Sorry I didn't post quickly after I got home like I said I would. I've been under the weather since I've been back and have pretty much been sleeping 75% of the day, but I'm feeling better and here it goes...
I just want to say thanks fo reading this and commenting while I was on my trip. I've found that traveling alone is difficult for me, so it was always nice to know someone was reading and it felt like I had someone along for the ride with me.
Anyway, the trip home was pretty uneventful. I was stuck in a middle seat with annoying hippie woman and her crunchy loser husband sitting in front of me, insisting on pushing the seat back all the way deep into my knees, all the while leaning forward, thus making having the seat back unnecessary. After asking them to remedy the situation, I got some sort of "we can do what we want" self righteous speech which I countered that I guess that's only the case if we're not talking about forced veganism and environmental regulations set on destorying our economy even further. Since they (of course) didn't understand a thing I was talking about in reference to their self righteous, granola-eating, dread-lock hair, ignorant selves, that ended the matter and about 5 minutes later (about 5 hours into the 10 hour flight) they switched seats and the guy raised his up, thus relieving my surgically reconstructed knees of any further pain .
I must say, it's getting to the point where it's pretty hard for me to fly on airplanes. When you're 6'4" and your shoulders are as wide as 2 coach seats, it makes things quite difficult. I guess I'll try to lose any sort of musculature I now possess before I fly to Europe in the future if I go back, because that way I can fit in the seats and maybe wear some capris and women blouses so I look like a European and don't get discriminated against.
Anyway, after being up for about 30 hours I got back to Nashville, fell instantly asleep when I got home and have been on (what is extremely foreign to me) basically a 9 PM to 6AM sleeping schedule the last few days...maybe I'm truly becoming the old man I'm starting to feel like?
And now here I am...taking care of the corgis while my folks are away, cooking up a storm, trying to continue to build on what I've learned...and it's been AWESOME!! Yesterday I made the best bolognese sauce I've ever had (if I don't say so myself...) with homemade tagliatelle pasta. I'm going to keep practicing the tips, tricks, and recipes I've learned, as well as continue to practice my knife skills (I need help - 2 bad finger cuts in one month...eh).
Other than that, I have about 3 weeks to get my stuff together for the move down to Austin. For the first time in quite some time, I have to admit, I'm actually excited about the future. I know I have a great opportunity to do something really big and different from anything the people of Texas have ever had in terms of Italian food, and I'm excited to really start my life in Austin, as the past year and a half has basically been purgatory, just waiting for something to happen.
So, that's about it. If anyone is still reading this and anyone is still interested, I'm going to post the pictures from the last 5 days of the trip or so - definitely some of the best ones - http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag .
Thanks again for everything and wish me luck in Austin!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Back in Pisa
Im at an internet cafe at the campsite Im staying at in Pisa which is 800 meters from the leaning tower and about 3 km from the airport, so...perfectly situated. The drive today was one of the more stressful ones yet, as my GPS managed to take me TWICE through tiny villages on narrow country roads to points where I was instructed to navigate off-road. Somehow, I managed to make it to Pisa, though. I must say...I'm exhausted. This trip has been incredible. Its been fun, beautiful, inspirational, education, but, most of all, exhausting. I'm sooooo tired. I am looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for the first time in 2 weeks (the bed at the cooking school was about 2 feet wide and 5.5 feet long, so not exactly the right fit for me). Im looking forward, more than anything else, to driving my wonderful Japanese-made automobile on an American road where people follow traffic laws...mmmmm. Anyway, I'm going to make the most of my day here, though, and am just about ready to set out to tackle the leaning tower once and for alland get some lunch and tool around the city of Pisa. I'm pretty sick of sightseeing, but its the last day and Im going for it. Tomorrow I may not post because Ill be traveling back home, but Ill definiately be posting more the next day including all the photos from this past week.
H
H
Friday, September 25, 2009
Toscana = Beautiful
Freshly arriveed at my campsite in the shadows of the towers of San Gimignano, and after being stuck behind a truck carrying freshly harvested chianti grapes for the past hour, I am now sitting at the free internet terminal I was happy to discover here. The drive today was magnificent to say the least. When I drove back into Tuscany, I immediately felt a calming effect come over my body. The traffic slowed, the landscape became breathtakingly beautiful, and the people immediately more receptive to foreigners. It's cliche for any American tourist to Italy to say, but Tuscany is simply just different. It feels like another world away from the bustling cities and kamikaze drivers of the othe other regions. Even the larger cities here in Tuscany, such as Siena and Pisa, are so much more peaceful and relaxing...and Ive needed this.
I cant wait to get the pictures up that Ive taken today - looks like it will either be tomorrow or Sunday night when I arrive back. Anyway, my GPS took me through winding country roads up and over the hills of Tuscany, signs displaying the Chianti signature of the vineyards ever kilometer or so. I even got stuck behind a tractor carrying a trailor full of freshly harvested grapes as it peeled out of the vineyard right in front of me, and I could see the workers harvesting the grapes in the fields everywhere I traveled.
It was simply beautiful, and it was experiences like these that I came here for, unfortunately absent much of the past few days.
Anyway, after getting my tent set up in the campground which is (literally) in the shadows of the impressive tourist mecca of San Gimignano, I headed out to Volterra, about half an hours drive through some of the most beautiful landscape in Italy. After searching half an hour for a parking spot, I climbed up what seemed to be 10,000 stairs into the walled city on top of an impressive hill that dominates the countryside. Immediately, I followed the signs to the Roman amphitheatre just on the outside of the city walls that was unvcovered not too long ago. About 5 minutes walk from that, I saw an archway created by the Etruscan inhabitants of Volterra in 800 BC. Then I went for what I actucally came to Volterra for...the wild boar. I settled on a busy restaurant just off the main square and sat down to a lunch of bruschetta and then a wild boar ragu, which was eveything I hoped it to be and more. Wild boar meat, when done properly, is pork times ten, or in other words, basically the "mana" stuff talked about in the Bible. It was great.
Anyway, now Im back the campsite and will be heading over to San Gimignano in a bit to walk around then get an early dinner before turning in early for the night (once it gets dark at these campsites, its pretty much just time to go to sleep, and Ive gotten used to it).
Tomorrow Im heading from the Siena province of Tuscany into the Pisa province and up into the city of Pisa where I will be staying at a campsite within walking distance of the leaning tower and the sights. Im planning on biting the bullet and actually buying a ticket to go up to the top of the tower. I imagine the views must be magnificent. Then Im going to try to explore more of the city that I really enjoyed a few weeks ago.
Ciao!
I cant wait to get the pictures up that Ive taken today - looks like it will either be tomorrow or Sunday night when I arrive back. Anyway, my GPS took me through winding country roads up and over the hills of Tuscany, signs displaying the Chianti signature of the vineyards ever kilometer or so. I even got stuck behind a tractor carrying a trailor full of freshly harvested grapes as it peeled out of the vineyard right in front of me, and I could see the workers harvesting the grapes in the fields everywhere I traveled.
It was simply beautiful, and it was experiences like these that I came here for, unfortunately absent much of the past few days.
Anyway, after getting my tent set up in the campground which is (literally) in the shadows of the impressive tourist mecca of San Gimignano, I headed out to Volterra, about half an hours drive through some of the most beautiful landscape in Italy. After searching half an hour for a parking spot, I climbed up what seemed to be 10,000 stairs into the walled city on top of an impressive hill that dominates the countryside. Immediately, I followed the signs to the Roman amphitheatre just on the outside of the city walls that was unvcovered not too long ago. About 5 minutes walk from that, I saw an archway created by the Etruscan inhabitants of Volterra in 800 BC. Then I went for what I actucally came to Volterra for...the wild boar. I settled on a busy restaurant just off the main square and sat down to a lunch of bruschetta and then a wild boar ragu, which was eveything I hoped it to be and more. Wild boar meat, when done properly, is pork times ten, or in other words, basically the "mana" stuff talked about in the Bible. It was great.
Anyway, now Im back the campsite and will be heading over to San Gimignano in a bit to walk around then get an early dinner before turning in early for the night (once it gets dark at these campsites, its pretty much just time to go to sleep, and Ive gotten used to it).
