home, sweet home... even if just for one evening.

i promised i would blog regularly, and here i am - even if it's late and i'd like to go to bed.

however, time starts to be an issue. just to mention my last couple of days, i got up in a berlin hotel yesterday at 4:40am, skipped breakfast, checked out, took a bus at 5:36 which (after a really pleasant trip through the desert night of berlin) left me in tegel at 6. i took off from there at 7, landed in munich at 8:10, took off again at 9:10, and landed in venice at 10:20.

from the airport i took a shuttle to the dock, and then waited 45 minutes for the vaporetto - that is, the venetian version of the bus, which, due to some unfortunate topological reasons, is actually a boat. that left at 11:40 and let me down at 12:50 right in piazza san marco, from where i walked for a few minutes and then took the vaporetto number 20 to the little island of san servolo.

there i had lunch with a couple of snacks taken from a vending machine - the only source of food on the island - and then took part in an interesting coordination meeting of the italian CRIS campaign, where i could report about our meetings in berlin and other misc internet governance stuff.

i left the meeting in a hurry at 18:45, to catch the vaporetto again to san zaccaria, from where i took the vaporetto #52 all around venice to the railway station of santa lucia, where i took a train that left at 19:51 to drop me at milan central station five minutes past eleven pm.

i then had dinner at a mc donald's - the only open place in the whole station area - and took tramway #33 for 25 minutes to corso sempione, where, by walking for ten more minutes, i reached my hotel (hotel lancaster, a reasonable three stars which was mentioned to me by a friend and where i could sleep for 70 euros, quite a cheap rate for milan, in a just renovated room). so i went to bed at half past midnight, after 20 hours of wake with no internet connectivity and almost no reasonable food, but a lot of movement.

today was slightly better - i woke up at 9, and spent the day in an operational meeting with one of our biggest customers, before catching the tram again and then my train to turin. i arrived in porta susa at 19:45, and my partner was kind enough to come and bring me home by car. and at home i could finally have dinner with my girlfriend, watch E.R. together (well, she's a student in medicine and her father is a doctor, but anyway also my father and my father's father are/were doctors, so it's a family thing: i can still remember my father watching the show years ago and forecasting what clooney & c. would do in a few seconds), and then downloaded my e-mail, prepared for my trip, blogged, and here i am.

tomorrow, i'll wake up at 5:45 to repack my things and drive three hours to geneva. i wish i could have been there tonight, for example to join at least one of the two pre-wgig dinner i had been invited to, one by the civil society circle and another by isoc and business wgig members. i originally wanted to do so, but i simply couldn't.

now, there was a point i wanted to make about activists from "street movements" being confronted with the choice of turning into policy-making professionals - thus losing their touch with reality - or failing to meet expectations, but i simply am too sleepy and my girlfriend is calling for me. good night to everyone out there, wherever you are.