other soldiers, other landmines, another city

Tonight on RAI3’s “La Grande Storia”Oliver Halmburger’s documentary film “Beyond the Wall” (see below the text excerpt from RAI3). The most adventurous escapes are reconstructed, and the several “releases” of the wall are illustrated.

Since this is a ZDF production, I saw that in the ZDF catalogue there are also “Busting the Berlin Wall” (still in production), and “Das Wunder von Berlin” (The miracle of Berlin) starring German Diva Veronica Ferres…looking forward to see these movies too…

Oltre il Muro – Beyond the Wall

Il 10 novembre del 1989 cadeva il Muro di Berlino, simbolo stesso della Guerra Fredda che per ben 28 anni aveva rappresentato la divisione fra Est ed Ovest, fra mondo comunista e mondo democratico, fra dittatura e libertà.

A vent’anni da quella che fu una delle pagine di storia più sorprendenti ed emozionanti della seconda metà del  XX secolo,  La Grande Storia di Rai Tre, in coproduzione con ZDF, ZDF Enterprise e History Channel  propone Oltre il Muro, un documentario di 110 minuti diretto da Oliver Halmburger.

Non solo le tappe principali della costruzione di questa “ferita” nel cuore dell’Europa e di Berlino, raccontate con immagini di repertorio e con interviste a storici, ma anche, e forse soprattutto, Oltre il Muro mette in scena alcune fra le più rocambolesche, assurde e drammatiche fughe dalla Germania dell’Est alla Germania dell’Ovest.

In 28 anni, infatti, migliaia di persone riuscirono nell’intento  passando sopra o sotto il Muro, scavando tunnel lunghissimi o affidando la propria vita a insicuri palloni aerostatici, mentre circa 200 cittadini della Germania Democratica morirono nel tentativo di scappare, uccisi dai proiettili delle guardie o precipitando dai palazzi lungo il confine.

Oltre il Muro ci farà rivivere quei disperati momenti sospesi tra speranza e terrore, con ampio uso di ricostruzioni filmate  e con interviste ai protagonisti.

La progressiva costruzione del Muro stesso e delle strutture di difesa ad esso correlate vengono descritte accuratamente grazie ad una computer grafica estremamente avanzata ed assolutamente spettacolare.

Marchionne’s auto-critique

Busy week in Rome this week. Many celebrities in town. All the bosses from the big corporates were in town for the industrialists’ meeting, and for the seismic waves emanated from it, conferences and the like.

So today at 5pm Mr Marchionne appeared magically (from Detroit? from Berlin? from some Ministero?) in steamy hot hot-house Rome, wearing his Linus-style blue jumper in an appropriately sub-zero air conditioned conference room. He sipped an espresso in religious silence at the speakers’ table in front of a couple of hundreds of eyes. I thought the moment was very Louis XIV.

Bits and pieces. He explained platforms and said that an Opel today has a 80% Fiat Punto skeleton. So the operation should make a lot of sense to the German government, if you know that I mean. (But we’ll see how that turns up over the weekend).

He also said that in the car industry top management either comes from the back  – the kitchen, ie the factory -  of from the glitzy front, the Geneva Car Show. But the car industry cannot look pretty and sassy in the front if it does not clean up its ugly kitchen. (For sure there were some greasy c(r)ooks at the helm, in those kitchens…)

He said that the car industry has been destroying value for too many decades. (That  makes a lot of sense. If the car industry were the IT one, we would still be running Lotus 123 and playing Pac Man, with advertising on TV boasting “green figures on a black background: cool!”).

He explained the negative Net Working Capital mechanism. You get paid for the sale of the car before you pay the metal that goes in it. Sort of magic. That magic stops  when you stop producing.

He said that the car industry did all sorts of monkey corporate behavior. Buy financial services. Sell them. Buy components manufacturers. Sell them. They tried all the tricks. Now it’s over. (Good auto-critique…or car-critique).

TriestBerlinExpress!

The BerlinRomExpress is for the moment only a blog and not a reality. Yet now there is an Autozug linking Triest to Berlin! From the beach of Triest to the beach of Berlin…Wannsee!