Tomorrow Im heading from the Siena province of Tuscany into the Pisa province and up into the city of Pisa where I will be staying at a campsite within walking distance of the leaning tower and the sights. Im planning on biting the bullet and actually buying a ticket to go up to the top of the tower. I imagine the views must be magnificent. Then Im going to try to explore more of the city that I really enjoyed a few weeks ago.
Ciao!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Change of Plans
Well, right now Im sitting in an internet cafe in Perugia, a lovely walled city on top of a hill in Umbria. Things are pretty good right now, but the last few days have been really tough and have caused me to change my plans.
number of times in the past few days Ive been denied a seat at a restauarant because Im alone: 4
number of times in the past few days Ive been denied a seat at a restauarant because Im American: 2
number of times in the past few days Ive almost gotten in a car wreck: approx. 4000
number of women with a baby stroller who (illegally and in great traffic) jumped out in front of my car yesterday while I was in 45 mph lunch hour traffic in Pescara, and I had to jam the brakes to stop 6 inches from her: 1
That was enough for me...
So Ive decided that with the unwelcome reception Im getting, the number of near-miss accidents that flash before my eyes everyday, the simple stress of driving and parking, and the sheer lonliness Im experiencing, Im going to cut my losses short and head home this Sunday instead of Oct. 11.
One week doing this is plenty...any more...Im LITERALLY going to go insane.
This has taught me a lot, about both myself and about Italy.
About Italy:
1. The romantic idea of Italy is just that...an idea. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE this country, Im proud that Im part Italian, and Ive had an amazing erxperience so far and have a few days left. However, the whole romantic idea of driving through Italy, shopping at markets, speaking with the locals, etc that one imagines in his mind is simply imaginary. Modern Italy is frantic, fast paced, the people hate toruists in their country, they all shop at supermarkets now, and the incredible amount of cars has led to a degredation of so many of the beautiful cities here. It is what it is, not what Americans, such as myself, imagine it to be.
2. Driving in Italy is Hell on Earth. I would be having a much greater time if I were not driving...
For those of you reading this under thirty years of age, youll get this, others may not...
Anyway, driving in Italy is a lot like Mario Kart, except you always have to be Toad, or Princess (the characters who always lose bc they have slow, crappy cars). Its a giant race everywhere you go. Every flat surface becomes a roadway and the goal is not to get to your destination safely, but to get there as fast as you possibly can to cross the finish line at all costs. While racing you have to dodge banana peels (pot holes, dogs, German tourists, women with baby strollers) and also dodge the turtoise shells coming at you (Vespas, bicycles, and motorcycles). All the while, you have to watch the screen (GPS) very carefully, because one wrong turn could equal an hour of traffic headaches. Ahh, but its also different from Mario Kart because there is no "Finish Line". When you get to your destination, it begins all over again and you have to begin the arduous task of finsing a parking spot (magical golden star icon, mushroom, etc.)
Make sense?
About Myself:
Ive always thought of m,yself as somewhat of a loner. Ive never been in a real, lasting relationship of any serious length, I have a few very close friends, Ive lived alone for a significant time and will be doing again startin in a few weeks down in Austin. However, Ive never felt true lonliness until this past week. while traveling alone here in Italy...the monumental task of driving alone, staying in almost abandoned campsites alone, not knowing the language of those around me, being deinied a service because I AM ALONE which doesnt help, and the lonliness of being dismissed because of my ethnicity, which is somethign Ive only felt a few times in my life. The first few were concerning my race in college when I was verbally assaulted by groups of minority students for being white, both in the classroom (where it is doctrine) and outside the classroom, where its tolerated...a very strange feeling. The other times were these past few days in Le Marches and Abruzzo. I think that maybe because its not tourist season anymore, the people there feel like they no longer have to accomodate tourists, like its "their time" or something.
Anyway, the point is, Ive learned Im truly not a loner. When Ive been feeling intense lonliness the past few days, all I thought about was my family and friends back home whom I wished I could be with or talk to. It made me realize how dependent I truly am on these people and what a big part of my life they are, because Im truly alone without them.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Enough of that...at the moment Im in Perugia and its a great place. I had an incredible lunch today (they were happy for my business!). I had the most dellicious antipasti of prosciutto, different chesses, crostini, salami, and brascola cappaccio (I probably butchered the spelling like ususal, but imagine if Italians made beef jerkey...). Then I had some penne with sausage and black truffle cream sauce (not quite diet food). Man it was good, though!
Earlier today I dove through the mountains of Le Marches into Umbria, some of the mmost beautiful, dramatic scenery Ive ever witnessed. Additionally, along the route my GPS took me, I encountered about every kilometer for a 100 kilometer stretch, were tractors along the side of the road selling the freshly harvested potatoes, onions, and garlic. The drive today, although long and tedious, took me almost to that "Italy of my imagination". For a few hours, it was as if I was transported back into a simpler time. It was undoubtedly the most memorable drive of my life.
So, now Im gonna head back to the camp grounds which are about 40 min away and get ready for the night. Tomorrow I head through Cortona to a campsite right outside the city of San Gimignano and I will hopefully visit Certaldo, too, if I have time. The next day is back up to the surprisinglyawesome city of Pisa where I will be staying in a campground which is supposedly 800 meters away from the leaning tower haha. Then on Sunday I head out.
Theres a delay in the lictures because these public computers wont let me upload the pics from my camera to them, and I havent found wireless the past few days to use my own laptop on. So, Ill keep trying the next few days, but worse case, they'll be up Sunday or Monday.
Pray I dont crash my car in the next few days.....
number of times in the past few days Ive been denied a seat at a restauarant because Im alone: 4
number of times in the past few days Ive been denied a seat at a restauarant because Im American: 2
number of times in the past few days Ive almost gotten in a car wreck: approx. 4000
number of women with a baby stroller who (illegally and in great traffic) jumped out in front of my car yesterday while I was in 45 mph lunch hour traffic in Pescara, and I had to jam the brakes to stop 6 inches from her: 1
That was enough for me...
So Ive decided that with the unwelcome reception Im getting, the number of near-miss accidents that flash before my eyes everyday, the simple stress of driving and parking, and the sheer lonliness Im experiencing, Im going to cut my losses short and head home this Sunday instead of Oct. 11.
One week doing this is plenty...any more...Im LITERALLY going to go insane.
This has taught me a lot, about both myself and about Italy.
About Italy:
1. The romantic idea of Italy is just that...an idea. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE this country, Im proud that Im part Italian, and Ive had an amazing erxperience so far and have a few days left. However, the whole romantic idea of driving through Italy, shopping at markets, speaking with the locals, etc that one imagines in his mind is simply imaginary. Modern Italy is frantic, fast paced, the people hate toruists in their country, they all shop at supermarkets now, and the incredible amount of cars has led to a degredation of so many of the beautiful cities here. It is what it is, not what Americans, such as myself, imagine it to be.
2. Driving in Italy is Hell on Earth. I would be having a much greater time if I were not driving...
For those of you reading this under thirty years of age, youll get this, others may not...
Anyway, driving in Italy is a lot like Mario Kart, except you always have to be Toad, or Princess (the characters who always lose bc they have slow, crappy cars). Its a giant race everywhere you go. Every flat surface becomes a roadway and the goal is not to get to your destination safely, but to get there as fast as you possibly can to cross the finish line at all costs. While racing you have to dodge banana peels (pot holes, dogs, German tourists, women with baby strollers) and also dodge the turtoise shells coming at you (Vespas, bicycles, and motorcycles). All the while, you have to watch the screen (GPS) very carefully, because one wrong turn could equal an hour of traffic headaches. Ahh, but its also different from Mario Kart because there is no "Finish Line". When you get to your destination, it begins all over again and you have to begin the arduous task of finsing a parking spot (magical golden star icon, mushroom, etc.)
Make sense?
