Reise nach Deutschland und Osterreich In wenigen tagen fahre ich nach Deutschland und Österreich. Jede jahre ich reise nach Deutschland vielen Mal. Am Februar ich fluge nach Frankfurt a. M. und denn Ich bis melsungen fahre. Ich bin da fur arbeit, mit mein kollegen. Wir haben da ein konferenz mit unsere Kunden. Denn in März, fluge ich nach Wien mit zwei freunde. Wir besuchen ein andere freunde, er studiert in Österreich mit Erasmus project. Er studiert nach Wien Universitat fur sechs monaten. Er ist nach am Januar nach Osterreich gegangen. Ich hoffe mein deutsch sprache zu praktizieren weil ich reise in Deutschsprachige Nationen so viel, und ich brauche deutsch sprechen un schreiben.

Central Asia CENTRAL ASIA I recently travelled to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for a short holiday. It was a great experience in terms of geographical exploration and cultural discovery as well. From my limited westerner poi of view, I’ve discovered a whole world. These countries show off a very special blend of Soviet culture, Russian heritage as well as Muslim-arabic tradition and Turkic ascendant. All these traits are well mixed in a unique culture that slowly changes moving from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan. The second one, in particular, is a very wild country with a limited heritage in terms of art and architecture, but with a very ancient and specific nomadic tradition and stunning beautiful mountains and landscapes. We drove from the charming blue domes of Samarkand and Bukhara, to the semi-abandoned soviet suburbs with their decaying factories and lonesome manufacturing plants, crossing high passes, crystal-like lakes and great landscapes. We looked at the Lenin statue standing in the central squares of Osh and Bishkek, and walked through the new mosques and Manas (the national hero) monuments rising everywhere in the country. I felt and still feel a bit ashamed because of f my ignorance: despite to the many books I read during life, and the assumption (true or false?) of having a wide knowledge of history and geography I realized how huge is the historical heritage of these places. And how small is my knowledge of the area. So, I decided to fill the gap and I’m now buying on the web a few books about Russian empire history, and also some travel narrative about central Asia and Siberia. Hopefully, this will help me to increase my knowledge of what I always considered as a remote area. I found the way to occupy the rainy evenings of our Italian autumn, that’s coming.

There’s life in Alps During my last trail into the Alps, not far away from home, while climbing a steep path at 2000mt, not far away from a mountain refuge, I met a big old Ibex. It stood still right in the middle of the path, staring at me for a while. Just the time for me to take a picture, for it to warn of my presence its herd, which was not long away, and make them run away. Then it left the path and disappeared jumping quickly from rock to rock. Their speed and agility on rocky, steep and rough terrains are legendary. It’s not the first time I meet wild fauna on the Alps, while having trekking and trails: chamois, ibex, eagles, falcons and marmots are not unusual meetings into the mountains. But their number, which was rather small in past, is gradually increasing and these animals are becoming more and more common every day. And they are not scared of men anymore. This is, probably, the result of many successful campaigns for reintroduction and an increased care and sensibility for environment and wildlife. Just at the end of 1800, Ibex were almost completely disappeared from the Alps, and they were saved by the Italian monarchy. They created a natural hunting reserve in order to protect the animal (hunting was exclusive for the king), saving it from extinction. So, it’s a great pleasure encountering them in large herds on the side of our mountains.

The way Suddenly, waking up in a cold, humid and hazy morning of that uncertain spring that was still reluctant to flourish, I understood the empty sensation I was feeling for some time. I didn’t lack any sort of career or success. Nor money or a better car. Not nice furniture or new trendy clothes. I missed the warm smell of the hay laying in the sun, wearing shorts in a limpid hot day. The deep silence af a oak forest. I missed the faraway cowbells ringing and the deep and comforting voices of my people. The butter and honey on a slice of rye bread. I missed all the old, obvious, things that I used to consider normal and boring and had been erased by time. Slowly, silently, replaced by new, trendy and cool needs. How obvious all those things were once, how impossible to reach they look now. And I wondered when, along the path, somehow, I missed the way.

The view from my office’s window. It’s spring now, so through the wide window I can see a couple of cherry trees, growing on the right side of the company's premises. They’re waving, blown by a spring cold wind, which is still cold. Sometimes a few flowers fly away from the waving branches. The grey, humid, concrete in front of our manufacturing site, as well as the wooden pallets stacked in the front to be used with a forklift, are covered with pink and white petals spread around. Not really a romantic view, to be honest, but for sure a weird and unusual one. The company is settled in a village at the very beginning of the Alps, so from the window I can see the small mountains around here, covered with forests, lightened by the sunlight. It’s still the very beginning of spring, so the chestnut and oaks trees in which this mountains’ side are covered, are dry and colourless after the winter. From here I can see also a few houses, part of the local village, and a small parking lot full of cars. I can hear the church bell ringing, a toll for 1pm, but from my seat I can’t actually see the bell tower, which is a little bit further on the right. This village has a nice, silent, round based Church with an high white tower, but to be honest I can’t remember who this Church is dedicated to. I pass there sometimes during lunch break in summer and stop for a while: sitting in it’s surreal, chilly, silence the hot and the noises coming from outside seem like things from another planet. Finally, on the mountainside, I can see a big old and ugly house, with creamy colour painted walls, brown windows and doors and a sad regular rectangular shape. It has a pine tree, probably a larch, on the left side of the front and a tall telecommunications antenna, that’s probably used for mobiles connection of this area.

