I'm fully half Italian on my mother's side,
something you'd never guess at by my
last name.
We don't know exactly where the Irish part
of my family came from, but we do know
where my Italian ancestors lived.
This time in Europe I finally had time to make
the trip and see for myself.
I took the train from Zurich to Milan.
Milan is a big city and like a lot of big European
cities (Paris for example), it's beautiful, but no
one will accuse it of being the friendliest place
on earth.
I stayed a few days to look around, but didn't
shed a tear when I boarded the train to Piacenza...
Pee-ah-CHEN-za
Piacenza...that's the Italian province where my
mother's family hails from.
It's just a hour southeast of Milan by train.
Italy is pretty mountainous throughout, but in
the northern part of the country, just south
of the Alps, there's a huge plain that has got to
be one of the best blessed agricultural regions on
earth.
Sun...all the water you could ever want
from TWO different mountain chains...
flat as a billiard table...and rich, black soil.
Piacenza is the name of a city and the
province. The city is situated on the same
lucky plain as more famous places like
Cremona, Verona, Bologna, and Venice.
Though not famous, Piacenza did have it's
day in the sun.
First of all, it's a very old city.
The area's been inhabited since before recorded
history.
Then 2,200 years ago, the Romans built a garrison there
to head off invaders from the north.
There's been a lot of fighting going on in this
part of the world and there are castles and walled
cities everywhere.
Piacenza itself is surrounded by a wall - and a moat.
It was on this trip that I realized that "castle"
is a misnomer.
These things are FORTS.
I have the feeling that for the longest time,
Europe was the Wild West on steroids and any place
worth fighting over was fought over again and again.
It happens that one of the great battles in ancient
history took place just southwest of Piacanza.
Hannibal, a general from Africa, launched a
15 year war against Rome when Rome was at
the height of its powers.
He's famous for bringing the fight to Italy
by crossing the Alps with 50,000 men and
40 elephants and repeatedly beating the
Romans on their own turf.
One of the early and most important battles
was near Piacenza where Hannibal lured
TWO Roman armies out into the open and
destroyed them both.
Two thousand plus years later, the people
in Piacenza were very effective fighters against
the Nazis too.
In fact, one town - in the middle of the
war - actually threw the Nazis out and
declared themselves the Republic
of Bobbio.
My mother's family is from the mountains
south of Piacenza, a little village called
Selva, about 20 miles one valley over from
Bobbio.
When she was alive, my mom used to tell me
stories about going back to Selva with her mom
as a little girl and spending the summers
there.
I have to admit her stories kind of went in
one ear and went out the other, but some
things did stick.
For example, she told me that the village didn't
have a road leading to it or electricity until
the 1960s.
I remember hearing this as a six year old
(then living in Los Angeles) and thinking:
"How is that possible? How can people live
without roads and electricity?"
At last, 43 years after hearing this story,
the day arrived for me to see for myself
and I bought a bus ticket from Piacenza to
the mountains.
Holy smokes!
I think Americans have the sense of Europe
as being a completely settled place with no
wilderness or wild places.
Forget that.
The mountains went on and on and on
in all directions.
Not quite as big as the Alps or the Rockies,
but big and vast and lots of them over
5,000 feet high.
The amazing thing is that every fifteen minutes
or so, we'd pass another town or village...way,
way out in the sticks.
Full fledged villages with squares and churches,
seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
And those were just the villages on the main road.
Every now and then, in the distance, hanging
on the side of a mountain, you'd see another village.
How did these people get there before roads
and cars? How did they make a living?
After nearly two hours of riding on good roads
with the mountains getting bigger and bigger
the deeper in we went, we had to change from
a full-sized bus to a van.
Then we began the trek up a winding narrow road
to Selva.
A half hour later, we were there.
The village was so high up in the mountains it had
its own weather. Just down the mountain there
was a light drizzle...In Selva it was snowing and
sleeting.
Now all of sudden, the story about my mom
as a little girl traveling in a basket on the back of a
donkey - no road, just a mountain trail - to get to the
village made sense.
As for electricity, they have it now, but I could see that
getting it there must have been a huge deal.
Amazing...
No stores, no ATMs, no restaurants, no hospital within
100 miles, no fire department, no police...just well built
stone houses, a little chapel, barns, huge piles of neatly
stacked firewood, and alpine pastures as far as the eye
can see.