About Myself:
Ive always thought of m,yself as somewhat of a loner. Ive never been in a real, lasting relationship of any serious length, I have a few very close friends, Ive lived alone for a significant time and will be doing again startin in a few weeks down in Austin. However, Ive never felt true lonliness until this past week. while traveling alone here in Italy...the monumental task of driving alone, staying in almost abandoned campsites alone, not knowing the language of those around me, being deinied a service because I AM ALONE which doesnt help, and the lonliness of being dismissed because of my ethnicity, which is somethign Ive only felt a few times in my life. The first few were concerning my race in college when I was verbally assaulted by groups of minority students for being white, both in the classroom (where it is doctrine) and outside the classroom, where its tolerated...a very strange feeling. The other times were these past few days in Le Marches and Abruzzo. I think that maybe because its not tourist season anymore, the people there feel like they no longer have to accomodate tourists, like its "their time" or something.
Anyway, the point is, Ive learned Im truly not a loner. When Ive been feeling intense lonliness the past few days, all I thought about was my family and friends back home whom I wished I could be with or talk to. It made me realize how dependent I truly am on these people and what a big part of my life they are, because Im truly alone without them.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Enough of that...at the moment Im in Perugia and its a great place. I had an incredible lunch today (they were happy for my business!). I had the most dellicious antipasti of prosciutto, different chesses, crostini, salami, and brascola cappaccio (I probably butchered the spelling like ususal, but imagine if Italians made beef jerkey...). Then I had some penne with sausage and black truffle cream sauce (not quite diet food). Man it was good, though!
Earlier today I dove through the mountains of Le Marches into Umbria, some of the mmost beautiful, dramatic scenery Ive ever witnessed. Additionally, along the route my GPS took me, I encountered about every kilometer for a 100 kilometer stretch, were tractors along the side of the road selling the freshly harvested potatoes, onions, and garlic. The drive today, although long and tedious, took me almost to that "Italy of my imagination". For a few hours, it was as if I was transported back into a simpler time. It was undoubtedly the most memorable drive of my life.
So, now Im gonna head back to the camp grounds which are about 40 min away and get ready for the night. Tomorrow I head through Cortona to a campsite right outside the city of San Gimignano and I will hopefully visit Certaldo, too, if I have time. The next day is back up to the surprisinglyawesome city of Pisa where I will be staying in a campground which is supposedly 800 meters away from the leaning tower haha. Then on Sunday I head out.
Theres a delay in the lictures because these public computers wont let me upload the pics from my camera to them, and I havent found wireless the past few days to use my own laptop on. So, Ill keep trying the next few days, but worse case, they'll be up Sunday or Monday.
Pray I dont crash my car in the next few days.....
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Lonely days in Le Marches
Im sitting at an internet cafe at some sort of supermarket/mall in Pesaro right now. It, honestly has been a strange two days. Ill try to start at the beginning (btw, Italian keyboards are confusing so bear with me)...
When I left off last time I was about to to a carnival/fair in Bologna right around the corner from my campsite. I did, and when I walked in I was greeted instantly by throngs of poeple with long hair, tattoos, and black metal t-shirts...hmm, interesting. I asked this group of people about my age and through some English/Italian/hand gestures I came to realize that a huge metal concert was about to start at this venue right there at the fairgrounds. I hadnt heard of any of the bands (and I pride myself on my metal knowledge), but there was a band there called FinnTroll, so I had to buy a ticket and join in. I would regret it the rest of my life if I didnt go to the metal concert in Bologna...and it was quite an experience. I had to control myself not to laugh a few times at the crowd there. It was like all the Italian metalheads are so unsure of themselves. They want to get into it, but they kind of just act polite and clap a little and then would get pissed if someone started moshing. The bands were nothing special apart from FinnTroll which was a bunch of anorexic looking Scandenavians with long blond hair that sang songs about vikings and mythological monsters...awesome.
So the next day (yesterday), I traveled south and east to the coast of the Adriatic to just north of the twon of Pesaro in the region of Le Marches. I am, literally, the only person camping at the campground right now. Its pretty spectacular though. Its located right on this cliff overlooking the ocean on one side with these rolling hills of vineyards and farmland on the other side. Being the only living person there aside from the manager, its incredibly lonely...in fact, this whole past couple of days has been. I guess Im feeling a little better now because Im starting to get the hang of things, though and am learning some great new concepts/ideas for the restaurant everyday so Ive kind of got my head down and am continuing on, trying to make the most of this time.
So, after I got settled at the campsite yesterday, I headed out to the Independent Republic of San Marino, somewhere Ive always wanted to visit after Greg, in 9th grade, told me there was a 26 square mile independent country within Italy that we could take over and rule if we basically had a horse and a sword to overwhelm them with.
Its hard to describe San Marino, and I hope the pictures (once I can finally get them up along with the others - this public computer wont let me) can help do it some justice. Anyway, after a crazy drive (all drives in Italy are crazy), I followed my GPS to deep inside the republic of San Marino until it told me to "navigate off-road" and I had to turn around and follow the road signs until I found the way up to the fortress city of San Marino which is basically a giant castle on top of a mountain sticking up out of nowehere in a land of green rolling hills. On top of that, itwas cloudy and foggy, so, after I parked the car and took a gondola a thousand or so feet up to the walled castle city, I was basically in the clouds, which gave the whole experience almost a spiritual edge. I would peer over the walls through the clouds down to the farms and vineyards below. It was exactly like how I imagined people in Heaven looking down on what was going on down on Earth when I was a child...eery and beautiful at the same time.
Anyway, after walking around the city and taking a ton of pictures, I had an EXCLELENT pizza for lunch, then decided it was time to drive back before it got too dark.
About driving here...its damn SCARY. I say a little prayer every time I get behind the wheel of my little Italian car. The intersates are no problem, but driving in the cities tkes some guts. Its basically Manhattan at rush hour with no traffic rules 24 hours a day. Ive adapted well and am much more confident, but it certainly has been trying and is VERY tiring.
Anyway, after a dinner of salad, cheese, and prosciutto last night at the camp, I woke up today and head outto this town called Jesi about an hour from the campsite. I drove all the way out there, got there, and immediately turned around. Every guide book I read talked about Jesi being this beautiful little town everyone "must visit". Jesi sucked. It was insane trying to drive near there, there was no place to park, and it looked basically like it had just been bombed - nothing pretty about it. I didnt mind, though, because the drives have been so beautiful. When you drive down the coast here, you have views of the Adriatico ut the driver side window and views of vineyards and fields of produce on the passenger side. Im not complaining...
Anyway, so I headed back towards Pesaro where Im staying and keptseeing signs for this cstle village called Gardara, so I went for it, and it was a great decision.Only about 15 minutes away, easy drive, easy parking, and it was BEAUTIFUL. I later found out that this town is mentioned in the Divine Comedy by Dante and is famous for its castle, which was AMAZING. Additionally, I stumbled across a great little restaurant there where I had and amazing pasta dish with fresh porcini mushrooms and tomatoes, and its somethign I want to try to recreate when I get back.
And now Im back here, in Pesaro, an unattractive, noisy, crowded city Im looking forward to leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow I head out down to the coast of Abruzzo where I will be staying in Pineto, just north of Pescara, a town Im excited to visit. If the campsite is nice, I might stay here for three or four days.
Anyway, thats about it. Im physically and emotionally exhausted, but Im learning alot and having an incredible experience. Just wish I had someone to experience it with me...
When I left off last time I was about to to a carnival/fair in Bologna right around the corner from my campsite. I did, and when I walked in I was greeted instantly by throngs of poeple with long hair, tattoos, and black metal t-shirts...hmm, interesting. I asked this group of people about my age and through some English/Italian/hand gestures I came to realize that a huge metal concert was about to start at this venue right there at the fairgrounds. I hadnt heard of any of the bands (and I pride myself on my metal knowledge), but there was a band there called FinnTroll, so I had to buy a ticket and join in. I would regret it the rest of my life if I didnt go to the metal concert in Bologna...and it was quite an experience. I had to control myself not to laugh a few times at the crowd there. It was like all the Italian metalheads are so unsure of themselves. They want to get into it, but they kind of just act polite and clap a little and then would get pissed if someone started moshing. The bands were nothing special apart from FinnTroll which was a bunch of anorexic looking Scandenavians with long blond hair that sang songs about vikings and mythological monsters...awesome.
