Posted on 08/16/2018 7:10:47 AM PDT by C19fan
Just a few months ago, I was hurrying to a meeting in Genoa. As I came out of Brin metro station and skirted along the footpath overlooking the Polcevera valley, I was suddenly confronted by the Morandi Bridge.
It wasn't just the scale of the concrete monstrosity – almost a mile long – that shocked me, but the setting.
Chaotic urban development covered every inch of the valley – dozens of railway lines, blocks of flats, an endless tangle of warehouses and roads. It was far removed from what the Italians call 'a misura d'uomo' – shaped for mankind. Instead, it screamed hubris.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I can see you have been to Rome!
Is there an app for that?
they don’t use brakes just horns and “hand”signals
I love driving there. I would not want to now.
Friggin gravity is to blame.
My favorite was a taxi driver in Milan who wanted to turn left across 2 lanes of traffic. He was honking at the car ahead of him stopped at a red light. It seemed like red lights don't mean quite the same thing as in the US. :^)
The Hertz rental guys in Florence gave us a nice map in English showing the easiest was out of town. It was useful since once you left the big cities driving in Italy wasn’t too bad.
It’s certainly ridiculous given the number of toll roads!
The Bay Bridge in San Francisco I bet will collapse in the next earthquake.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/30/structural-work-on-bay-bridge-complete-but-questions-remain-about-subpar-steel/
Excerpt: bringing to a close a long saga of construction delays and complications that pushed the opening of the bridge 10 years behind schedule and more than $5 billion over budget.
The $6.5 billion span stretching from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island started carrying passengers in September 2013, a few months after engineers tightened 96 steel bolts intended to stabilize the bridge during an earthquake and found that 32 of those rods were brittle and cracked.
A subsequent investigation revealed that the botched grouting had allowed water to seep into the tower’s foundation, making the more than 400 anchor rods at risk of corrosion. It didn’t help that the threads on a few of the rods were stripped, further weakening them.
One of my favorite places to visit when I was stationed in Germany was Trier, which was about a 30 minute drive from my apartment. I’d sit at one of the
Been there done that. My high school was named New Trier. And I have been to Trier numerous times and sent my children there while Trier high schoolers came to visit us. Its a wonderful city. And the Mosel was my favorite river flowing from Trier and dumping into the Rhine. Its true that Trier is a much more civilized city, Pompeii is really a day in the life, 2000 years ago. Germany is civilized, Italy is confused and corrupt with pick pockets everywhere. (or at least Germany was civilized.)
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