Pulling up to the machine, I likewise inserted thedidn'tket but the gate didnÂ’t open. The digital message told me to first pay my ticket then reinsert it. I knew parking wasnÂ’t free but with no one at the date, who would I pay and where would I find that person?

Parked at the ticket machine wondering what to do or who I would talk to, I saw cars starting to line up behind mcouldn'te we go again. I couldnÂ’t go forward and I couldnÂ’t back up. Thinking of the famous line delivered by Oliver Harder to Stan Laurel when the comedy duo found themselves in a tragic but funny situation, I admonished myself, silently saying, "HereÂ’s another fine mess youÂ’ve gotten us into."

I lept from the car and ran to what looked like a window where someone might relieve me of my embarrassment. Unlike America where using car horns is tantamount to giving someone the finger, in Italy car horns are needed and necessary to send important signals to pedestrians and operators alike. I was ready to hear the waiting drivers behind me blasting away at their horns like cannons firing at a battle.

The window I thought was open was closed. Holding my ticket and money in plain view for a group of people exiting the elevator and asking in my evolving Italian where I could pay, one of them pointed back to the elevator. But I didnÂ’t know what he was referencing. I next collared a woman on the street and again went through my pathetic routine. She understood and took me to a ticket machine that takes your ticket and money and returns the ticket and change, if needed. Thanking her, I walked away from the machine with the man whose car was waiting behind me in close pursuit. Another learning lesson came and went.

After touring the block twice, unable to figure how to get off the one-way street, we spotted a cyclist who made the turn we were looking for and followed him. As we made our way away from the historic center and its tangle of streets seemingly not found on our map, we followed signs leading to the Autostrada and Paciencia and Parma, two cities on our route to Lucca.

At one point we saw a smallish delivery truck suddenly turn into our way. Surprised by its sudden appearance, I was even more surprised when I saw in big letters printed on it "Spinelli Mozzarella." That made my day.

LIVING LIFE LARGE IN LUCCA

We met our rental agent Debra at the east gate of Lucca, located about 45 minutes northwest of Florence, one of ItalyÂ’s fabled art cities we would visit soon.

Our two small-car caravan wended through LuccaÂ’s narrow streets first started by Romans in 180 BC. The birthplace of Giacomo Puccini, a composer of operas, most notably "La Boheme," Lucca started looking as it does today around 1400 and acquired its quintessential medieval walls starting in the 16th century. The walls, which are tall, thick and wide, took about two hundred years to build and represent a three-mile hike.

In America we think things are old after fifty years or so. In Italy, the "new stuff" as I call it, started after 1000 AD.

Debra took us to meet Duccio, the owner of the tiny garage where we parked our tiny car for 7 Euros per night. The four of us walked to the next street over – Via Guinigi – to be introduced to the self-catering [full kitchen, bathroom and laundry accommodations] we would call home base for the next five days as we made day trips to the five small hillside sea towns collectively known as the Cinque Terra, Florence and nearby Pisa.

Cars generally are expensive to own, drive and park in Italy. This explains, in part, why Italians from the tip to the heel of the boot and from kids to grandmas and professionals to students ride bicycles or scoot along with Vespas or their equivalent. Bicycles are everywhere and in my opinion are integral to the active Italian lifestyle that when combined with their Italian diet augurs for a healthy and long-lived life. Compare this to the America lifestyle based on poor exercise – cars are the key -- and poor diets – fast food, pizza and sugar in everything. I mentioned to Kathy that we had yet to see any Italian that was as grossly obese as is now common among many Americans who increasingly eat a steady diet of fried, sugary midway fair food. Aside from kids and teenagers for do wear T-shirts, Italians, especially professionals, wear long pants, shirts, ties, skirts and snug pantsuits with an accent of color coming from scarves, shoes or eyewear.

Our apartment is huge, sleeping six or more, and offers a glorious rooftop view of the brick and stucco walls with their terra cotta tiled roofs and no fewer than three of the cityÂ’s signature towers. One of them boasting a grove of trees growing on its top is only two streets away. Being on the top floor of the building, I discovered a skylight that leads me to our rooftop where IÂ’ll have an unobstructed 360 birdÂ’s eye view of the town.

Speaking of birds, at sunrise and dusk the air is alive with packs of swallows darting and diving for their dinner. Other birds, especially pigeons, are in good supply as well.

The medieval brick wall surrounding Lucca is high, wide and thick, with only a handful of entrances and exits. To walk the top of the wall, which has occasional parks that are quiet and shady, is about three miles.