So the next day (yesterday), I traveled south and east to the coast of the Adriatic to just north of the twon of Pesaro in the region of Le Marches. I am, literally, the only person camping at the campground right now. Its pretty spectacular though. Its located right on this cliff overlooking the ocean on one side with these rolling hills of vineyards and farmland on the other side. Being the only living person there aside from the manager, its incredibly lonely...in fact, this whole past couple of days has been. I guess Im feeling a little better now because Im starting to get the hang of things, though and am learning some great new concepts/ideas for the restaurant everyday so Ive kind of got my head down and am continuing on, trying to make the most of this time.
So, after I got settled at the campsite yesterday, I headed out to the Independent Republic of San Marino, somewhere Ive always wanted to visit after Greg, in 9th grade, told me there was a 26 square mile independent country within Italy that we could take over and rule if we basically had a horse and a sword to overwhelm them with.
Its hard to describe San Marino, and I hope the pictures (once I can finally get them up along with the others - this public computer wont let me) can help do it some justice. Anyway, after a crazy drive (all drives in Italy are crazy), I followed my GPS to deep inside the republic of San Marino until it told me to "navigate off-road" and I had to turn around and follow the road signs until I found the way up to the fortress city of San Marino which is basically a giant castle on top of a mountain sticking up out of nowehere in a land of green rolling hills. On top of that, itwas cloudy and foggy, so, after I parked the car and took a gondola a thousand or so feet up to the walled castle city, I was basically in the clouds, which gave the whole experience almost a spiritual edge. I would peer over the walls through the clouds down to the farms and vineyards below. It was exactly like how I imagined people in Heaven looking down on what was going on down on Earth when I was a child...eery and beautiful at the same time.
Anyway, after walking around the city and taking a ton of pictures, I had an EXCLELENT pizza for lunch, then decided it was time to drive back before it got too dark.
About driving here...its damn SCARY. I say a little prayer every time I get behind the wheel of my little Italian car. The intersates are no problem, but driving in the cities tkes some guts. Its basically Manhattan at rush hour with no traffic rules 24 hours a day. Ive adapted well and am much more confident, but it certainly has been trying and is VERY tiring.
Anyway, after a dinner of salad, cheese, and prosciutto last night at the camp, I woke up today and head outto this town called Jesi about an hour from the campsite. I drove all the way out there, got there, and immediately turned around. Every guide book I read talked about Jesi being this beautiful little town everyone "must visit". Jesi sucked. It was insane trying to drive near there, there was no place to park, and it looked basically like it had just been bombed - nothing pretty about it. I didnt mind, though, because the drives have been so beautiful. When you drive down the coast here, you have views of the Adriatico ut the driver side window and views of vineyards and fields of produce on the passenger side. Im not complaining...
Anyway, so I headed back towards Pesaro where Im staying and keptseeing signs for this cstle village called Gardara, so I went for it, and it was a great decision.Only about 15 minutes away, easy drive, easy parking, and it was BEAUTIFUL. I later found out that this town is mentioned in the Divine Comedy by Dante and is famous for its castle, which was AMAZING. Additionally, I stumbled across a great little restaurant there where I had and amazing pasta dish with fresh porcini mushrooms and tomatoes, and its somethign I want to try to recreate when I get back.
And now Im back here, in Pesaro, an unattractive, noisy, crowded city Im looking forward to leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow I head out down to the coast of Abruzzo where I will be staying in Pineto, just north of Pescara, a town Im excited to visit. If the campsite is nice, I might stay here for three or four days.
Anyway, thats about it. Im physically and emotionally exhausted, but Im learning alot and having an incredible experience. Just wish I had someone to experience it with me...
Sunday, September 20, 2009
-(Bologna)=Parma
Ok, now honestly I was beginning to get worried about things. Bologna sucked and the food was not what I had imagined. I was beginning to wonder of maybe I had built things up too much in my head, and these next three weeks were going to be very trying...then I went to Parma....
For those of you who don't speak Asian, -(Bologna)=Parma is another way of saying that Parma is undoubtedly my favorite city I have ever visited. After an easy hour long drive down the autostrada, pear trees and vineyards lining the roadway, I reached Parma and, with the help of my (sometimes) helpful GPS, found a great parking garage. So far, so good.
Then I stepped out into the most majestic city I've ever visited. Stores lined the cobble-stoned streets lined with stores fselling giant legs of prosciutto tempting me as I walked past. Old ladies would call out for me to come in to sample their freshly made toretllini and tagliatelle (which, of course I did). Cafe's, gelaterias, and trattorias spilled out onto the quiet, pedestrian-friendly streets. Families were out for Sunday lunch sitting in the shadows of the most majestic 700 year old towers and churches and duomos. Ancient Roman ruins were scattered throughout the city as children rode their bikes under the arches oblivious to what was overhead....Parma. -(Bologna)=Parma
It was about 1 pm at this time, perfect time for lunch, so I settled on a restaurant spilling out into the main square packed with Italians, so I figured it must be good. Man, was I correct, nay, more than correct, for I had the greatest meal of my life!
A very friendly waiter about my age greeted me as I sat down and, in Italian, asked me if he could recommend to me the the house specials (I figured it out hearing "cosa" - see, I'm picking it up!) He pointed on the menu to the two things I was going to order anyway haha! Prosciutto crudo and tortelli. Prosciutto being what Parma is famous for and tortelli (basically ravioli) being what the region of Emiglia Romagna is famous for.
First, the prosciutto...or, should I say, "meat-butter," because that's what it was like. It almost melted as it hit my tongue. I was going nuts. It was beyond even my wildest expectations how wonderful prosciutto could be. I've had some great prosciutto in the past, but this was on a whole other level.
Next was the tortelli. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say THIS WAS THE GREATEST THING IN MY LIFE I HAVE EVER EATEN! It was exhausting eating those tortelli because it took every ounce of my energy not to start growling at the people close to me and scarf it down as fast as I could. It was painful, but the most beautiful pain imaginable to try to slowly savor the tortelli prepared simply with a little butter and the most delicious Parmesan (also from Parma) sprinkled over the top.
At this point I was basically high on food. I asked the waiter over and told him I MUST have a secondo, or meat dish, and, with the help of my phrase book, managed to ask him what he recommended. He simply said, "Ah!" and scurried back into the kitchen. About 5 minutes later a plate of veal with a porcini mushroom bechamel sauce apeared in front of me...wow. It was awesome. Simply awesome. I'd say the three courses I had at this one restaurant are in my top 5 of my life, including the amazing food I had at Toscana Saporita. I really picked a good place.
At this point, I was on cloud 9. I spent several hours just wandering around the city, constantly running into some amazing tower, or ancient Roman ruin. It was simply beautiful. It was everything Bologna was not, everything one could want in a city. I wound up spending about an hour just wandering through the main park in the city which was unbelievably beautiful and everyone was outside enjoying it. I was going to go to Modena in the afternoon, but I didn't care, I wanted to just stay in Parma for the whole afternoon and I did.
It was sad to leave, but I had to, and now I'm back in Bologna at my campsite. The place is great, though actually. I'm sitting in my tent using the wireless internet here which is fast and only costs a euro an hour. I also got some laundry done which was much needed. So, I'm doing well. Just trying to stay dry in my tent (which has been perfect so far). There's this fair/carnival type thing about a quarter of a mile walk from the campsite, so I might head over there in a bit to find some sort of Italian carnival food to eat and see the sights. Tomorrow I head southeast to Pesaro, located on the northern coast of the region of Le Marche where I will begin my slow descent along the coast over the next 10 days or so. From Pesaro I will set out to visit the independent republic of San Marino, Rimini, Fano, and maybe a few other towns depending on how it all goes.
Oh and the pics of Parma are up now at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag but sometimes take a while, so hopefully they'll be up soon. That's about it. Wish me luck!
