Christian Eggermont, Hendrik Haak, Andreas Röver, and a whole bunch of Italians visit

We were lucky enough this past month to have Christian Eggermont come for a few days visit.  We've known  each other for a while and he and his girlfriend decided to come for a short visit to the WPC. 

They had a bit of trouble on the way down and arrived rather late at night.  Not to worry.  I had dinner all ready for them and when finished, we had them settle into the (ex) lego room.  

Of course I had to have them try the puzzle door. 

This was a short vacation for them.  I am not sure if they played with many puzzles during their stay, but They did enjoy Sacra Bosco and a trip into Orvieto.  

We had a Berrocal dinner as is the norm with a small number of visitors.  

Mosolino was the restaurant this time around and we enjoyed it as always.  We are doing a 'rotation' of the 4 in town when visitors arrive.  This keeps it fair. :) 

Our next visitors were Hendrik Haak and Andreas Röver.  They arrived for a week and spent a great deal of time puzzling and chatting.  George and Andreas worked on a new puzzle that will be (hopefully) coming to an IPP soon.  

We took them to Sacra Bosco for a visit and in the afternoon we had a great pizza in Orvieto.  

On the 6th the Grape Festival started in Panicale.  We had a nice simple dinner at home then went into town to see what this was all about.  George and I have lived here through 2 in the past and didn't see a thing last time.  George and Andreas opted out, but Hendrik and I tasted the wines on offer.  I'm glad I did it once, not again though.  It's not good for my aging body.  But we had a good reason to go.  

I passed my theory test (Folio Rosso) on the first go and was thrilled.  Time to celebrate.  For those that don't know, this is not really a test of driving knowledge, but rather a language and memorization test.  The language used is antiquated and not in everyday use.  There are over 7000 questions to memorize and the driving school really doesn't teach anything other than "if you see this word on the test it is always true" sort of thing.  I have been studying for almost a year and managed what over 50% of Italians don't.  I passed.  This has been a real cause for concern, and I have had literally no free time in the past month to write or do anything really.  Now I can have my life back!

The next morning I took them to the train station where they returned to Rome for the flight home.  As usual, there were strikes here so their flights were delayed.  Thankfully the train still ran.  Both eventually made it back safely. 

Around Noon, our next group of visitors arrived.  This time it was a group of Italian puzzlers.  They spent only one night, but it was jam packed with loads of puzzling, magic, chat, and of course good wine and food.  

We took them for a walk around town and dinner in Mosolino as they had room to accommodate us all. 

Sadly this visit was all too short as we had tickets to the Opera at 5 and while I told them to puzzle as long as they wanted, some of them had to work in the morning so they left around the same time we did. 

The Opera was Puccini bits, and was amazing. The last act had me in tears.  It was just so beautiful.  

During this month we also celebrated our Antonio's birthday,

and finally got the tags on the Tesla.  

George and I visited a Sculpture park near the lake

and we've had a few picnics.  

It's been a busy month and I haven't even told you of the work in the hotel.  Next post or so I suppose.  We have a short break before the next batch of guests start to arrive on Wednesday.  Just enough time to clean the house and do a bit of grocery shopping.  

Road tripping

Many people have commented about range anxiety and how EV's are unreliable.  This is a little plug for Tesla.  (I won't give a comment on the guy that runs the company, just the car.)

George and I left our car in Florida in the garage of the big house.  When the house sold, we had to either sell it or find it a new home.  We came to an obvious conclusion. We 'loaned' the car to Katherine while we are out of the USA.  You see, we believe the car to be too valuable to sell.  I know what the Kelly Blue Book values it as, but they don't take into account the free supercharging for the life of the owner.  For this reason alone, it is worth the loan.  Add to that free hardware upgrades and a number of other perks we got when we purchased and it's a keeper.  But more importantly, we have a car to drive when we return home that isn't an overpriced rental. 

On our last trip around the US, we saved close to $2000 in gas charges had we been driving an ICE machine.  The only place I paid to charge was the IPP hotel as they didn't have a Tesla destination charger.  

The beauty of the car is that it tells us where to 'gas up'.  Now I know that sitting for 15 or 20 minutes to charge is much slower than putting gas in a car, but think of it this way.  You always need a bathroom break, most people want to buy a drink or a snack, and there goes your 20 minutes.  

In the photo I have here, we pushed for longer drives and longer stops.  Mind, we didn't do this trip.  I set it up only for this blog post.  The car even tells us how many chargers are there and the charging speed at that charger.  Most of the charging stations have a place to get food nearby and all have a bathroom within a few meters. 

