Author: René Seindal
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Italian Commercial Neologisms
Italian shops are often called something ending in “-eria”. A bookshop is a libreria, from libro which means book. A pizzeria makes and sell pizze (plural of pizza), a gelateria sells gelato, icecream, and so on. An osteria sells hospitality, literally a “hostery” like in “host” 🙂 Since the scheme is very simple, it is…
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Mobile phones in Italy
I have understood from a previous post that Wendy travels without a mobile phone, and hence have limited internet access. Here is how you get a mobile phone with internet access in Italy. There are three mobile phone operators in Italy: TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), Wind and Vodafone. TIM has a red/blue logo, Wind is…
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Team paddling experiences
The four weeks I paddled in Sardinia is the longest kayak journey I have been on so far, and the first time I have travelled for so long with somebody I knew so little. Things went very wrong between Wendy and I, and I have quite naturally given it quite a bit of thought as…
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Pentax Optio W30
I have bought a new camera, a Pentax Optio W30. I’ve been very happy with my W10, and frankly, I’m amazed it has survived the abuse I’ve put it through for as long as it did, so I have no problem getting another Pentax Optio. Compared to the Optio W10, the Optio W30 has a…
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My Pentax Optio W10 is no more
My camera is dead. It’s been a bit flaky for a while, the flash stopped working a while ago, and after my paddle with Francesco Ravasio on Friday it wouldn’t turn on anymore. I’ve tried everything, but no go. It’s been a good friend from some 1500km paddling in the last year or so, taking…
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Leaving Sardinia
I’m in Palermo now. I spent a couple of days in Fertilia, first to make up my mind, then to figure out what to do with all the gear I had there. The first night I slept in the open near the harbour where I had the kayak in sight. At that point I hadn’t…
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TIM Prepaid Mobile Internet Warning
As mentioned previously, I have had some problems with my Telecom Italia Mobile prepaid mobile phone account. It ran out of money, I put in €50 and was told my account was still at €0. My assumption was that the payment had somehow failed. I spent hours on the Internet and on the phone to…
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Telecom Italia Mobile customer “service”
I have a TIM sim card in my mobile phone here in Italy. It’s a pre-paid card, so I have to ‘recharge’ it regularly. I did that today. I bought a €50 card, scratch the field to get the number, call the service and enter the number. I get a message that it went well.…
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Vodafone Wi-Fi Hotspots
I have the dubious pleasure of using a Vodafone Wi-Fi hots at the Jolly Hotel at Cagliari. It must be the lousiest hotspot I have ever used. I am consistently thrown off every few minutes and association attempts fail three times out of four. It makes it bloody hard to do something with the time…
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My Sardinian journey ends here
I have decided stop my journey around Sardinia here in Fertilia. My primary reason for embarking on this trip was to recover from a depression I had after a marital crisis last year. I wanted to get away from everything, try something new, have fresh impulses in my life and hopefully come back a fitter…
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Team split
Wendy and I have for some time had disagreements, mostly on questions of time and speed. Our disagreements has proven irreconcilable, and yesterday at Porto Ferro we decided to go on separately. Wendy left before me this morning. I have no information on her whereabouts. I’m currently at Fertilia just north of Alghero. Tomorrow I…
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Hardship continues
We’ve had a hard day on the beach today. The sun was relentless, but we did manage to send several text messages, shave various body parts (apparently Wendy and I have different predilections there), do some laundry and cook an edible meal of italian noodles, which they seem to call ‘pasta’ down here. Only at…