Stop Kenneth Foster's execution - Opinion

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When flying into Fiumicino..

..Be prepared to have your luggage lost!

These are not lucky days for travelers that use the Fiumicino Airport. In fact it has already been several weeks since a real chaos started in the 'bagagge claim department'. At today's date thousands and thousands of Italians - and most likely also foreigners- have lost their luggage after having departed or landed in Fiumicino, the main airport of the Capital that serves every day around 100,000 people.
Government is investigating, but currently the mystery has remain unsolved. If you are about to arrive to Rome by plane, then, the best thing you can do is to gather accurate and updated information of the baggage question in Rome, before taking your flight. In case of loss, in fact, the procedure to recuperate your luggage is not at all easy, and you might, at the end, not even have it returned to you and receive instead -possibly -a mere compensation of 200 euros (as for what concerns Alitalia's flights).
Furthermore, if you happen to loose your luggage when on an Alitalia flight, after landing and having done all the necessary formalities (loss declaration at the airport), the airline will give you two numbers to call to verify if your luggage has been found or not. You can call the first number for the first 5 days, this is a local phone number, not expensive to call, but after 5 days, you will need to call the number 199.137.811 (Baggage assistance of Alitalia's Customer Care), which, please note, it's very expensive to call: 11.88 eurocent each minute of call, including the time you are waiting for them to answer, which - as it happened to a friend of mine that has recently lost her luggage these days- can be very long: around ten days calling the 199 number just to be able to speak to somebody (and 25 euros spent in calls).
What happens if you don't call? Your luggage might never been returned to you, your file will be abandoned by Alitalia and your luggage is destined to be sold in an auction (you won't even get the revenue from this, though!).
Remember also to keep the receipts of the expenses you incur due to the loss of your luggage, as those can be reimbursed, if you provide Alitalia with a series of other documents in original: baggage receipts, a letter in which you ask them for the reimboursment and a declaration of loss made to Alitalia at the moment you landed, which have all to be sent to Alitalia with a registered letter (in Italian: "raccomandata") with a return receipt (which can prove you wrote them). The worse thing in all this is that once again Italian companies -like Alitalia- show us how badly they treat their Customers, with an assistance that can only be reached by spending an unfair amount of money!

on the roman Underground

Image: Flickr

Today I was surfing the english website of the Roman underground and on the Line A page, I noticed a paragraph that says:

"Just to let go on the works that will renew the Line, from the 10Th of January 2005 until the next three years, the last train is at 9:00pm from terminal Anagnina as like from terminal Battistini. So for the next 36 months, two new bus lines named MA1 and MA2 are added, and they will cover the entire Line A route. That two shuttles supplied by Trambus, are on duty from Monday to Friday including holidays from 9:00pm to 11:30pm, and on Saturday until 0:30am"

I think that it's a pretty bad translation from (a bad) Italian to (an even worse) English. I wonder why a big company like Metroroma, that handles the roman underground, cannot find a better qualified employee to do its translations...Italian mysteries!!

I am not a professional translator, but I believe that they meant:

The Line A is currently undergoing renovation works. Due to these, from January 10th 2005 and for the following three years, Line A trains will run every day from 5:30 a.m. to 9.00 p.m.(when the last train will depart from each of the two terminus A stations). Until January 2008, buses MA1 and MA2 will be available to replace underground transportation, from 9.00 pm, to 11.30 pm each day from Monday to Friday and from 9.00 pm to 0:30 am on Saturdays.

Also I noticed that a very important thing is missing: a map with the location of the bus stops where one can take the bus that replaces the underground after 9.00 pm.

I use the underground every day and I have no idea where these bus stops have been placed. I searched every underground station, websites, local newspapers, but I haven't found their location! I can imagine the problems that visitors from other countries can have, when in Rome, in finding out where these alleged bus stops are located! I bet at the end they are forced to take the taxi (if they can find one!).

I sent my suggestions to Metroroma's Customer Care. Let's see if they accept them.

By the way, have you ever seen, in other countries, an Underground closing at night as soon as 11:30 pm? Our does!

At what time does the underground (americans read: subway) close at night in your town?

Rome, land of hucksters

Rome, Pantheon Square

In no other European city one can witness the same presence of 'hucksters' than in Rome. Escaped from the povery of their native countries, many of them have arrived to Italy and can nowadays be seen in all the beautiful and historic roman squares of the Italian Capital.
Stationary from dusk until dawn, these people are busy every day selling their goods: fake designer purses, glasses, but also little gadgets.
Their excessive number causes, evidently, negative effects on the aesthetics of Rome. The roman Administration, that tries in several ways to make Rome a modern and cultural city (a part from the ruines, that we have inherited), organizing, for example, many international events - even if we are far from the lively London or New York- seems to forget that the look of the Eternal City can be affected also by other elements.
First of all what everyone can see along the streets of the old town. In Rome, even the more vacant look cannot avoid to notice all these hucksters, with their goods well exposed on sheets placed on the ground. This view strucks the citizens, like it does the turists, that while is busy admiring a nice monument like the Pantheon (see picture above), is destined to bump into a crowd of pitchmen, all selling the same items.
The 25 millions tourists that at the end of 2007 will have visited Rome will remember of course the monuments, the exhibits, the nice buildings, the food, the weather.. but they will probably also remember the dirt, the garbage and the absurd number of hucksters spread everywhere around town.
No-one enjoys their presence: not the citizens (they all sell the same items so how many fake designer purses should we buy, after -maybe- the first one?) nor the shop owners (competitors).

Who, then, benefits from the hucksters?

If the Mayor wants to mantain this type of commerce why doesn't he organize it like in Manhattan, where they all concentrate in one place (the always busy Canal Street) leaving in peace the rest of the town?