Without electric lights at night one can imagine being transported to a time when candle power guided horses and carriages through the quiet streets instead of cars, small trucks and motorcycles that today navigated their way through the high-canyon walls of the village alive with residents and tourists.

We Americas have been raised on the notion that horizontal space is unending. This sense of entitlement to open spaces, I believe, has in part resulted in the outward sprawl from our central cities. Here in Italy, density is vertical. This notion of using limited resources, like open spaces, is key to making mass transportation like trains, buses and subways work and it also encourages the use of bicycles, an eminently sensible people powered form of propulsion to shop and visit without concern for parking a car. Speaking of cars, IÂ’ve only seen a couple of SUVs and not one Hummer or similar silly-sized American vehicles. It seems to me that if someone wants one, by the very size and cost of running it here, its use would be limited to non-city driving because Lucca central would be inhospitable to the status statement such a vehicle would represent. Considering I nearly got a small Fiat stuck in a small town, driving a Hummer here would be sheer insanity.

Shopping for sundries like soap and toothpaste and groceries like meats, cheese, fruit and vegetables and bread in Lucca consists of visiting a string of small shop owners. No Wal-MartÂ’s or KrogerÂ’s here, although Tesco, a European facsimile of Wal-Mart, are found but not in dense surroundings like Lucca.

For our grocery shopping, IÂ’ve adopted Macelleria Tuccori Mariano, run by Graziana and her husband. Located on Via S. Croce, a five-minute walk from our apartment, the small market offers a variety of fresh meats, cheeses, breads and a small assortment of fresh vegetables and other items like canned and packaged goods, wine and soda. Lured in by a handwritten note taped on the front window saying "English Spoken," Graziana, born in Canada where she grew up speaking English, is helpful for "touristi" like me whose spoken Italian is hit and whose understanding of spoken Italian is on a word-by-word basis, depending on the context of the conversation.

There must be an Italian law that stipulates that at least one gelato vendor be located on every block in the country. They are everywhere, more prolific by far than barbecue joints in Texas. Gelato, Italian ice cream, is luscious, creamy and comes in a multitude of flavors. In general, four scoops in a medium cup costs about 2.5 Euros.

In contrast to me, who despite my pedigree as a government journalist wanted to leave the pitiful politics of America behind for the duration of our trip, Kathy wanted to keep a lifeline open to new from home. As the technology expert in the family, she managed to figure out the satellite TV system in the apartment. Instead of watching Italian entertainment and game shows, we can now tune into CNN World News and other American shows.

Last evening as we were walking the top of the Lucca wall, we came upon a gathering of smartly dressed people and heard the sound of someone speaking into a microphone. Seeing two Carbinieri standing outside the gathering, we were curious to learn more, so we walked into the proceedings.

Turns out it was a political dinner gathering for Mr. Gambogi, running for a province seat and endorsed by five parties, one of which was Forza Italia, the powerhouse party created by billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, ItalyÂ’s prime minister for the past seven years who was recently defeated in national elections by Prodi, the socialist candidate. Those in attendance were well dressed and were listening to remarks after clearly having had a nice sit-down dinner. Forza Italia is the equivalent of the Republican Party in America.

Not speaking with anybody about the event, we headed into the town, walked around and had another gelato, then became attracted by more amplified speech coming from another plaza. This gathering, it turned out, was for an opposing roster of candidates, who like American Democrats, meet in a square to listen to speeches and a band. The main candidate here was Stefano Baccelli, young, good looking, with a beard, compared to Gambogi, who was older but dressed in a suit in his candidate photo.

After having spoke to a women and her son from Czechoslovakia, they in their broken English and me in my punctuated Italian made more understandable with hand gestures, it turns out regional elections will be held this Sunday and part of Monday. Politics and political candidates are everywhere and as the European Union moves experiments with morphing sovereign nations into cooperative states, the importance of politicians with real skills will increase.

FABULOUS FLORENCE

The drive from Lucca to Florence, or Firenze as its called here, was without mishap until we got off what we thought was our exit. It wasn’t, as we soon found out. Suddenly lost, we did what we’ve grown accustomed to doing – asking many people the same question: "Dove ce ……?" which means "where is….."

The first woman we asked directions from actually gave us the course correction we needed, but it a little moxy and a U-turn to get where we were going. Driving in Italy is definitely freeform, to put it mildly. As I learned in 1999 when I first visited the homeland of my gene pool, Italians donÂ’t really stop for anything but they do make way. Movement is constant but its considered. Drivers in America would think it horrible if a scooter ducked in and out of traffic as the driver and maybe a passenger moved forward through clogged traffic. In Italy no one takes notice because its an accepted and obviously legal tactic.

