Ava loves pizza, prosciutto, salami, and pasta… but three meals a day, no.  So today our field trip was to the mall.  McDonalds is always an interesting visit in a foreign land, and in Bologna Italy, you can get the famous McLobster sandwich, McDonalds chicken wings (with Picante sauce, a type of mustard sauce), as well as Beer and a couple of hamburgers.  Plus… free wifi.

So, a beer, chicken wings and some wifi for me and & Austen…the girls, went shopping. It is after 6pm here, so 11am in Branson, MO…so we are still working helping customers.  Which can be done, in Bologna, takes to modern tech and McLobster’s.

So what is interesting beyond McLobsters…?  About everything.   I am completely thankful for the round-a-bout practice in Branson, as every intersection is one.  Countryside is absolutely beautiful, and farm land here is like a giant garden, with onions, wheat, corn, grapes, pears, and other farm to table crops being rotated, and very, very, very good soil.  Mountains off in the distance, and rich valleys.  Roads though the countryside are absolutely an adventure, narrow, no shoulder, often no centerline, and windy (for no apparent reason, probably following some path a Roman made 2000 years ago).

The houses in this part of Italy are awesome in their own way.  The one we live in is a home/business, which I think is great, would build one like it in USA.  Every house has zombie proof security (I wonder if there is something they know that we do not?), like a door that would definitely take a battering ram to get through (I would love seeing some of my tenants try kick these doors in, they would have broken feet).  Walls are like 12″ thick, masonry, all windows seems to be double opening, and all have these metal shutters that roll up to cover them, security for an apocalypse. It is normal to have a masonry and/or steel fence around your home (like a tall one, with spikes on top), and a metal gate with motorized opener to slide it aside when you want to enter or exit.  If a door-to-door salesperson were to come to your castle, they would fist have to get through the security… thus, I do not think there are any door-to-door salesmen in Italy.

Michelle & girls are enjoying the shopping.  One novelty in Italy is that they sell things that they actually make in Italy… crazy eh?  Shoes, shirts, etc., made in Italy, and well made at that.  The Chinese made shoes I got two months ago (BASS brand, which was actually once a real shoe company in America) soles came off of them, so I got two pair of shoes, made in Italy, and really well made in Italy, and a price about the same as the Chinese made BASS shoes.   I know USA could make shoes, shirts, pants, and such again if we would just put a massive tariff on the Chinese crap and sue Walmart for unfair business & labor practices…. but that is a different blog.   It is nice to see the Italians don’t just make awesome gearboxes & motors, but shoes, shirts, etc.

Coffee.  Everyone drinks coffee here, and if we had coffee like they have, everyone would drink more coffee here too.  It is not the Starbucks “fatbutchino” coffee drinks, but just really excellent coffee, about everywhere, even from vending machines in our factories.  You can probably get a better espresso on the shop floor at Tramec than you get at a Starbucks, fresh ground, not burnt beans.  Italy is not a paradise, but I do like the way they do some things and think we could learn from them on a few items.

I will take some countryside photos and show, and some farm & rural home photo’s.