I don’t like football I know, it’s quite strange to hear from an Italian. But I do not like football. In my parents’ house, when I was a little boy, no one was interested in football. No one watched it or enjoyed it. So I did not inherited from relatives and I can not understand the joy and trepidation connected with watching a match or seeing “your” football team doing well in the weekend match. For this same reason I cannot enjoy watching the world cup. Someone could jokes saying that it’s because Italy is not in the competition this year…but that’s not the reason. The truth is that I do not have fun at all watching sports in general. During 2006, when Italy last won the World Cup, I was around on my bike, returning home after a day of work. The roads were desert, there was an unnatural silence, a vibrant tension in the air. And, time by time, there was a sort of collective shout that exploded when a team did a mistake or a goal was scored. And then silence again. The effect of coral participation was quite powerfull. I simply was not able to feel part of this, and I must admit i felt a little bit sorry about this. I’ve always been a very active sports player since my early years, and I always preferred to play individual sports. Even if I’ve never been a strong athlete, what I find interesting in sport is to reach my limits and try to push myself further. I love learning new things and experience places and activities which are far away from our everyday life, challenge myself in long, difficult trails or paths and succeed. This is what I love of sport. I do not think that sitting on the sofa, having some beers and watching some super-paid guys playing a game have something to do with sport. It is a form of amusement, not far away from watching a movie or going to theatre. And, I think, sport seen on TV tries to reproduce the feeling that people have during a competition: it is a comfortable and easy way to recreate, without big effort, the sense of challenge, expectation, and joy after the victory that you can feel when you are part of a real contest or match.

A Newspapers’ Shop This morning, driving along the way from home to my working place, I passed by a small newspaper shop. It’s some sort of small, ugly, box made by dirty glasses and green steel, with a black and yellow banner on the top. The front is open, to show the newspapers and allow to the owner to sell newspapers and other stuff. I passed by that building for over an year now, and I never noticed it. I mean, I knew that a newspapers’ shops exists there, but I never spent more than a couple of seconds thinking about it. It was a little bit earlier than usual this morning, 6.50am, and the owner was opening up “the box”, running his business. Glancing at him, an image came to my mind: that man, for years, day after day, every morning, entered and enters into “the box” and spends his whole day there, looking after his customer. I started thinking about the meaning of this. I mean…which is the deep sense of a life spent, every day entering and exiting a small box. Spending here your whole life, without creating nothing, without moving. The small newspaper’s shop is nothing but the metaphor of any other bigger box in which we live in, that could be an office, a shop, a workshop or a big factory. Which is the meaning of a life spent moving back and forward a box, doing things we do not love, that don’t really satisfy us? Waiting for a couple of weeks of freedom during holidays or a couple of days during the weekends? Life of most of the people is spent in such a box, waiting for the weekend, hoping the working day to pass quickly and painlessly, jumping from a weekend to another. I know that there’s dignity in doing our duty, taking care of our families. And some sort of sacrifice is necessary to carry out our jobs properly and constantly. And I also think that there is great dignity in any kind of jobs, often more in the humblest than in the so-called “important”. But I am terrified at the idea of a life spent inside “the box”.

3d manufacturing as an alternative to traditional manufacturing? Over 10 years have passed since when additive manufacturing started being popular in industrial contexts. What is this kind of manufacturing and how does it applies in different industrial fields? Additive manufacturing consist, in great synthesis, in a deposition tool that lays some layers of raw material (they can be both a soft material or a powder, covering the whole range from polymers to metallic materials) one over the other. Through thermal action the layers are melted together creating a, more or less, compact body according to the shape of the 3d drawing. In case of metallic 3d manufacturing, layers of metallic powder are laid one over the other and laser welded to the required shape. The name of “additive manufacturing” comes from the fact that, instead of removing material from a block (as happens in traditional manufacturing), production is ran laying layer after layer, then adding material. This new production style completely changed the concept of manufacturing and it’s opening a wide range of possibilities both for what concern geometries and materials. About geometries, in fact, we can now create hollow bodies or impossible geometries that could be barely imagined with traditional manufacturing systems. About materials, new geometries, for example cell structures, permit to obtain high strength with light and traditionally fragile materials, allowing us to use new materials in applications where they were unthinkable before. The potentialities of this system are really huge, in particular in mechanical engineering, medicine and applications where small special batches of products are required and it’s necessary the use of expensive materials. It is also very useful where and high level of customization is a plus or where “impossible” (from a productive point of view) geometries must be manufactured. On the other hand the high cost of this production way, compared to the traditional methods, the almost always longer production times and the mechanically poorer final result are limiting this manufacturing style to market niches. However it is widely spread in prototypes applications. 3d manufacturing is good for prototyping because it does permit to have a tangible idea of the finished product with its criticalities without investing big money in mass production tools that are expensive and require long times to be realized.

Does Nations, Nationalism and National languages still have sense, in Europe?

According to the changes happened during the last few years in politics, mentality and lyfestyles that are making Europe more and more similar in mentality and habits, do you think that a strict "national" linguistical and cultural identy still have sense? Or the centrifugal forces rising inside each nation will prevail and the new big political frame to include them all could be the EU?

Will the future move towards a general European culture, with local/regional particular shades but not related to any big national block we've seen in the 20th century?

Opinions are appreciated.