We’ve seen very few Italian police on either city streets or the Autostrada. When they are seen, they dress more like military men than city cops. Last night in quiet Lucca we actually saw two police cars with their flashing lights on, a rare sight. Lucca: CSI – The Gelato Affair – what a boring show that would be.

When we did make it into historic Florence, where to park the car legally again raised its ugly head. In a reversal of fate from my pickle in Pescallo and my migrane in Milan, by sheer luck we ended up being the last car accepted into a central-district parking garage. That was worth the four-hour, 16 Euros parking fee.

We walked to the Duomo, another magnificent, one-of-a-kind church of monumental proportions and artistic exuberance whose dome was completed in 1463. As large and as domineering as the Duomos in Milano and Florence are, they remain hidden in their giant plazas until you actually set eyes on them because they are sequestered among the labyrinth of old, tall buildings that surround and that were known to the likes of Dante, Michelangelo and Leonardo among other notables of history.

Being a warm and beautiful Saturday in Florence, the entire area was crawling with people. It appeared as crowded as an Ohio State University football game day in Columbus. The central market, reminiscent of the West Side Market in Cleveland with its bounty of ethnic stalls brimming with all the wonders of the area, from fish and meats to cheeses, wines and local produce, was buzzing with local shoppers, hungry tourists and everyone else in between.

The fish stalls were especially impressive. In Columbus, Ohio, fresh fish is often times a misnomer as it was likely caught days before in a fish farm elsewhere. In Florence, just an hour from the rich fishing coasts of the Mediterranean, the fish were so fresh that you would surely loose a starring contest their eyes were so clear and unspoiled.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF CINQUE TERRA

The Cinque Terra, five small hillside towns that cling to the sides of the cliff like the lemon and olive trees planted in terraced forms, are exceedingly popular for tourists of all nationalities.

We drove to La Spezia, a seaport where we purchased two day-trip tickets that included the cost of hiking the sometimes rugged foot paths no wider than a yardstick. We hopped the first train to leave the station and the ride was super fast, but being the express train, it flew past the stops we wanted. We had to get off before we ended up in Genoa and take a local train back to Monterosso, the furtherest north of the five absolutely charming little villages that each were agog with people either sunning themselvs on the beaches or resting for the trek that should be done only by those were are in basic good shape.

It took us two hours to walk up and down and up and down the narrow two-way pathway that took us to Vernazza, the next stop in the string of villages. We met several folks from either the USA, Canada or othe countries that, like us, found shade to rest as we geared up for the next segment.

The day was sunny, which meant the hillsides were hot and dry. Fortunately for us I had frozen two bottles of water the night before, otherwise we would have been hard pressed for water on our trip.

When we did arrive in Vernazza, we basked in the rest we took and the pesto pizza and gelate we had to curb our hunger and treat our tastebuds to a cool and refreshing treat.

The seaside here is spectacular but hard to view if you don't walk the rugged paths.

Tomorrow we're off to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. Then our stay in Lucca comes to an end as we drive to Rome and points south.

Amazing Amsterdam

Whatever the Weather, Amsterdam is Dam Nice

Riding the sleek, quiet train from Shiphol Airport, outside Amsterdam, to the center of the famous and fabulous city known for its rings of canals was the first sign of a country that is progressive in many ways other than just its transportation system.

Having flown British Air in that morning from London, where my wife Kathy and I spent four days fraught with fickle weather with old friends, we were excited to see an old city we knew was small and beautiful but one that while centuries-old is still a work in progress community now boasting of its cosmopolitan, multi-cultural atmosphere, which we found appetizing and appealing.

Gazing out my window as our train glided from one station stop to another, I got my first glimpse of the connection of canals that criss cross the country and ring the city, all below sea level [New Orleans and Mayor Nagink, take note], and saw a bevy of the smart icons I'm waiting to see in Ohio, renewable power windmills that gracefully turned in the wind that blows constantly across the lowlands collectively known as the Netherlands.

Once in the stately brick Centraal Station that is a key landmark and reference point to the city originally located on the Amstel River and built close to the "dam" that got tacked onto the river's name, we followed the traffic of likewise departing passengers and found our way out of Centraal Station and took in our full breath of view of the postcard city.

Wheeling our one piece of luggage each behind us [neither my nor my wife's luggage weighed more than 22 pounds, a first for us], we exited onto a sunny plaza where trains stood quietly waiting for their fill of passengers before they clanged and moved on to their next stop.