For those of you who don't speak Asian, -(Bologna)=Parma is another way of saying that Parma is undoubtedly my favorite city I have ever visited. After an easy hour long drive down the autostrada, pear trees and vineyards lining the roadway, I reached Parma and, with the help of my (sometimes) helpful GPS, found a great parking garage. So far, so good.
Then I stepped out into the most majestic city I've ever visited. Stores lined the cobble-stoned streets lined with stores fselling giant legs of prosciutto tempting me as I walked past. Old ladies would call out for me to come in to sample their freshly made toretllini and tagliatelle (which, of course I did). Cafe's, gelaterias, and trattorias spilled out onto the quiet, pedestrian-friendly streets. Families were out for Sunday lunch sitting in the shadows of the most majestic 700 year old towers and churches and duomos. Ancient Roman ruins were scattered throughout the city as children rode their bikes under the arches oblivious to what was overhead....Parma. -(Bologna)=Parma
It was about 1 pm at this time, perfect time for lunch, so I settled on a restaurant spilling out into the main square packed with Italians, so I figured it must be good. Man, was I correct, nay, more than correct, for I had the greatest meal of my life!
A very friendly waiter about my age greeted me as I sat down and, in Italian, asked me if he could recommend to me the the house specials (I figured it out hearing "cosa" - see, I'm picking it up!) He pointed on the menu to the two things I was going to order anyway haha! Prosciutto crudo and tortelli. Prosciutto being what Parma is famous for and tortelli (basically ravioli) being what the region of Emiglia Romagna is famous for.
First, the prosciutto...or, should I say, "meat-butter," because that's what it was like. It almost melted as it hit my tongue. I was going nuts. It was beyond even my wildest expectations how wonderful prosciutto could be. I've had some great prosciutto in the past, but this was on a whole other level.
Next was the tortelli. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say THIS WAS THE GREATEST THING IN MY LIFE I HAVE EVER EATEN! It was exhausting eating those tortelli because it took every ounce of my energy not to start growling at the people close to me and scarf it down as fast as I could. It was painful, but the most beautiful pain imaginable to try to slowly savor the tortelli prepared simply with a little butter and the most delicious Parmesan (also from Parma) sprinkled over the top.
At this point I was basically high on food. I asked the waiter over and told him I MUST have a secondo, or meat dish, and, with the help of my phrase book, managed to ask him what he recommended. He simply said, "Ah!" and scurried back into the kitchen. About 5 minutes later a plate of veal with a porcini mushroom bechamel sauce apeared in front of me...wow. It was awesome. Simply awesome. I'd say the three courses I had at this one restaurant are in my top 5 of my life, including the amazing food I had at Toscana Saporita. I really picked a good place.
At this point, I was on cloud 9. I spent several hours just wandering around the city, constantly running into some amazing tower, or ancient Roman ruin. It was simply beautiful. It was everything Bologna was not, everything one could want in a city. I wound up spending about an hour just wandering through the main park in the city which was unbelievably beautiful and everyone was outside enjoying it. I was going to go to Modena in the afternoon, but I didn't care, I wanted to just stay in Parma for the whole afternoon and I did.
It was sad to leave, but I had to, and now I'm back in Bologna at my campsite. The place is great, though actually. I'm sitting in my tent using the wireless internet here which is fast and only costs a euro an hour. I also got some laundry done which was much needed. So, I'm doing well. Just trying to stay dry in my tent (which has been perfect so far). There's this fair/carnival type thing about a quarter of a mile walk from the campsite, so I might head over there in a bit to find some sort of Italian carnival food to eat and see the sights. Tomorrow I head southeast to Pesaro, located on the northern coast of the region of Le Marche where I will begin my slow descent along the coast over the next 10 days or so. From Pesaro I will set out to visit the independent republic of San Marino, Rimini, Fano, and maybe a few other towns depending on how it all goes.
Oh and the pics of Parma are up now at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag but sometimes take a while, so hopefully they'll be up soon. That's about it. Wish me luck!
BolognBleghhh and "Heir Sonntag: Savior of German Tourists"
So after going to sleep at 10 pm for the first time in several years, I'm feeling quite refreshed today. THANK GOD! I felt HORRIBLE yesterday, part physical cold/headache, part absolute disgust...I'll explain. Anyway, just found out they have blazingly fast wireless internet here at the campsite in Bologna....was going to leave this morning, but now I'm going to use this as base camp for one more day before I move on.
OK, yesterday I was dropped off at the rental car counter at the Pisa airport to pick up my car for the next 3 weeks. When I finally got to the front of that massive line, I was promptly told by the lady at the counter,
"Too Young. No car."
What the heck? I double checked with the car rental agency to make sure that the minimum age was 23, not 25. After much arguing, and my showing here the rental guidelines I (thankfully) printed out, I convinced her to call her corporate headquarters and ask them directly. It was at this time that these two 40-something year old German guys behind me started jabbing me in the back with their fingers telling me to hurry up like I had some control over it. When I got 2 inches from their faces standing over them and told them I'd squash their faces just like my country did to theirs 60 years ago, they shut up and LITERALLY walked to the back of the line (they were next) HAHAHAHA.
It was at this time that the rude car rental lady told me I was right about the age guidelines...double success.
When I finally got to my car, oh you have to see the pictures of the car, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how the heck to get it to move lol. Once I did, I figured out that "automatic" in Italy is quite different from driving an "automatic" in the U.S. They haven't quite figured it out yet. It, sometimes, shifts to the right gear, but, usually, is a few seconds late and causes the car to jerk violently as it revs up the 57 horsepower diesel engine. So, I figured out how to drive the car as a "clutchless manual" and change the gears myself. It took me about 30 minutes to get used to it, and I have the hang of it now.
Anyway, I then proceeded to drive east towards Florence, through the grape and vegetable fields of western Tuscany, the, right before Florence, I changed direction to the north and drove through (literally, about 60 tunnels) these beautiful mountains of northern Tuscany and into the province of Emiglia-Romagna. I counted 27 castles on top of hills/mountains in my 2.5 hour drive and numerous other ancient walled cities and ruins of Roman aqueducts. The drive was beautiful, and highway driving in Italy was truly no problem. City-driving...a different story.
So after about 2.5 hours I reached my campsite on the outskirts of Bologna. No problem, except for very rude managers. I can deal with that.
When I was setting up my tent, this older German couple asked me if I could help them move their camper into position. No problem. I went over and pushed it into its spot.
I then went back to setting up my tent and the heard with a stereotypical German accent
"Excuse me. You make strong on camper, ja?"
"Ugh, yah"
So I went and moved theirs and then went back to my tent. 2 minutes later,
"Strong man...(and this 70 year old looking German lady just pointed to her crooked camper)"
"OK, OK."
Thankfully, this was it. Each time I was pushing their campers into place, the old German people would pint to me and make muscles and nod their heads...I think I'm like some sort of physical manifestation of their old "perfect German Aryan youth" of years past, and I really excited them.
So, after getting all set up, I decided to try to find a supermarket to get some supplies and some ibuprofen for my now throbbing headache. I looked up the nearest supermarket in my Garmin Gps which was only 1 km away and set out...big mistake. Following the GPS perfectly, I somehow managed to drive into the Islamic section of Bologna (pretty much most of the city, I cam to find) and was driving around these little crowded streets getting death stares from the women walking around in burkas and their slave masters, I mean...husbands. So I finally, after going in circles for half an hour thinking I was either going to be the target of an assasination or crash into a Smart Car, I finally reached my destination and...no supermarket. Garmin sucks.
At this point I cut my losses and just decided I have to somehow make it back to the campsite alive and then just take the bus in from then on. Thankfully, after another half hour of traffic and death stares, I made it back.
By this time I felt like my head was going to explode. I could feel my heartbeat pulsating painfully in my forehead. The nearby sounds from the mosques (in BOLOGNA!?!?!) calling put the call to prayer didn't help either. "How often am I in Bologna, though? Maybe some great food will make me feel better."
