By
Don and Linda Freedman
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PAOLO MAIETTA
Ziner in the Spotlight!
Paolo Maietta was born and
currently lives in Trieste, an historical town nestled at
the upper corner of the Adriatic Sea. A former Hapsburg
Empire main shipping port, Trieste sits at the crossroads
of West and East, mixing together people, languages and
architecture of Italian, German and Balkan worlds. It is
the perfect environment in which to develop a curiosity
about the world and a love for travel.
Paolo works as a supervisor for a leading air courier
company, a very good place to learn geography and
practice language skills which then come very useful when
applied to leisure trips. His first taste of travel came
at the age of 17 on a memorable trip to the Swinging
London of the 70s. He was able to tour the city alone for
a full week and experience the wonders and the troubles
of a teenager in a strange land.
The weak exchange ratio of the Italian lira kept Paolo
mostly inside Italy for many years, excluding the trips
to neighbouring countries like Austria and former
Yugoslavia. But in 1983, a mixed business/pleasure trip
brought him to New York with a visit to relatives in
Connecticut. A new world opened for him. In the following
years, alone or with his wife Gabriella, Paolo extended
the range of his trips: Egypt (the only group tour so far),
India and Nepal, Peru, Bolivia and eventually Tanzania.
Paolo and Gabriella would have kept going, but the
romantic nights of Africa brought at the end of that year
their first son. Absence of exotic travels did not mean
staying at home of course. The three of them took car
trips in Europe, visiting France,The Netherlands and
Belgium. When a little girl followed four years later,
they reverted to farm holidays or countryside rentals in
Central Italy where children played in swimming pools
while mom and pop planned the next excursions to
surrounding art towns. Eventually the kids grew up enough
and they started to appreciate themselves the joys of
travel, so the family visited London, Greece and Denmark.
In more recent years, Paolo and his family have seen a
lot of Europe - Sicily and Sardinia, Normandy and the
Loire Valley, Scotland, Dalmatia, Burgundy and Germany.
The World Wide Web has made travel planning easier.
Mailing lists became a good way for Paolo to become
acquainted with people around the world. In 2000 one of
these friends invited the Maietta family to Florida. It
was a very exciting trip for them - the theme parks, the
nature, the food, the people. The only problem was the
mis-sorted baggage on both ways. Four people living three
days out of a small hand baggage with only 3 toothbrushes
and no summer shoes was an heroic task. Paolo has also
used the Internet as a resourceful tool to give him a lot
of ideas about where to go. For him, TheTravelzine is one
of the best forums to learn about new places, share
experiences and make friends.
Paolo, thank you for being a friend of TheTravelzine and
travelers worldwide for almost 10 years!
All pages on TheTravelzine.com©Copyright 1996-2008 Don & Linda Freedman