The second happy site we saw, one I've never seen before, not even in Seattle or Portland where we lived for months years ago, was the mass of people on pedal bicycles riding in specially designated bike lanes. There are so many bikes, in fact, that special garages are built just to park them, as residents, workers and visitors alike use them as their primary form of transportation. Streets are small, even cramped compared to American standards, and cars, some of which are the smallest I've seen, even smaller than the Smart Car now made famous by the Paris code cracker Sophie Neuve in The Da Vinci Code, [which we saw her and enjoyed], are expensive to run at 0.95 Euros/Litre and difficult to park in a small city where every inch priced accordingly.

Following check in at the A-Train Hotel, conveniently located within eye shot of the train station, my wife took a nap while I took off with my camera for a short reconnoiter to get my bearings for later.

Despite my growing misanthropism, I'm always energized by bustling hordes of people, especially in a new city. Turning the corner from Prinz Hendrikkade, where our hotel is located, onto Damrak, one of several major traffic arteries that would become familiar to us over our stay, I saw the first of many views that would soon endear me to the city and one which nearly caused me to go back and roust my wife from her dreamy sojourn to see. But I left her to her relaxing reveries.

This year is the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth and Amsterdam is going all out to pay tribute to the painter. Included in our canal boat ticket price was the entry cost to The Van Gogh Museum that we visited and saw a large collection of the painter's work. The painter's paintings, and his writings -- he wrote over 1,100 letters to his brother Theo and his painter friends like Gauguin -- were on display.

Riding the canal boat like a water taxi, we saw the beautiful city from water level and were able to hop on and off as needed. The city, and for that matter the entire country is located on a giant multi-river delta, and the canals that expand from the center were part of the urban planning that continues to this day.

That evening we met Andrea, an au pair who worked for friends of ours and who lives in Utreck, about 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam central. She took us to a small restaurant away from the hot tourist area. There we had local beer and fresh sole with the city's signature sidedish, fried potatoes with mayonnaise.

On our way back to our hotel, Andrea took us by what she said was the oldest cinema theatre, dating to 1921. The Pathe theatre, once run by the Pathe brothers who got into the news and cinema business early last century, was a wonderful example of art deco. We purchased tickets for the next day to see The Da Vinci Code. The movie was in English, but the subtitles for the scenes spoken in French were in Dutch, so we completely lost those segments of the movie.

The following day was another travel day, which would take us to Eindhoven Airport, a Ryanair hub. Ryanair is amazingly inexpensive to fly, but time is critical and they get you on and off with no frills, which is why their slogan is they are the "on time" airline of Europe. For two of us, the one-way trip was $95 or so, a real deal. And during special rate time, the ticket can be under $1 -- figure that one out American airlines.

We were on time for our bus to the airport. Even though the sign by the ticket seller directing us to where the bus would pick us up was completely wrong, despite being handwritten and the location highlighted in bright yellow, we made the bus and the ride to end point, about 45 minutes down the road was smooth and uneventful. Eindhoven is a small but snazzy and clean airport. Our plan arrived on time and left on time due in part to the stewardesses whipping people into their seats so time schedules could be met.

Flying over the Swiss Alps was a great site and the further we traveled away from England and Amsterdam, the sunnier it got. Posting from Lucca now, we have yet to use our umbrella in Italy, where the sun and weather have both been accommodating.

The Blairs of Britain

The Blairs of Britain

The three Blairs of Britain -- Tony, Ian and Eric -- are curiously connected over time to the contemporary so-called "War Against Terrorism," the seemingly endless battle against a ubiquitous enemy driven political ideology and fear of the unknown.

The first of the troika of Blairs, Tony, the current but outgoing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, appeared punctually at noon on Wednesday, May 17, at Parliament in the House of Commons, where I watched him stand for 30 minutes to answer questions from various party members [some friends, many foes] including Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrats among others [US translation: Big Labor Democrats, Ronald Reagan Republicans and Jesse Jackson Democrats]. Blair, who has served nine years as the UK's PM but who has fallen out of favor due to his lap dog alliance with Bush in prosecuting military action against Saddam in Iraq instead of Osama where ever he is, started his remarks by honoring the names of two Brits killed in Iraq last week.