So, I got on the bus and headed in to town. On the bus were these two sophomores from Texas A&M, actually, and we began talking. They agreed we should team up and we'll explore together and then get something to eat.... ehhhh
Once we reached the city center after about a 15 minute bus ride and got off, I felt like I was in a war zone. This was not the Bologna I expected. It was dirty, CROWDED beyond belief, beggers everywhere, street vendors hassling everyone who passed by, about 50% of everyone there was a Muslim immigrant, grafitti covering everything, punk rocker Italian youth running around everywhere having some sort of Che Guevara celebration, and just plain old nasty.
My headache suddenly got a lot worse...
I then went with the two kids from texas and we walked through this giant market into the main park where, apparently, we walked right into this massive group of dirty, hippie, punk rocker Italian youth who started screaming "riot" then went and jumped on these kids and started fighting and it was like this one giant, evil mosh pit. I got the heck out as fast as possible.
It was at this point that I had to get to a pharmacy to get some medicine for my headache and the two kids from Texas told me they would wait at the market across the street in plain sight...didn't see them again to much later.
So, at this point, I set out on my own and found nothing of interest. I must say, Bologna is my least favorite city in Eurpoe I've visited. I never thought anything could top the uber-expensive Euro-trach Mecca of Nice, France, but Bologna blew that place out of the water.
The food is supposed to be great, though, right? I decided to find a place to eat. I settled on this very crowded Trattoria I figured must be good. Everywhere else I passed by was pretty empty, but this place was happenin'.
I ordered some mortadella (a Bolognese specialty) some tortellini en brodo (tortellini soup - Bologna is known for its tortellini) and some tagliatelle Bolognese (meat sauce). Result: mortadella excellent, tortellini sub-par, and bolognese was about what you would get at a diner in Jersey. Very disappointing...
So, at this point I decided I would cut my losses and get back to the camp. The coolest part of the night was when the 400 pound bus driver pulled out this leg of prosciutto from his bag and started carving off slices to eat at the stop lights...sweet. I tried talking to him, but he didn't understand a word of English.
So, I got back to camp, feeling like I was just about ready to pass out from the headache from hell and absolute exhaustion from the city and as soon as my head hit the pillow in my tent, I was out cold and didn't wake up for 11 hours.
Now, here I am. I feel 100% better and am ready to get going again. I have no desire to get back to Bologna, so I'm going to use the campsite today as base camp to visit Parma and Modena which are not too far away, and then tomorrow I'm going to get the heck out of this city.
OK, yesterday I was dropped off at the rental car counter at the Pisa airport to pick up my car for the next 3 weeks. When I finally got to the front of that massive line, I was promptly told by the lady at the counter,
"Too Young. No car."
What the heck? I double checked with the car rental agency to make sure that the minimum age was 23, not 25. After much arguing, and my showing here the rental guidelines I (thankfully) printed out, I convinced her to call her corporate headquarters and ask them directly. It was at this time that these two 40-something year old German guys behind me started jabbing me in the back with their fingers telling me to hurry up like I had some control over it. When I got 2 inches from their faces standing over them and told them I'd squash their faces just like my country did to theirs 60 years ago, they shut up and LITERALLY walked to the back of the line (they were next) HAHAHAHA.
It was at this time that the rude car rental lady told me I was right about the age guidelines...double success.
When I finally got to my car, oh you have to see the pictures of the car, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how the heck to get it to move lol. Once I did, I figured out that "automatic" in Italy is quite different from driving an "automatic" in the U.S. They haven't quite figured it out yet. It, sometimes, shifts to the right gear, but, usually, is a few seconds late and causes the car to jerk violently as it revs up the 57 horsepower diesel engine. So, I figured out how to drive the car as a "clutchless manual" and change the gears myself. It took me about 30 minutes to get used to it, and I have the hang of it now.
Anyway, I then proceeded to drive east towards Florence, through the grape and vegetable fields of western Tuscany, the, right before Florence, I changed direction to the north and drove through (literally, about 60 tunnels) these beautiful mountains of northern Tuscany and into the province of Emiglia-Romagna. I counted 27 castles on top of hills/mountains in my 2.5 hour drive and numerous other ancient walled cities and ruins of Roman aqueducts. The drive was beautiful, and highway driving in Italy was truly no problem. City-driving...a different story.
So after about 2.5 hours I reached my campsite on the outskirts of Bologna. No problem, except for very rude managers. I can deal with that.
When I was setting up my tent, this older German couple asked me if I could help them move their camper into position. No problem. I went over and pushed it into its spot.
I then went back to setting up my tent and the heard with a stereotypical German accent
"Excuse me. You make strong on camper, ja?"
"Ugh, yah"
So I went and moved theirs and then went back to my tent. 2 minutes later,
"Strong man...(and this 70 year old looking German lady just pointed to her crooked camper)"
"OK, OK."
Thankfully, this was it. Each time I was pushing their campers into place, the old German people would pint to me and make muscles and nod their heads...I think I'm like some sort of physical manifestation of their old "perfect German Aryan youth" of years past, and I really excited them.
So, after getting all set up, I decided to try to find a supermarket to get some supplies and some ibuprofen for my now throbbing headache. I looked up the nearest supermarket in my Garmin Gps which was only 1 km away and set out...big mistake. Following the GPS perfectly, I somehow managed to drive into the Islamic section of Bologna (pretty much most of the city, I cam to find) and was driving around these little crowded streets getting death stares from the women walking around in burkas and their slave masters, I mean...husbands. So I finally, after going in circles for half an hour thinking I was either going to be the target of an assasination or crash into a Smart Car, I finally reached my destination and...no supermarket. Garmin sucks.
At this point I cut my losses and just decided I have to somehow make it back to the campsite alive and then just take the bus in from then on. Thankfully, after another half hour of traffic and death stares, I made it back.
By this time I felt like my head was going to explode. I could feel my heartbeat pulsating painfully in my forehead. The nearby sounds from the mosques (in BOLOGNA!?!?!) calling put the call to prayer didn't help either. "How often am I in Bologna, though? Maybe some great food will make me feel better."
So, I got on the bus and headed in to town. On the bus were these two sophomores from Texas A&M, actually, and we began talking. They agreed we should team up and we'll explore together and then get something to eat.... ehhhh
Once we reached the city center after about a 15 minute bus ride and got off, I felt like I was in a war zone. This was not the Bologna I expected. It was dirty, CROWDED beyond belief, beggers everywhere, street vendors hassling everyone who passed by, about 50% of everyone there was a Muslim immigrant, grafitti covering everything, punk rocker Italian youth running around everywhere having some sort of Che Guevara celebration, and just plain old nasty.
My headache suddenly got a lot worse...
I then went with the two kids from texas and we walked through this giant market into the main park where, apparently, we walked right into this massive group of dirty, hippie, punk rocker Italian youth who started screaming "riot" then went and jumped on these kids and started fighting and it was like this one giant, evil mosh pit. I got the heck out as fast as possible.
It was at this point that I had to get to a pharmacy to get some medicine for my headache and the two kids from Texas told me they would wait at the market across the street in plain sight...didn't see them again to much later.
So, at this point, I set out on my own and found nothing of interest. I must say, Bologna is my least favorite city in Eurpoe I've visited. I never thought anything could top the uber-expensive Euro-trach Mecca of Nice, France, but Bologna blew that place out of the water.
The food is supposed to be great, though, right? I decided to find a place to eat. I settled on this very crowded Trattoria I figured must be good. Everywhere else I passed by was pretty empty, but this place was happenin'.
I ordered some mortadella (a Bolognese specialty) some tortellini en brodo (tortellini soup - Bologna is known for its tortellini) and some tagliatelle Bolognese (meat sauce). Result: mortadella excellent, tortellini sub-par, and bolognese was about what you would get at a diner in Jersey. Very disappointing...
So, at this point I decided I would cut my losses and get back to the camp. The coolest part of the night was when the 400 pound bus driver pulled out this leg of prosciutto from his bag and started carving off slices to eat at the stop lights...sweet. I tried talking to him, but he didn't understand a word of English.
So, I got back to camp, feeling like I was just about ready to pass out from the headache from hell and absolute exhaustion from the city and as soon as my head hit the pillow in my tent, I was out cold and didn't wake up for 11 hours.
