I am back in Germany, on a train carrying me back north, so it's a good time as any to take stock of my vacation in #Italy .
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I am back in Germany, on a train carrying me back north, so it's a good time as any to take stock of my vacation in #Italy .
The two years of Italian evening classes have been a good investment, as was the time I spent practicing texts and expanding my vocabulary. While I still have to look up words, I now get the gist of the majority of the Italian sentences and phrases I read. There also weren't too many surprises in the dishes I ordered in restaurants, which I count as a win.
On the other hand, my conversational Italian is still very poor (and it did not help that I had forgotten my phrasebook back at home). A lot of waiters quickly switched to English or German, although ultimately we managed to understand each other. But I am not yet able to hold more complex conversations outside of the context of ordering food. Beyond continuing my evening classes, I also plan to watch some Italian-language movies and series on Netflix, in the hope that this will help.
All in all, I've enjoyed this trip, and hope to do this again next year - hopefully with my father, if he is still able to do so.
The question is where to go. I picked #Verona because it was still fairly easy to reach by train from Germany, and I'd prefer to travel by train in the future as well - particularly if I have to pick up my father on the way. I don't want to expand the trip into multi-day trips for the train ride, either. Right now, the most intriguing possibility is #Bologna . There is a direct train connection from Munich, it has lots of cultural stuff to visit for me, and lots of nearby hiking areas for my father. But I am open to further suggestions.
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I am back in Germany, on a train carrying me back north, so it's a good time as any to take stock of my vacation in #Italy .
The two years of Italian evening classes have been a good investment, as was the time I spent practicing texts and expanding my vocabulary. While I still have to look up words, I now get the gist of the majority of the Italian sentences and phrases I read. There also weren't too many surprises in the dishes I ordered in restaurants, which I count as a win.
On the other hand, my conversational Italian is still very poor (and it did not help that I had forgotten my phrasebook back at home). A lot of waiters quickly switched to English or German, although ultimately we managed to understand each other. But I am not yet able to hold more complex conversations outside of the context of ordering food. Beyond continuing my evening classes, I also plan to watch some Italian-language movies and series on Netflix, in the hope that this will help.
All in all, I've enjoyed this trip, and hope to do this again next year - hopefully with my father, if he is still able to do so.
The question is where to go. I picked #Verona because it was still fairly easy to reach by train from Germany, and I'd prefer to travel by train in the future as well - particularly if I have to pick up my father on the way. I don't want to expand the trip into multi-day trips for the train ride, either. Right now, the most intriguing possibility is #Bologna . There is a direct train connection from Munich, it has lots of cultural stuff to visit for me, and lots of nearby hiking areas for my father. But I am open to further suggestions.
Bologna has the oldest university in Europe, as I recall. Good law school. Which pretty much exhausts my knowledge of Bologna.
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Bologna has the oldest university in Europe, as I recall. Good law school. Which pretty much exhausts my knowledge of Bologna.
I still remember the "Bologna Process" from my university days.
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I am back in Germany, on a train carrying me back north, so it's a good time as any to take stock of my vacation in #Italy .
The two years of Italian evening classes have been a good investment, as was the time I spent practicing texts and expanding my vocabulary. While I still have to look up words, I now get the gist of the majority of the Italian sentences and phrases I read. There also weren't too many surprises in the dishes I ordered in restaurants, which I count as a win.
On the other hand, my conversational Italian is still very poor (and it did not help that I had forgotten my phrasebook back at home). A lot of waiters quickly switched to English or German, although ultimately we managed to understand each other. But I am not yet able to hold more complex conversations outside of the context of ordering food. Beyond continuing my evening classes, I also plan to watch some Italian-language movies and series on Netflix, in the hope that this will help.
All in all, I've enjoyed this trip, and hope to do this again next year - hopefully with my father, if he is still able to do so.
The question is where to go. I picked #Verona because it was still fairly easy to reach by train from Germany, and I'd prefer to travel by train in the future as well - particularly if I have to pick up my father on the way. I don't want to expand the trip into multi-day trips for the train ride, either. Right now, the most intriguing possibility is #Bologna . There is a direct train connection from Munich, it has lots of cultural stuff to visit for me, and lots of nearby hiking areas for my father. But I am open to further suggestions.
@juergen_hubert
There is FTA Italian TV and radio on Satellite. Really only sport is encrypted.
I get it here in Mid West of Ireland, as well as German, Polish, North African, Ukrainian and other domestic stations.I have 28.2E (for UK), 19.2E, 13E and some 23.5E.
The Irish TV is only FTA on 9E on Irish Spot beams of KaSat 9E, but Irish Radio is FTA on 28.2E. -
@juergen_hubert
There is FTA Italian TV and radio on Satellite. Really only sport is encrypted.
I get it here in Mid West of Ireland, as well as German, Polish, North African, Ukrainian and other domestic stations.I have 28.2E (for UK), 19.2E, 13E and some 23.5E.
The Irish TV is only FTA on 9E on Irish Spot beams of KaSat 9E, but Irish Radio is FTA on 28.2E.Right now, I think I will stick to stuff that (a) has captions and (b) can be paused at any time while I look up words.
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Right now, I think I will stick to stuff that (a) has captions and (b) can be paused at any time while I look up words.
@juergen_hubert
The cheap < €50 boxes will record on USB stick or USB HDD, but of course if there are captions they are in the native language. Some can "pause" for a while using the external storage as a buffer.I do find it odd that the Irish National channel in Irish (maybe more people can speak fluent Polish here) has only Irish (Gaelic) subtitles and not English also for the vast majority that are poor at Irish, or have none.
Worth having Satellite for when a digger cuts your cable.
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@juergen_hubert
The cheap < €50 boxes will record on USB stick or USB HDD, but of course if there are captions they are in the native language. Some can "pause" for a while using the external storage as a buffer.I do find it odd that the Irish National channel in Irish (maybe more people can speak fluent Polish here) has only Irish (Gaelic) subtitles and not English also for the vast majority that are poor at Irish, or have none.
Worth having Satellite for when a digger cuts your cable.
I do want to get a Don Camillo DVD set eventually, but I will start with Netflix series since that's what I already have available.
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I do want to get a Don Camillo DVD set eventually, but I will start with Netflix series since that's what I already have available.
@juergen_hubert
Oh, is that from the books, which I've read years ago in English?
The Priest and the Mayor in the Po Valley town? -
@juergen_hubert
Oh, is that from the books, which I've read years ago in English?
The Priest and the Mayor in the Po Valley town?Yup. I've bought the first book in Italian.
The movies were also very popular among my parents' generation, and my father still speaks of them fondly. They capture the atmosphere of post-WWII Italy really well.
And both the priest and the mayor were anti-fascist resistance fighters, although now they are ideologically opposed.