Sitting on the oak benches covered with hunter green ribbed leather -- the same as I sat upon from Stranger's Gallery, where I could peer down upon the proceedings from the stadium-like configuration of the House of Commons -- Blair, looking fit and sounding well-versed for the weekly challenge he endures when Parliament is in session, responded with vigor to the very pointed questions shot at him from across a small table by the opposition party lead by David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Compared to the demeanor of the Ohio Senate and House, where emotional rhetoric is shut down quickly by either The President or The Speaker, the exchanges between Blair and others verged on the point of shouting at each other. The questions zinged at him by his critics were aimed to kill, or at least fatally embarrass him.

The top topics of the day that made the news by reporters, who like myself in the Ohio Statehouse were given special seating assignments, were about the deportation of foreign prisoners, the resurgence of the UK's nuclear energy program and when British soldiers will return from Iraq.

On the first topic, deportation of foreign nationals who are suspected of anti-social behavior or who have been convicted of a crime and have served time in prison, Cameron said Blair's flip flopping on the issue [mimicking the strategy used by the Swift Boat Bush-backers in the last presidential election in 2004 to fatally wound the Democrat's John Kerry to the point he could not regain his political health] had resulted in him being "rattled" by the controversy. Cameron said Blairs changing declarations on the topic was a further sign his administration was "in paralysis," as was confirmed in a report the following day by The Guardian, a newspaper published in London and Manchester, that reported on PMQT.

Cameron tightened the noose further on Blair by noting to his face that his own senior civil servant in charge of removals, Dave Roberts, "did not know how many illegal immigrants were in Britain," an observation Blair blasted over, declaring that "there will be an automatic presumption to deport...Irrespective of any claim that they have that the country to which they are going back may not be safe," a statement I witnessed that was confirmed again by the Guardian.

Blair also has angered Green and other environmental supporters by declaring he will support the resurgence of nuclear energy facilities across the country. Curiously, as oil skyrockets in price -- BTW, here in the UK the price of petrol [gasoline as we American's know it] is approaching $10 USD a imperial gallon, about 10% more than a US gallon -- the UK and the European Union are also rushing towards producing more energy from renewable sources, especially wind. According to a recent BBC report, the UK is also working on over 20 wind-energy farms. For any one who has visited the UK or Ireland, as I did in 2003, the wind is always blowing, sometimes dramatically. Since arriving three days ago, the weather here has been blustery, to say the least. As I understand the EU's strategy to become greener over time, the move toward and the investment in renewable wind energy power is clearly blowing in the wind.

It was exciting to see Cameron badger Blair to his face, something political junkies can only dream of happening in the US. Could you imagine such a thing happening in the Ohio General Assembly or the US Congress? Even though the theory of evolution is under attack, pigs will take flight before any such confrontation will happen in the world's greatest democracy.

When asked when UK troops will leave Iraq, Blair like Bush said they will stay there as long as needed or until Iraqi forces are able to do the job themselves. According to my friends here in East Dulwich, Blair is nearly out the door now due to his close alliance to Bush's War in Iraq and the longer he is the PM, his Labour Party, which genuinely saved the nation from the stringent policies of former Tory PM's Margaret Thatcher and John Major, will continue to fail at the polls, as they have in the past two national elections.

Housing in the UK is expensive according to American standards. My friends' small home would sell for about $700,000 USD. Today, as we returned from a fundraiser at their children's school, we passed by a relatively small house they called "derelict" that is selling for about $500,000 USD. One of Blair's great boasts at PMQT was the introduction of the 60,000 British Pound house. One of my hosts asked, "I'd like to know what he's talking about and where they are." This was another pejorative comment made by my friends who once were supportive of what he had done to turn the country in a different direction from where it was headed under Thatcher and Major but who have now turned away from him.

Lafayette Park in Washington DC is used as protest area because it is within view of the White House. Outside Parliament yesterday, next to St. Margaret's Church, which is located next to Westminster Abbey, war protestors displayed big, colorful banners and flags that caught many an eye, including mine.

But inside the famous chamber, which was reconstructed following German bomb attacks in WWII, the atmosphere was solemn and dignified. Those of us with tickets to the proceedings, mingled in the stately corridors leading to the House of Commons that were lined with statutes of the rich and famous of English history and replete with wall murals that told colorful stories of the once proud and world-dominating British Empire.

In the minutes before the event started, British Bobbies dressed in their finest and wearing their signature hats with an eight-pointed badge on them, asked all of us to stand behind an imaginary line so The Speaker's procession could come through the hallway and make it's way into the chamber [Jon Husted, eat your heart out]. The procession was lead by black shiny shoed servants wearing small wigs who marched single-file through the corridors that echoed with the clap of their shoes hitting the marble floor. Preceding The Speaker was his gold colored sceptre, which was about four feet in length and that was laid to rest on the table in front of his ornate covered chair and over which Blair and Cameron went at it like ferrel cats in suits, hissing and clawing at each other from across the table.

