Olympics Coverage, Germany edition

The Olympics coverage in Germany is pretty good.  The two main channels alternate days of coverage, and they show the Olympics all day.  As much as possible is shown live.  We also have access to Swiss and Austrian channels, which also cover the Olympics all day (not everyone in Germany gets those channels, though).  So, when the Olympics were in England, we saw pretty much everything live.  Russia is only 3 hours ahead, so it works pretty well again; they start coverage around 6:30am, and it ends around 8 or 9pm.  Also, the German TV website has live streaming and videos of entire events.  However, it doesn't have video of all events, and you don't know beforehand which events it will have.  So if two things are happening at the same time, you can't necessarily watch the other one later.

Olympics Coverage

I've been trying to watch the Olympics -- we don't have a TV -- and luckily Rai lets you watch TV online. So that is nice. However, they only show skiing events, since those are happening in the evening here (they don't bother with curling or hockey). Of course NBC won't let anyone outside the US watch any videos on their site. So I was looking around for a way to watch other events like figure skating, snowboarding, or speed skating, and discovered this list of countries that can watch Eurovision's programming online. Unbelievable. While Italy is not on the list, countries in the Caribbean, south Pacific, north Africa, Russia and other countries bordering China, etc. can watch Eurovision online. Even San Marino, a microstate completely surrounded by Italy, is on the list. Non ho parole.
UPDATE: Evidently, Sky Italia acquired the broadcasting rights from the IOC, instead of Eurovision. But Sky Italia's site has very few videos, and most of them are delivered in blips. And you can't watch anything live online.

More Observations

The bus drivers must be engaged in an ongoing contest to see who can wear out the brakes the fastest. They're all doing pretty well, because 95% of the bus brakes screech loudly.

Also regarding buses: no matter what stop I go to or at what time, I have to wait at least 15 minutes for the D bus. It's supposed to come every 12 minutes.

A little more on fashion (from previous posts): apparently heels go with everything. Also, in the winter, it seems the only accepted footwear for women is boots. It was kind of impressive to see stores go from selling nothing but sandals one day to nothing but boots the next.

Two projects that were progressing surprisingly rapidly for Italy were the renovation of the Santa Maria Novella piazza and the building of the tram lines. Then the SMN project ran out of funds and was temporarily halted, and the tram line installation was put on hold for a month around Xmas, because the store owners by the lines complained it was affecting business. That's more like it. Another funny thing about the tram lines is that some people don't want them running near the duomo, even though there's a constant stream of buses and cars there now.

The concept of customer service is still not known here, especially at Vodafone, which is the worst company in the world. It now out-ranks U-Haul's terrible policies, Bank of America's lying employees and website, and Telecom Italia's terrible policies and lying employees and website. When we were in the Vodafone store recently*, where the totally incompetent employees were not able to do anything for us again, a number of other people were in there with complaints. I overheard a conversation in English wherein a woman was explaining that she had recently bought a pay-as-you-go internet "service" from Vodafone, but when she tried to use it, she was only able to send one email in 4 hours. The response from the employee was that the woman should bring her computer in to the store to be tested, because the Vodafone service is "very good." The only accurate thing that employee said the whole time was when the woman asked for a refund for the time she wasn't able to use Vodafone's crappy service, and the employee told her, "In Italy, we don't give back money."

Italian mosquitoes don't die. It's freaking winter.

Something positive: I like the Teatro della Pergola.

* There are several episodes in the Vodafone saga we've skipped so far in this blog. Maybe eventually we'll post the whole thing.

Connected...

In chapter three of the never ending story of trying to get an internet connection in our apartment, we've had some success... at least partially. After hearing from Fastweb that Telecom Italia had told them that they couldn't activate a line in the apartment, we went directly to the Telecom and requested a line from them. That was then actually activated a week and a half later, giving us hope that our situation would soon be resolved. So last weekend we went to Vodafone, which had a good offer for DSL and phone service. Since they didn't have any of the hardware there at the moment, they said they'd call back, which they did yesterday. So Kristen went to pick up the DSL modem, though again a problem arose. Vodafone can't actually give us DSL service at the moment, since for some reason the Telecom is needed for the activation, and their site tells Vodafone that DSL isn't activated in our apartment. Of course, they offered us their own DSL service several times, and inserting our telephone number into their online site shows that it is available, so it's pretty clear that they're simply lying to us and Vodafone (as they did to Fastweb). If in the future anyone has any reason to get Italian phone or internet service, please boycott Telecom Italia at all costs!
Luckily, the people at Vodafone were quite helpful, and we now have internet via their cell phone service. It's the same price as DSL but has some limitations, such as having to sign in, having a maximum of 10 hours a day and not having quite the same speeds, though for now it's fine. If we can somehow convince or bribe the Telecom to allow us to have DSL, then we can switch over to their DSL service without any problems.