Our MO is to charge full overnight, drive until noon.  Enjoy a nice leisurely lunch while charging the car and drive on again until mid-day comfort stop where we would charge some more before finding a hotel for the night with a destination charger.  Perhaps we would have a morning stop if I didn't fully charge the night before.  It's not at all inconvenient.  And if we did have to stop longer than we thought, we can always hook up to Hulu or Netflix and watch a movie while we wait. 

The better bit for me is that I have learned to game the car.  If I pass a stop that it tells me to take and I have enough charge, it will send me to another one further down the road.  (I've never had it do anything else, so I'm pretty sure there is always a 'reserve tank' available that Tesla doesn't tell us about.)  In this way, I can make fewer stops should I choose.  If I am running low on charge when I do this, the car automatically tells me to slow down to a certain speed to make the next charger.  Usually along the way it will allow me to increase speed again.  This slowdown?  Back to 65 instead of the usual lead footing that I do.  

Now why am I posting this?  Because we finally got the tags for our Tesla here in Italy!  We have taken a trip to Viterbo recently and while we were charged to 85% before starting, I wanted to see how it compares to the US.  Viterbo is 1 1/2 hours south of us so I did about 4 hours driving total.  This used up 64% of our battery.  Not bad really.  The best part?  I just plug it in at home and it's filled up overnight.  If only we could have solar here.

Once I pass my driver's license theory test (in Italian of course) we plan to do a roadtrip down to the toe of Italy and see a few things we haven't seen before.  Just playing around with the Go Anywhere page, I can see by looking at the little red dots that charging won't be a problem here either!  Bring on the free time!  

Where is the puzzle you ask?  Well, I gave the solution today instead.  Electric vehicles are amazing.  No problems as claimed by many of the nay sayers.  Recalls? An over the air update.  Oh, and did I mention that everytime we put through an update we effectively have a new car?  Ok well, the brains are new anyway.  And how many cars do you know that will drive themselves home?   

We thought we were stuck with a small engine vehicle and had numerous problems with getting the tags for this car, so we had to buy the puzzle van.  It has served its purpose, and will be garaged until we have a lot of puzzles to pick up once again. We get excellent milage in it, but we'd much rather ride in comfort.  

Next week, a new visitor comes to Panicale.  Until then, Happy Puzzling.

MPP and return home

MPP didn't start until 10, but I woke up early anyway.  I wanted to do a bit of grocery shopping and take some stuff back home with us.  (I can't get cup of soup in Italy and since George doesn't drink soup there is no reason for me to make big pots of it for myself.) I got what I needed and headed back to the hotel to pick up my lover.

We arrived promptly at 10 where we were first met by Kevin and then by Steve and Ali who had some boxes for me.  I put everything away in the suitcases and we went inside. This trip I brought along a WADA puzzle for Michael to see so that came in with us as well. I don't get the hype, but everyone likes them so why not.  

I really enjoyed this day.  I spent a good deal of time talking with Phil and Kyle.  I got to try both of their new puzzles and of course I bought them both.  Kevin handed me a few puzzles to try which I was of course rubbish at so I handed them to George.  

I really enjoyed this trip.  The guys  brought their IPP puzzles for others to play with and I had a go at a few.  All in all, I managed to solve 3 puzzles that day.  I'd call that a success.  Well, one wasn't.  I solved it, was about to move it to the base, and the thing went flying all over the room. Oh joy!  I know I solved it though.  

I was looking forward to a pork sandwich for lunch but that was not meant to be.  Instead I had a Cornish pasty!  OMG!  Delicious.  It brought me back to my childhood when my grandmother would pick these up in Door County and bring them home from her trips to Michigan.  I got a lesson on why they have the crimping along the edges and have decided I'm going to learn to make these myself. Why should I have to wait until next summer.  They would be amazing in the cold winters I bet.

The afternoon we puzzled on and chatted some more.  I played with Rik's exchange for a while then handed it over to Steve and George.  Later Ali came by and showed us what we had all just gotten to in solving.  It's a tricky bugger.  Fun though.

That night we headed to Allard's for a bunch of chatting. No puzzling really.  We did all enjoy watching Gilly make an autumn wreath.  Dinner was fish and chips as usual, and we took our leave around 10.  Tomorrow was another day of driving.  This time to the Netherlands.

We awoke around 7 and just hit the road. This put us to Folkestone a full 3 hours ahead  of schedule and as expected we managed to get on the chunnel early.  Our stop that night was in Delft where we stayed with Peter Knoppers.  Oskar and José bicycled over and we all had a wonderful dinner.  

The next morning Peter showed George his laser cutter and I have a feeling there will be a new purchase soon.  We left around 10 and headed for Khus.  Hendrik has been holding a bunch of puzzles for us for almost a year now so I thought we could drive up and get them. 