The second Blair of Britain is Ian, the head of London's police force. He came to prominence when suicide bombers detonated themselves in a London underground subway station on July 7, 2005. As we know 9-11 in the US, Brits refer to this date as 7-7. He oversees the public camera surveillance system in place throughout London. The system of cameras mounted on buildings and poles surveying everyone walking the streets was able to lead to the identification of the bombers by the police who reviewed tapes and spotted the bombers scoping out their route before they committed their act of violence. In his comments at PMQT, PM Blair said he would like such a system to be more wide spread throughout the country.

This leads me to the final Blair of Britain, Eric Arthur. Although you may not know him by his given name, you do know him by his more famous pen name, George Orwell. Among his many writings, the two everyone should read or re-read are Animal Farm and 1984, the prescient work about a never-ending war of fear in a society built on obedience through public surveillance, which to me seems closer to reality than many care to admit.

Having stumbled onto 1984 last year through happenstance, I read it with a new sense of understanding I didn't have in 1964 when it was a reading assignment in high school. 1984, written in 1948, was Orwell's foretelling of an English society where the leader, Big Brother, was a friend to all and not to be doubted or challenged [sound familiar America?] and where production was always better than before and language was the ultimate controler of thoughts.

Language was controlled by constantly shrinking it. One of the characters in the book was most proud when the new dictionary was smaller than previous ones. One of the key concepts in 1984 was that "whom ever controls the present controls the past; and whom ever controls the past controls the future."

Winston Smith, who tells the story of 1984 from his viewpoint as a writer for the state and whose job it to rewrite information so that it would agree with the present regardless of what was forecasted in the past, knows his thoughts are not as blindly faithful as they should be. He pays the price for his doubts by being tortured to the point where he believes what the state wants him to believe only to finally be assassinated because even though he was rehabilitated, he could no longer be trusted to implicitly follow without questioning the party line.

I see many aspects of 1984 in play today: From the White House's declaration that everything is better than it was before, notwithstanding facts to the contrary, to the War on Terror which is being used to both eavesdrop on Americans and to withhold information from them, to the slippage in America's understanding of the value of their own civil rights and its lethargy in objecting to it, to Bush's unilateral and unchallenged use of executive privilege to the point where he says that in a self-declared state of war he can do anything he wants without fear of any one doing anything to stop him, and no one is stopping him. 1984 is blooming 20 years late, but it is here nonetheless.

It's late in the evening here in London and I've been summed by my wife to come down stairs and stop my anti-social writing routine.

Buckeyes in Europe hops to Amsterdam tomorrow, Monday.

Monday, we're off to Amsterdam, where the Buckeyes in Europe will continue.

T-Minus Zero and Writing

T-Minus Zero and Writing

It's D-Day. Departure day, that is. Posting from the basement office of my brother-in-law's Garrett County, Maryland home, 280 miles and 11 dead deer into our trip to Europe, I'm preparing to enter the tsunami of people streaming to our nation's Capitol. We'll be streaming there because our British Air flight departs at 6:35 p.m., and we need ample time to find our car park and make our way on the DC metro to Dulles Airport.

We're traveling light, which is to say neither of our carry-on bags weighs more than 22 pounds -- the limit for Ryanair, touted as Ireland's largest airline that flys you at bargain prices to second-tier airports through out Great Britain and Europe. Our real baggage -- one each -- is also light compared to what we've lugged around before.

Stranger in Stranger's Gallery

Our first order of business once we land at Heathrow Airport (London), will be to make our way to Parliament and the House of Commons to hook up with Prime Minister Tony Blair for Prime Minister's Question Time. We're to be at the St. Stepehen's Gate entrance at approximately 11:15 for security before entering the chambers.

PMQT was started in 1961 by Harold MacMillan, the PM at that time, to afford Members of Parliament to ask questions and to hear the PM's responses, which can break news or provide a titillating response to a topical subject.

ASIDE: Having covered the Ohio Legislature for nearly three years, the good, bad and ugly of it all, I think having the governor of Ohio stand before the Ohio House each Wednesday when they are in session to serve as a target at which members could aim their questions at, would add spice and liven up our sometimes tired system of public discourse in the Buckeye State.