Now, here I am. I feel 100% better and am ready to get going again. I have no desire to get back to Bologna, so I'm going to use the campsite today as base camp to visit Parma and Modena which are not too far away, and then tomorrow I'm going to get the heck out of this city.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Newspaper hats, drunken old men, and black magic force-fields...
Wow, just finished my last meal/last time I will see the two chefs that have taught me so much this week. I've had a hell of an experience and have so many new thoughts and projects to work on when I get home. I feel that if I wasn't writing down stuff in every second of spare time I have, I would have gone insane from simply thinking too much about things for the restaurant, different recipes, how we'll do them, how we'll do this, that, etc...ahhhh!
Anyway, a real comfort I have is that Sandra and Tony have graciously made themselves available to me and are waiting for my emails with questions. I told them they might regret it, but they insisted, much to the benefit of myself and the people of Austin, TX about a year from now.
So, enough of that. Today we went to the town of Pietrasanta north of here located at the bottom of the marble mountains of Carrara and is where the quarried marble is taken and sculpted. We visited a factory of artisans working on some of the most magnificent sculptures I've ever seen, including some currently under production for the Vatican. I really hope you'll see the pictures, because the words don't do it justice, but I had a 15 minute conversation with a little tiny Italian man I guess was about 70 wearing a newspaper hat on his head while sculpted away on the beautiful white marble with classical music coming from the small stereo next to his workbench. He explained to me that they wear newspaper hats so that they have something to cover their hair from the marble dust that they can simply throw out at the end of the day...and some fine newspaper hats they were. 9 year old Harrison during a boring math lesson t school only wishes he could have made a hat like these.
Anyway, he also showed me some of the aweosme sculptures he was working on, including several of 5 foot tall fetuses (feti) and one of that man (who was a woman and had a sex change) that got pregnant twice (think of Oprah 6 months ago). Freakin awesome... none of that same old ancient-style stuff, but fetuses and pregnant men. This guy was awesome.
So after we left the workshop we went to the town center of Pietrasanta which was absolutely beautiful. The greatest part was Elena took me to this little tiny wine cellar place run by a bunch of old Italian men who really seemed like they just wanted to have a place to get drunk away from their wives. They filled bottle and corked them there of the most delicious Tuscan wines that were stored in giant stainless steel vats. They INSISTED, I try every single one of the wines there with them, and, before I knew it, I had gotten kind of drunk with a bunch of 70 year old Italian men who kept wnting to arm wrestle me haha. I only took one picture of the place, unfortunately, because I was having so much fun and didn't want to ruin the whole thing by being a tourist and whipping out my camera during an impromptu drinking session with Francesco and his other red-nosed buddies. I actually wound up buying two big bottles of the most expensive red wine in the establishment to have some for a while. Cost me a whopping 3 Euro each...most expensive wine there...3 Euros...how good is it?...just about as good as any I've ever had. I love this country.
Feeling quite good about myself at this point I parted ways from Elena and had a good hour to kill wandering the city. Seeing as how I had the newly found confidence a plethra of Italian wine gives to oneself, I decided it was time for me to figure out a way to break the magic force-field barrier that surrounds all beautiful Italian women and try to talk to some. My first encounter was while I was walking down the street and walkign towards me was this beautiful Italian women who looked to me like she was about my age and had "kind eyes" which I have come to find is a rarity.
"Bona sera" (good evening), I said, trying to focus and remain steady, my wine adventure being just a few minutes earlier.
She kind of did a double-take looked at me and then, with a disgusted look in her face, tapped her index finger on her front teeth and walked away.
I instantly thought, "wow, I must have something in my teeth, or my teeth are stained or something."
After chechking in a mirror of a nearby public restroom, I concluded this wouldn't be the case.
"Hmm," I thought, "She must have been resetting her black magic Italian woman forcefield or something after I smoothly pulled off that 'bona sera' back there."
Then I tried again. First girl started walking a little more fastly by me and out of sight. Second girl laughed and then started giggling with her friend. Strike one, strike two, strike three and I was out.
About 2 hours ago I learned that, in Italy, when one taps their finger on their top front teeth it means, in more gentle language, "In your dreams." So much for that magic force-field theory haha. Maybe if I lose 60 pounds and where capris one of them will talk to me one day...one day.
So this takes me back to the present, which, is, I have to admit, kind of scary at the moment, and no weight loss will be humanly possible. About 12 hours from now I'll be driving a tiny little Italian car through the countryside hoping to God I don't run into a Vespa. I did some serious thinking today and, based on information I've gathered, Cinque Terre is some of the craziest driving in Italy, so I think I'm going to save it for the end of the trip if I have time. By that point, I will have a better sense of my schedule ( Cinque Terre is dead last on my list of places I "must see" bc I've been lucky enough to go there before) and will have had some Italian driving practice under my belt. So, tomorrow I'm actually off to Bologna on my first (of several I'm sure) deviations from my initial itinerary. It's an easy drive, taking the interstate all the way. Basically I go east towards Florence for an hour, then north from there to Bologna for an hour.
Bologna is considered the gastronomical capitol of Italy. The capitol of the Emiglia-Romagna province, called La Grassa Terre (The Fat Land) by other Italians, the food of this region is rich and amazing, no place for a diet. We're talking the land where parma ham (prosciutto) is from, where tons of pecorino cheeses are made including the famous Parmesean Reggiano, where the bechamel sauce is king, and dishes such as lasagna, tortellini, canneloni, and other cheese filled pastas are in abundance. I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll get settled at the campsite which is on the outskirts of Bologna and take the bus in from there to the city center which is supposedly a ten minute ride and comes by like every half hour. So I'll have dinner there tomorrow night and explore the city tomorrow evening, then, depending on how much I see of Bologna, either spend Sunday exploring Bologna more or visiting the small towns of Emiglia Romagna such as Parma (where they produce the best Prosciutto and Permesean) or Modena (the home of balsamic vinegar). Should be ineteresting. Regardless, pray for me. I'm scared to death, but excited.
I think some Bolognese food is exactly the kind of comfort I could use right now.
pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag but it doesn't look like the ones from today are loading for some reason, so I'll keep playing with it. Just like the workers in Italy, it appears the internet goes on strike quite often.
Anyway, a real comfort I have is that Sandra and Tony have graciously made themselves available to me and are waiting for my emails with questions. I told them they might regret it, but they insisted, much to the benefit of myself and the people of Austin, TX about a year from now.
So, enough of that. Today we went to the town of Pietrasanta north of here located at the bottom of the marble mountains of Carrara and is where the quarried marble is taken and sculpted. We visited a factory of artisans working on some of the most magnificent sculptures I've ever seen, including some currently under production for the Vatican. I really hope you'll see the pictures, because the words don't do it justice, but I had a 15 minute conversation with a little tiny Italian man I guess was about 70 wearing a newspaper hat on his head while sculpted away on the beautiful white marble with classical music coming from the small stereo next to his workbench. He explained to me that they wear newspaper hats so that they have something to cover their hair from the marble dust that they can simply throw out at the end of the day...and some fine newspaper hats they were. 9 year old Harrison during a boring math lesson t school only wishes he could have made a hat like these.
Anyway, he also showed me some of the aweosme sculptures he was working on, including several of 5 foot tall fetuses (feti) and one of that man (who was a woman and had a sex change) that got pregnant twice (think of Oprah 6 months ago). Freakin awesome... none of that same old ancient-style stuff, but fetuses and pregnant men. This guy was awesome.
So after we left the workshop we went to the town center of Pietrasanta which was absolutely beautiful. The greatest part was Elena took me to this little tiny wine cellar place run by a bunch of old Italian men who really seemed like they just wanted to have a place to get drunk away from their wives. They filled bottle and corked them there of the most delicious Tuscan wines that were stored in giant stainless steel vats. They INSISTED, I try every single one of the wines there with them, and, before I knew it, I had gotten kind of drunk with a bunch of 70 year old Italian men who kept wnting to arm wrestle me haha. I only took one picture of the place, unfortunately, because I was having so much fun and didn't want to ruin the whole thing by being a tourist and whipping out my camera during an impromptu drinking session with Francesco and his other red-nosed buddies. I actually wound up buying two big bottles of the most expensive red wine in the establishment to have some for a while. Cost me a whopping 3 Euro each...most expensive wine there...3 Euros...how good is it?...just about as good as any I've ever had. I love this country.