When I started the car in the morning, it made a bit of a screeching noise, but on the second crank it turned over.  Fluke I guess.  We spent the night in Lübek and drove to Hendrik's in the morning.  No problem starting the car.  

Upon arrival, I condensed the puzzles from 22 boxes down to 14.  9 of which we put in the car and made Hendrik promise that he would bring us the rest at DCD this October.  

He made a wonderful BBQ for us an we got to meet Matilda, his 1 year old grand daughter. She's adorable.  George played with the devil for a while, but around 3 we took our leave. I still had that lack of dash lights problem.  Once again the car made funny noises starting up and so I decided we just drive until we get to a hotel that has a Ford garage near by just in case.  

You have no idea how wise this decision turned out to be.  The next morning when we were to take off, the car would not start at all.  It just screeched at me. Ok.  I need a new starter. I suspected it, but was hoping we could make it to Italy.  No such luck.  I called a garage, and got a tow truck for the next morning.  

Sigh.  When the tow truck came to get us, the driver told me it was a broken timing belt.  Crud! That means a new engine.  We only paid €2000 for the car so a €4000 engine was out of the question. We had it towed to a junk yard and sold it for €100. Sounds cheap, but it did 2 (almost) trips to England, and it brought a lot of puzzles home.  We drove it for 3 months so that came out cheaper than a rental car.  

Now what?  Well, we are known to be a bit soft in the head, so we called Tesla while sitting at the junk yard and ordered a new Model Y.  Easy! 

Or not.  We were told the car could be picked up on the 12th.  It is in stock, almost exactly what we wanted (only missing the FSD, but we can add that later) She's a beautiful car.  Midnight red.  This paint job is amazing. As to the color you see, it depends on how you look at it and the light that it is in.  

But I digress.  The car is ready, at the delivery center.  Ready to be picked up, but....we need to register the car.  Normally Tesla would help, but because we are taking it to Italy we need to do it ourselves.  We sent the money over, paid for the car, and yet we wait.  It turns out the salesman thought we were diplomats for some reason.  I guess it was hard to understand that our car died and we were buying a new one on the spot.  Anyway, we had to spend 5 days in Berlin waiting.  So much for on the spot purchasing.

So we spent a day in bed catching up on emails, movies etc.  Then we drove to Leipzig to visit with Andreas Röver.  We had a lovely lunch and then George and Andreas returned to his flat to work on some Burr Tools stuff and just puzzle away.

 I wandered into town to see a few sights.  Leipzig is a city I was unable to visit when I lived here way back in the '80's.  It is a mix of old and new with some amazing churches and great sculptures.  I really enjoyed my wanderings.  I hope you enjoy the photos below. 

This is a chime for the clock across the road

My MPhil was on the 30 years war

Tallest tower in Leipzig

St. Nicholas Church

On Monday I went into Berlin to do some sight seeing and a bit of shopping.  Of course I bought a few legos to assemble and promptly did them when I returned.  I was here in the 80's and again a few years back for an IPP.   Today I decided to wander the streets where I was in the 80's.  Nothing remains the same except the KaDeWe.  All the rest was like walking into a foreign land to me.  

Kaiser Wilhelm Church

An amazing clock

It could have been a puzzle

KaDeWe: THE place to shop circa 1980's Berlin

The wall inside the European Center

An old Skoda

A part of the wall near our hotel

Tuesday morning!  We get to pick up our car!  Oh yipee!  NOT!  Remember that diplomat thing?  Well, they hadn't changed it and we are still waiting.  George and I returned to the hotel where I assembled the rest of my legos.  

That evening we saw the Berlin Orchestra play at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.  The pipe organ was amazing during the event.  This of course was the real reason we went. George loves that music. 

When we returned to the hotel we received the email telling us that our registration documents are on the way to the dealership.  This means all we need to do is bring them to a company who will in turn get us tags so we can then drive back home to Italy where we start the process of registering the car all over again.  Stay tuned for that bit of bureaucracy. I'm sure it too will be great fun.  

Today we got our temporary tags.  We picked up our new ride at 4:30 and headed to the rental agency to return the Fiat 500 that we rented.  A word of advice, don't rent one of these.  They have great storage, but the steering is hard work. Thankfully there was no extra charge for the bit of today that we had the car. 

Tesla in hand. The driving is as expected and I'm so glad to have a bit pickup again.  Actually, a lot of pickup.  I can get into traffic.  With that Fiat and the Ford I wasn't able to. Whose a happy girl then?  We got our Tesla for Italy. Now to do the paperwork. 

Tomorrow we leave for home. First stop: A junk yard to pick up some plates and a carload of puzzles.  Next stop: Tesla Florence to register a car.  And then home. It's been too long.  Here's hoping the reest of the trip is uneventful!