The weather was a lot less than optimal, but I was
thrilled to be there and I could see that in the
right season this was a spectacularly beautiful
place.
In fact, young Ernest Hemingway when he was
an ambulance driver in Italy during WW I visited
these same mountains and declared them the
most beautiful place on earth.
Of course, he was young and hadn't seen much
of the world at that point, but still...
I'm definitely going back some day in the good
weather and roam around.
Europe was an eye opener in so many ways.
First, I realized how good we have it in the US.
We've got a massive internal market, everyone
speaks the same language and for all its problems
we have a darn good transportation and communications
infrastructure.
It's EASIER to get things done in America - and on a
big scale - than it is anywhere else on earth.
Also, you know the old Frank Sinatra song about
New York..."if you can make it there, you can make
it anywhere?"
Well, that's true about the US too. In many niches,
if you're a success in America, you've got instant
credibility everywhere else on earth automatically.
That's just not true if you're from Cypress, or
Slovenia or Hungary or any of the dozens of smaller
countries on earth.
Your home market is small and winning there doesn't
really buy you anything outside of your country's
borders.
On my way back to the US, I was watching a
"reality" TV show in Dublin about business people
working for a prize.
You know what the prize was?
Getting technical assistance to expand their
businesses to the States.
That's what the whole multi-part series was
about...the excitement around getting a shot at
doing business in America.
I've heard it said that business is more regulated
in Europe than in the US. That may or may not
be true, but what is true is that the same things
that make Europe charming for a tourist must
make it maddening for a business person.
Travel a few hundred miles and people are
speaking a different language and living a
different culture.
Switzerland and Italy could not be more
different - and yet they are right next to
each other.
And both these counties are very different
from Germany which is very different from
France which is very different from England...
and on and on it goes.
Beautiful, wonderful...and complicated.
Glad I went....glad to be back.
Looking forward to the holidays and then
starting the new year.
I hope you are too.
There's no way around it, 2009 is going
to be a challenging year for a lot of
people.
I'm looking at the next year as a chance
to re-focus and sharpen things up.
Over the last two years, I've been experimenting
with different teaching formats and have come up
with one I'm very happy with that I'll be rolling
out in 2009.
It's going to make learning - and succeeding - in
Internet marketing a whole lot easier.
"The best is yet to come..." has been a motto of
mine for as long as I've been offering the System
Seminar, and every year we've always managed to set
the bar higher than the year before.
I'm expecting 2009 will be our best teaching
year ever for reasons I'll be explaining in
future e-mails.
Meanwhile, take note that this year's System
Seminar in Chicago will be earlier in the spring
than ever before March 27 - 29th.
As usual, we've got a super early bird tuition
discount for smart people who are ready to
register and take advantage of it before the
end of the old year.
If you've never been to a System before,
THIS is the one you want to make sure you
don't miss.
...If you're a System veteran, I know the new
innovations we'll be launching at System 2009
will blow everything else we've done away.
Details:
http://www.thesystemseminar.com/register.html
Ken
P.S. One of the things I was doing in Europe
was looking for a new place to move to.
If I were to move to Europe, I'd almost
certainly live somewhere in Switzerland,
but the conclusion I came to after a month
of traveling is there really is no place
like home.
Between the Hudson Valley and New York City
where I spend the summer and fall and New
Orleans where I spend the winter and spring,
I didn't find anyplace in Europe better than
the deal I've already got.
Not that I don't want to go back for a visit, but
for now any fantasies I had of living in Europe
are on hold for now.
For now, I'm living exactly where I want to
be, doing exactly what I want to do which
is a pretty good deal when all is said and
done.
The Internet has made this possible and I'm
proud to say that our trainings have made
this possible for countless people over the
last sixteen years.
It's starts with a solid training, and that's
what we've been offering now going into this
our 16th year.
Details:
http://www.thesystemseminar.com
Ken McCarthy
The System Seminar
---------------------------------------------------------
* The System Seminar March 27 - 29, 2009
The annual gathering of *serious* Internet entrepreneurs
http://www.TheSystemSeminar.com
* Home study solutions for Internet entrepreneurs
http://www.KensCatalog.com
* Serious marketing books for serious marketers
http://www.RealMarketingBooks.com
The System
Education for Internet Entrepreneurs
14 North Road
Tivoli, NY 12583
To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?TAyMrGyMtMwcTGyMrGwstEa0LIwsHAwcHA==