At PMQT, the official records of speeches given each time are seated directly above The Speaker of the House of Commons, so as to afford them proximity without interferring into the carefully arranaged procedure that is PMQT. This process, according to Parliament's own website is called "Hansard," and gains it's name from the first recorder of speeches in Parliament.

ASIDE: The statehouse press corps in Columbus has an opportunity to get up close and personal with the President of the Senate and The Speaker of the House in what is called the "Gang Bang." The GB, which often times includes hardened, seasoned lady reporters who are as much feared as they are respected for their journalistic prowess and ability to drop a bomb on anyone at any time, is a time following the end of legislative session when reporters, gathering like hungry eaglets, stand at the bottom of the dais, waiting for one either the POS or TSOH
to descend and feed them answers to their questions. Some reporters as T-ball-like questions that have to do with procedural matters and involve "when..." and "have you..." and "are you...," while others wind up with a mini course on the subject of their question.

Stranger's Gallery, where we have tickets to sit, is I believe at the opposing end of the chamber. To actually sit in Stranger's Gallery, which has limited seating, it is essential to first have secured tickets, which we did through the kindness of my friend Joe Hayes, an American from St. Louis who has served as the Mayor of Arundel, in West Sussexx slightly south of London, for the past several years. With Joe's help, his local MP, Nick Herbert, a conservative who would fit well into the Ohio House these days, delivered the goods, which are waiting for us at SSG.

I leanred my lesson on this one in 2003, when I naively thought I could stand in line for hours, and have a seat to watch the proceedings. I did stand in line for hours and actually sat on wooden benches in the grand corridor of the House of Commons, but all I saw were people walking past me once the event was over.

Time to go. Next post will be from London. Cheers, mate!

Travel Planning and The Art of Browser Juggling

Last Millenium Travel

Once upon a time, out-bound travelers normally went to a travel agency to speak with a travel agent who dispensed maps and travel information like a prescient anthropomorphic vending machine that knew where you were going. For a price, someone else did all the work. You sat through it, thought about what you were going to pack, then paid the bill.

Had my North Dakota lottery-winnings check appeared as I keep hoping it will someday, I'd be more inclined to take the last millenium travel-planning route. But since another week went by without it showing up, we did what we normally do: we did it ourselves. Although this method requires role-playing [agent to customer] with yourself, the decisions -- and the blame for them -- will all be yours.

Aside: But if you are ready to play the blame game on travel particulars, especially when vouchers are issued through email, remember the controlling rules will be those of another country. This understanding was emphasized in the final words of our lodging contract from Lucca, which read: "Any problems that may arise between the parties will be dealt accordingly to Italian Law and will be dealt in Lucca." Any statehouse reporter worth his or her story leaks knows to read between these lines, even if they are in Italian. When in Lucca, to avoid a run in with the medieval walled-city's scales of justice, do as the Luccans. Soprano watchers, take note.

Browser Juggling

Sitting in the comfort of your home (my choice) or office, you can now find and see almost anything in the world. Clicking your way through a couple key websites can, when used as a group, become a powerful provider of info. Even with a half-baked plan, a bucket of determination and lots of time to work around the inevitable obstacles that humans or machines will cause you as you enter and exit the payment process, learning the art of juggling multiple browsers (I use Mozilla Firefox 5.0) is an acquired talent that you'll enjoy as your booking victories pile up.

Approaching the trip planning process like a seasoned tag-team duo, my wife Kathy and I took turns navigating through websites over the past month, learning on the fly their in's and out's as we compared and contrasted information from one site to another, then hitting the submit button to lock in rates and accommodations. OJT is what it's all about when you're shopping the web. Learning to be an armchair travel planner takes time, but it's good time as it represents a mini continuing-education-course guaranteed to improve your digital moxy, notwithstanding the embedded frustrations that will give you intermittent heartburn. Your newly developed ability to juggle browsers, and the multi "open tabs" you open as you go, would look impressive if you wanted to attend Jedi College.

Utilizing your browser's "tiling" feature (I prefer vertical, not horizontal), you can have many windows open simultaneously. And with the "tab" option in Firefox, you can manage them like a maestro might conduct a full symphony orchestra, calling on each musical section as the music demands to conjure forth their informational treasures.

Googleishous!

To an amateur travel planner, taking Google into your own hands is equivalent to what a magic wand can do for a young apprentice wizard. It makes things happen you never thought could happen. We all know Google has become synonymous with information retrieval, much the same way the name Xerox stood for paper copies and Kleenex translated into wispy personal paper tissue. With the world's strength in satellite imaging now at the hands of you and me [imagine what the NSA can see] Google Maps is a must-use tool to "see" your destinations, be they places or routes.