Am Autozug-Bahnhof in Berlin-Wannsee werden die Kunden mit Prosecco, Orangensaft und Salzgebäck begrüßt. Während die Gäste die Getränke und die Sonnenstrahlen genießen, werden Motorräder und Pkw auf den Zug verladen. Am nächsten Morgen – nach einer 17-stündigen, sanft ratternden Fahrt auf Schienen – werden sie am Bahnhof in Triest von einer kleinen Musik-Kapelle empfangen, die italienische Schlager schmettert. Dazu gibt es den weit über die Landesgrenzen hinaus berühmten San-Daniele-Schinken sowie Weißwein aus der an Slowenien und Österreich grenzenden italienischen Region Friaul-Julisch Venetien.

E’ arrivato oggi alla stazione di Trieste il primo treno con il servizio Autozug auto-passeggeri di Deutsche Bahn, che colleghera’ fino a ottobre il capoluogo giuliano a Berlino, Amburgo, Dusseldorf e Francoforte. Ad accogliere i primi turisti sono stati i rappresentanti di Deutsche Bahn, Trenitalia, Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, Comune di Trieste e Agenzia Turismo Fvg, oltre a una banda musicale. I treni (tre o quattro alla settimana) sono composti da quattro carri (per un totale di 48 auto) e da 4-5 carrozze con cuccette, un vagone ristorante e alcuni vagoni letto. Il costo per persona del viaggio notturno parte da circa 60 euro, mentre il trasporto di una macchina costa 149 euro. Il servizio e’ gia’ attivo ad Alessandria, Bolzano e Verona.

someone fit the key(nes) brick, please!

On the bora.la website, my favourite place as far as Mitteleuropean métissage is concerned, I read an interesting panoramique by Julius Franzot on the forthcoming german elections.

This synthesis is a powerful stimulus for us to read more about it in the forthcoming weeks…after all, MeinMann and I are tiny taxpayers in Germany. The western economies – also those on the eastern brim of Europe – are undergoing unprecedented changes, even if in Italy the white noise tries to scramble everything.

In Ukraine banks are keeping hostage the citizens’ savings. I know the feeling, august 1998, Moscow, cash was king. Now that for the past year governments have been busy “saving banks” with our money, shouldn’t banks be more generous and lend to individuals who want to start a business? Shouldn’t the govvies incentive the creation or salvation of business – workers buying out the factories, or the shops where they work?

And what about women? Even the left in Italy removed the words “quote rosa”. But let’s face it: women are more cautious when it comes to money. Governments should grant them incentives more than proportionally. Think about Russia. Or Ukraine. Or the South of the World. Their microeconomies rest in the hands of mothers, grandmothers and young women. Why shouldn’t the macroeconomy too be fixed by giving them more space? …provided that they – in the first place – stop voting for male or femalepoliticians who want to maintain the status quo: the reserve army of underemployed/underpaid women.

here it is forbidden to talk

If my eyes belong to Rome, in today’s crystalline light, maybe my ears listen to Berlin, cuddled up in the green silence embracing the town. But I breath in Triest, where the wind carries the perfume of the sea, and where a mimetic Karst  squats between sea and wind, like a lynx cub, nostrils tense and alert.

This morning the light in Rome was precious. My mind voltiges swift to next sunday, when I will be in Berlin with my brother. But now I’ve read my first ever pages by Boris Pahor. So I am still. I am in Triest, my inner core. My madeleine and my cub imprinting.

And that language, which I could not speak nor understand, the hymns during the mass, is there as well.  A language never used but always present, with clear spots like a leopard skin, sharpening feline intuition in a child.

Slovenian is for me the perfume of pinze fresh from the oven. Of ripe sticky grapes of terran, vintaged in a hurry before the bora comes. It’s Karlo’s bachelor onion omelette, when Milka would visit her family and he would rather stay home. My only language with a perfume.

Boris Pahor – “Qui e’ proibito parlare” (Here it is forbidden to talk) – “Parnik trobi nji”

berlin bei nacht: festival of lights!

Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin!

Packing up a light koffer and tomorrow off I go, to Berlin! The Festival of Lights is at the rendez-vous! I’m looking forward to the photo safari of BVG…!!

There will be quite a bit of work to do, re. Aflatinberlin, but I hope to fit in also a bit of leisure. I need a 48hrs break from these crazy days at work. The heavy economic newsflow from september and early october (“illiquid society”) has erased totally the benefits of the recent Swiss-Berlin holidays. Then Monday will be back, too fast, too soon…but a breath of new ideas will help being constructive. Aufwiederlesen!

photo: BVG