Work and pleasure in Pistoia

Today was the first day of work in Pistoia. The EU project Earth4Rail, Work Package 4, had Face To Face meeting at Hitachi's facilities. The weather was beautiful med 20-22 degrees and a sun-cloud mixture.

I was amazed by the lunch room at Hitachi - it was enormous (serves some 1500 meals a day), efficient, lots of food and since we are in Italy the food was gorgeous. If it had been at a restaurant, I would have said it was "good", but now as it was a gigantic canteen - it was just great.

We took a tour of the facilities as well, I would have loved to share pictures but it is of course not allowed to take pictures in the plant. Many trains in production at the same time for various train or subway operators. Some in our group are really competitors of Hitachi, but in these projects we try to work around that. Meaning, not trying to do espionage, and not divulging secrets, and then it works out pretty well.

Since my hotel, Villa Capuggi, was 3 km from the city centre, I stayed in town between work and dinner. One of my hobbies is geocaching, which is a really good hobby when you are new at a place or arriving as a tourist. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is sort of a treasure hunt, it makes you go to places that you likely would not have seen if it was not for geocaching.

So I did what I usually do - I plotted the nearest caches downtown Pistoia (two traditional and one multi, the multi had too many steps so I did not bother). It took me to the buildings shown in the photographs. Not the first one though - that one is from my hotel room in the morning. Nice, huh?

And it got even better. In the evening, the project participants met at Voronoi, an italian restaurant in the city center. We had been given a special menu in advance to choose from. Short version: OH. MY. GOD. Food was soooo good. Four courses naturally, antipasti first, then a pasta with finely cut meat (not minced, cut) in a sort of Bolognese way but sooo much better than regular bolognese at home.
Then cheeses and chocolate cake. I guess the chocolate cake was the most ordinary one, and cheese is..well, cheese. But the pasta and antipasti blew my mind.

If you go to Pistoia, make sure to visit Voronoi.Read more