Speechless

In the continuing saga of trying to get internet access to our apartment, today a colleague of mine called Fastweb, from which I had ordered DSL, to see what was going on. As you might recall, the last time the Telecom was here, they said that they would have to lay a line up to our apartment from the ground floor. Fastweb now said that the Telecom had told them that they had not been physically able to lay that cable (apparently they were here sometime last week – and Fastweb said that they would have called me “today” to let me know). My colleague said that something similar had been the case when he got internet, and that in the end his landlady had an electrician come and do it himself. Encouraged by that, I had him call my landlord to tell him about the situation and see what he could do. The landlord said he’d investigate, but thought the Telecom story was a little strange since the two other apartments right next to ours have a telephone line already installed. Apparently he called the Telecom to find out what the deal was and called me back a short time later. Being the former monopolist they are, the Telecom seems to have decided that it will only install 20 lines per building for other companies, and we were number 21 or so. In other words, they will not install our telephone line unless we go through them (and pay the 96 Euro or so installation fee). Our options at this point are therefore to go through them for landline and internet, just pay for the expensive installation and then get a different company for internet (and telephone), or call the whole thing off and get an (also expensive) USB modem through a mobile phone company. None of these options sound especially attractive, but we’ll have to choose one if we want internet. I still wonder how something like this can be legal…

Still no internet

A month after ordering an internet connection, the first steps towards that were taken today. Though I ordered DSL from Fastweb, the Telecom Italia had to come and check to make sure that the line is active. I thought this was just a formality and that I'd have internet soon, but this being Italy, I was sadly mistaken. A guy from the Telecom came today (on time!) after having called last week to tell me when he would be coming so I would be at home. After checking the phone jack in the living room, which apparently didn't have a signal, he opened up a box in the entrance hall and found a disconnected cable. He only spoke Italian, but I caught something about 2 people coming back and 5 stories, so I'm guessing they have to lay a new line up to the apartment. He didn't know when he or the other people would be coming by to do that - today, tomorrow, next week, only that they'd call beforehand. In the meantime, I'm still only able to access the internet in the office.

In the evening, I met Max and Caren again, this time to go to dinner, as well as gelato afterwards. Since my apartment is outside the city, I don't see much of the city at night, so it was nice to do that for a change and eat gelato on the steps of the Duomo.

A couple of days off

Due to an abundance of non-working days, I had ample time to get things organized and settled in the new apartment. Thursday, May 1 was Labor Day, a holiday so important that not even the buses were running (except for the ones to the stadium, since Florence was playing Glasgow Rangers in the semi-final of the UEFA cup). Therefore, I decided to walk into town, mostly in the Cascine park, which stretches along the Arno river for quite a few kilometers. Interestingly, the paths and piazzas in the park are named for American presidents, e.g. Piazzale J. F. Kennedy, Viale Giorgio Washington, or Piazzale T. Jefferson. Somehow I doubt that there will be a Viale Giorgio W. Bush anytime soon. Friday was officially a work day, but since most of the people in the lab took the day off, I only went into work for half a day, mostly to use the internet, since I don’t have that at the apartment yet. I did order it, but apparently that can take up to three months, since they first have to activate the telephone connection. That’s also why these blog posts pop up at random times, since I’m writing them, saving them to my computer, and posting when I have an internet connection. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a wi-fi hotspot like at Starbucks (no Starbucks in all of Italy!), so weekends and holidays are internet-free for now. Finally, today was a shopping day – Mercato Centrale for produce, Natura Si to check out the selection of fake meat products for Kristen, and a regular supermarket and Lidl for everything else. Afterwards, another short trip to Ikea to get some more stuff from Ikea. The apartment is slowly coming together, and I’ll definitely post a picture once it’s presentable.

It definitely is nice to have a place to call one’s own again (a feeling that I didn’t really have in the temporary apartments), and I’m quite happy with the apartment I have. There are however a few details that I can complain about:

• A bright red couch/sofabed (definitely not my color)
• No dishwasher means endless rounds of cleaning dishes after cooking (or postponing it and having to do it before the next meal)
• No dryer means hanging everything on a drying rack on the balcony, which in combination with the extremely hard water means that even with fabric softener, the clothes end up hard as a sheet of metal
• Gaudy blue glass fruit bowl and fake flowers that have to be packaged and moved out of sight