Add monday

content/blog/wk11day1.md

@@ -1,7 +1,67 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 11, Monday:"
+title: "Week 11, Monday: Zurich to Piacenza"
 date: 2024-10-07T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/cyberlopod.png" alt="Credit: CYBERLOPOD, YouTube" >}}
+
+Today we drive from Zurich to Piacenza, Italy. Marina has her Monday drawing course in Oerlikon, and
+I promise to pick her up at the Oerlikon station at noon. In the morning, I pack up the car and grab
+our belongings. I have to say, NOGs are a very social phenomenon. How I got to Piacenza is perhaps a
+typical route: on FOSDEM 2024 I presented on VPP and MPLS. In the audience there was one Kostas from
+Athens, who organizes the GRNOG series of conferences. He asked if I would be interested to come
+present my work there. I was more than happy to join GRNOG'16 and it would be a good chance for me
+to re-record the talk, as at FOSDEM unfortunately the microphone battery died shortly after I
+started presenting, which made the recording unusable.
+
+So off to Greece we went, and it was a truly wonderful time. At GRNOG, I met one Alessandro from
+Italy. As we were having dinner with the folks from LANCOM (a datacenter operator and telco from
+Thessaloniki), Marina sat at the _Italian_ side with Livio and Alessandro, and when I came over to
+chat, they both said it'd be fun to have me in the upcoming ITNOG _On The Road_ edition, which would
+be in the home town of Alessandro and his company [[Naquadria](https://naquadria.it)]. Well, since
+Zurich - Piacenza is only 4.5hrs or so by car, I thought: why not?
+
+Fast forward to today, I picked up Marina in Oerlikon after a brief runaround due to roadworks at
+the train station, and we made our way down South. I consider myself truly blessed to be able to
+humblebrag that just two weeks ago, I was all the way up North in Oslo, and now I'm finding myself
+driving all the way South to Piacenza.
+
+The drive down is leisurely and calm. Somewhere along the line I drive past Luzern, where IP-Max has
+a new point of presence at the Stollen datacenter; and then I drive past Altdorf, where IP-Max used
+to have a really cool Point of Presence at Deltalis DK2 in a former military bunker (sadly, Deltalis
+went out of business so we all moved out); and then I drive past Manno, where IP-Max has a point of
+presence at the Bancadati datacenter. It's so cool to be always only a few kilometers away from an
+AS25091 PoP! Maybe we'll pull a wire over the Alps at some point and go to Italy as well.
+
+Lucky us - the Gottard tunnel is completely free of traffic. This is a looooong tunnel! I put the
+cruise control to 80km/h (50mph) and .. wait. It takes a good fifteen minutes to drive through this
+tunnel, which is truly a magificent work of civil engineering. I think my appreciation of the
+engineering quality definitely goes up if there are no traffic jams :)
+
+We make our way to Milan, drive past it on the motor way to Bologna and about one third of the way,
+we see the offramp for Piacenza, which is our $dest for the first half of the week. We make our way
+to the hotel, Marina is glad that I'm driving - you must know: compared to the german and swiss
+driving style, italian drivers are a fair bit more _artisanale_ and things like blinkers and full
+lines are all optional, and actually in several places there simply _are no_ road markings at all.
+
+But, when in Italy, drive like an Italian. And I am happy to oblige, to great amusement of my
+copilot. Piacenza is a nice town, and (luckily for us) parking in the city center is pretty easy. We
+take dinner in a small restaurant called Antonietta. We enjoy some starters with (italian) tapas,
+and then both go for fish: Marina takes spaghetti Vongole (English: clams), and I take a Branzino
+filet (Ebglish: seabass).
+
+After dinner we walked back to the car, and then the hotel, where we turn in for the night.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1864.JPG" caption="on the way down south, we passed Altdorf in Uri. In this mountain, Deltalis DK2 was situated." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1870.JPG" caption="Rolling down the Alps on the south side, is a very efficient use of energy. Ticino is at lower elevation than Zurich, so in general, we gained energy :-)" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1871.JPG" caption="Rolling past Manno near Lugano, Italy. Here, Bancadati has an IP-Max point of presence." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1872.JPG" caption="A church in Piazenca, Italy." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1875.JPG" caption="A selfie of Marina and I are at Antonietta in Piacenza, Italy" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-07/IMG_1880.JPG" caption="The Tiramisu was served in a coffeecup, and tasted very nice" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}