The free version, notwithstanding the slight age of the images, is a wonder of science and technology. By entering a simple place name like "London" or a structure name like "Eiffel Tower" or an exact street address, Google Maps will fly you there in nanoseconds. Once "virtually there," by drilling in or out, you can literally see the lay of the land. And when the images are of good quality, which is not always the case, even Peter Pan would be jealous of the view, as you fly at street level or peer down through a cloudless atmosphere to your destination below.

The Wonder Websites

When you're ready to fly hither and yon, as I've done for a while, the roundup of websites I can recommend from personal experience that will turn you into a competent, quick travel agent are Google Maps, ViaMichelin, TripAdvisor, SlowTravel.com, Worldby.com, Venere.com and Kayak.

Via Michelin is fantastic for European driving directions, complete with kilometers traveled, petrol needed to make the trip and the expected cost of that petrol at current prices. [BTW, to change USD last week into Euros and British Pounds took $2.01 for one BP and $1.385 for one Euro.] TripAdvisor is a "go-to sight" for visitor comments and a cornucopia of other info. SlowTravel is what the name implies; a site for travelers like us who don't want to rush or be rushed from one stop to another. Instead we'd rather hang around a bit, not that we're going to be mistaken for a local but to enjoy life from a different perspective.

Illustrating this notion is done best by recalling the scene from National Lampoon's Holiday Vacation movie when the movie's family finally arrives at the Grand Canyon after a series of mishaps befall them. Tired, mad, upset, they leave after a about eight seconds of group gazing into the gorge's timeless bowls. They cut and run as the view is too overwhelming to do much more than gawk in wonder at its enormity.

Kayak is the new pick of the web-travel-planning litter. It gathers search results from across the web, reducing the need for you to visit the many sites it searches as it mines data to match your request.

Still Learning to Drive the SOA Blogmobile

This is my second post to Spinelli on Assignment since I took it out for a spin a couple days ago. I know where the ignition key goes and how to put it into gear, but I'm very much an OJTer. Steady as she goes for me for a while. Next week I'll be in the nation's Capitol to attempt to hunt down information related to my father's 1928 passport and his attainment of U.S. Citizenship, which may have occurred about 1917.

Although we leave home soon, adventure is still just over the horizon. Stay tuned. JMS

Buckeyes in Europe -- Plan, Pack, Travel

Spinelli on Assignment

Mark Twain's time-travel fantasy "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is a fanciful juxtaposition of time, place and purpose. The opposite of Twain's historical and humorous out of time fantasy is Spinelli on Assignment (SOA), a contemporary match in time and space that includes a health dose of the author's viewpoint and perspective, all floating above an undertow of humor.

The viewpoint and perspective of SOA is that of me, John Michael Spinelli, a native of Ohio on perpetual self assignment . I've amalgamated my civic and business accomplishments with my years as a journalist covering Ohio politics, issues and lawmakers to produce a body of work with a unique style and focus.

Buckeyes in Europe (BIE) is my new blog covering my return to Italy in 2006 to visit the small hometowns of my father and mother, Mike Spinelli and Jane Gallucci, who although they met and married in America, were born in towns only 30 miles apart in the poor, southern state of Puglia, always renowned for its olive trees but now being touted by some as Italy's next up and coming tourist area.

My wife Kathy and I are in launch mode for our upcoming trip to Italy. Like astronauts entering the space capsule hours before launch time to work their checklists, feeling both excited and anxious, we are likewise readying to successfully catapult ourselves to Europe. Once there, we'll spend several days in each of my parent's birth places -- Faeto (or Fait, according to native Italians) for my mother, and San Marcos in Lamis, near the Gargano Peninsula along the Adriatic Sea, for my father.

In BIE I'll give you bite-sized, flavorful travel samplers of our adventure, which begins in London and ends in Paris, with molto stops inbetween including Amsterdam, Bellagio, Milan, Lucca, Cinque Terra, Rome, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Bologna, Venice, Barcelona, Chartres and Blois in the Loire River Valley. Of course, what isn't planned is where the real adventure will lie, and I'll be ready and receptive for what the road or track ahead brings, be it the Via Appia or a high-speed Eurostar train.

Consider SOA launched. More episodes will follow. New to the blogosphere, I'm as excited as a teenage driver sitting behind the steering wheel of his first car, looking at the open road ahead and wondering where it leads. SOA is about to enter traffic, so keep an eye out for it as it comes to an email near you.