Feeling quite good about myself at this point I parted ways from Elena and had a good hour to kill wandering the city. Seeing as how I had the newly found confidence a plethra of Italian wine gives to oneself, I decided it was time for me to figure out a way to break the magic force-field barrier that surrounds all beautiful Italian women and try to talk to some. My first encounter was while I was walking down the street and walkign towards me was this beautiful Italian women who looked to me like she was about my age and had "kind eyes" which I have come to find is a rarity.
"Bona sera" (good evening), I said, trying to focus and remain steady, my wine adventure being just a few minutes earlier.
She kind of did a double-take looked at me and then, with a disgusted look in her face, tapped her index finger on her front teeth and walked away.
I instantly thought, "wow, I must have something in my teeth, or my teeth are stained or something."
After chechking in a mirror of a nearby public restroom, I concluded this wouldn't be the case.
"Hmm," I thought, "She must have been resetting her black magic Italian woman forcefield or something after I smoothly pulled off that 'bona sera' back there."
Then I tried again. First girl started walking a little more fastly by me and out of sight. Second girl laughed and then started giggling with her friend. Strike one, strike two, strike three and I was out.
About 2 hours ago I learned that, in Italy, when one taps their finger on their top front teeth it means, in more gentle language, "In your dreams." So much for that magic force-field theory haha. Maybe if I lose 60 pounds and where capris one of them will talk to me one day...one day.
So this takes me back to the present, which, is, I have to admit, kind of scary at the moment, and no weight loss will be humanly possible. About 12 hours from now I'll be driving a tiny little Italian car through the countryside hoping to God I don't run into a Vespa. I did some serious thinking today and, based on information I've gathered, Cinque Terre is some of the craziest driving in Italy, so I think I'm going to save it for the end of the trip if I have time. By that point, I will have a better sense of my schedule ( Cinque Terre is dead last on my list of places I "must see" bc I've been lucky enough to go there before) and will have had some Italian driving practice under my belt. So, tomorrow I'm actually off to Bologna on my first (of several I'm sure) deviations from my initial itinerary. It's an easy drive, taking the interstate all the way. Basically I go east towards Florence for an hour, then north from there to Bologna for an hour.
Bologna is considered the gastronomical capitol of Italy. The capitol of the Emiglia-Romagna province, called La Grassa Terre (The Fat Land) by other Italians, the food of this region is rich and amazing, no place for a diet. We're talking the land where parma ham (prosciutto) is from, where tons of pecorino cheeses are made including the famous Parmesean Reggiano, where the bechamel sauce is king, and dishes such as lasagna, tortellini, canneloni, and other cheese filled pastas are in abundance. I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll get settled at the campsite which is on the outskirts of Bologna and take the bus in from there to the city center which is supposedly a ten minute ride and comes by like every half hour. So I'll have dinner there tomorrow night and explore the city tomorrow evening, then, depending on how much I see of Bologna, either spend Sunday exploring Bologna more or visiting the small towns of Emiglia Romagna such as Parma (where they produce the best Prosciutto and Permesean) or Modena (the home of balsamic vinegar). Should be ineteresting. Regardless, pray for me. I'm scared to death, but excited.
I think some Bolognese food is exactly the kind of comfort I could use right now.
pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag but it doesn't look like the ones from today are loading for some reason, so I'll keep playing with it. Just like the workers in Italy, it appears the internet goes on strike quite often.
I hope this works....
Ok I'm writing this in an email to my blogger account because
supposedly this will post what I email directly into the blog. The
reason for this is that, no matter what I do, it appears that google
and, thus, "blogger" have committed suicide in the country of Italy,
at least for me. My Gmail works, googlemaps works, but google web
doesn't and blogger works until i try to post something, then it dies
again...very frustrating.
Anyway, so here it goes...
Last night we made the pizzas. I really hope no one from the cooking
school ever reads this, but...Valentino's kick these pizza's a$$, 500
year old wood burning brick oven and all. I did learn some things,
though. For one, apparently in Italy, they use rolling pins to flatten
out the dough for the pizza...you couldn't pay me to do this. I don't
care if that's the way they do it here, I think it's wrong - hand
tossed is better. However, I learned one thing I really have to
experiment with. We had this one pizza that was a sauceless pizza with
a mix of a soft cow's milk sheese called stracchina (probably not
spelled right) with sausage that had been taken out of the casings and
folded into the cheese mixture. This was then spread directly on the
raw dough and baked in the oven...soooo unique and amazingly
beautiful. Since stracchina is not available at all in the U.S. I'm
going to have to start experimenting with some other soft chesses to
try to find one somewhat like this, because this pizza is sooo unique
and delicious, I KNOW it'll be a hit.
The only other part of the night is I somehow managed to knock the
6-foot long pizza peel in the 5x5 tiny 500 year old room where the
oven was into a bowl full of sauce, sending the sauced flying over the
entire room, walls, ceiling, floor, everything, but mostly on my
face...awesome....
I have never felt so uncool in my life and that's saying something
when you're a conservative metalhead who likes to cook more than
anything else in life. When this is combined with me cutting my finger
a few days ago, spilling a glass of juice all over the table this
morning, knocking a spoon of the counter onto the floor this morning,
and completely missing my flip while flipping a fritatta at lunch
today and getting half of it in the pan and half on the stove...I
really suck right now. I think a large part of it may be the fact that
everything in this country is designed for little graceful people -
little and graceful being two things I am most certainly not. Still, I
have to admit, I'm kind of mad at myself and feel like freaking
Godzilla roaming the Tuscan countryside and destroying everything in
my path. I think before I come back to Italy next time, I'm going to
lose 80 pounds and take a year of yoga and ballet....
Sooo, that was last night. I must say, though, seeing as how I've just
finished my last cooking lesson of the week, I have LEARNED SOOO MUCH!
I feel I came into this place a pretty good cook and will be walking
out of here a pretty great cook, armed with so many little vital hints
and tricks and techinques I've never heard before, along with a
truckload of recipes and some great friends here who are more than
willing to answer all of my questions along the way...God bless the
internet and email.
Anyway, today we made fritattas, tiramisu, and a porcini risotto, a
saffron and yellow onion risotto, and a gelato made from the custard
for the tiramisu. I have to say, I HONESTLY BEAILIVE I could become
RICH just by opening up a store and selling the gelato made from the
tiramisu custard. It is simply one of the most amazing things I have
ever tasted and I PROMISE I will be recreating it when I get back,
because this needs to be spread around the world. I truly believe that
if we dropped some of this gelatto di marscapone on Mecca, we would
instantly be able to live in peace with the Islamic world.
So right before lunch, actually, (I'm getting a little messed-up
timewise here), we toured the olive oil production rooms here at
Campromano. You can see the pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag . It was lot of fun
and really interesting. More interesting, though, was the olive oil
tasting we had afterward. Apparently I'm the only American here who
really enjoys drinking olive oil, but that's the others' problems. It
was really gret to learn about how the different regions create
different oils from different species of trees, and how the amount of
rainfall affects the flavor of the oil. For example, if there is
little rainfall, the oil will be much more fruity and spicy, whereas
if there is little rainfall, then the oil will be much smoother and
have a delicate flavor. Also, I learned the whole "cold press" thing
is BS. It may have been important 100 years ago where people would
warm the olives by the fire so that the oxen pulling the grinding
stones would have an easier time extracting the oil from the olives.
However, now that it all done mechanically, no one would ever do that
anymore so it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's info like this that I
have entire journal full of already after a week.
So, that' about it. I'm going to be heading to Pietrasanta, a famous
marble sculpting town in the nearby marble mountain just north and
east of here - the same marble mountains where Michelangelo got his
marble for his masterpieces. I'm really excited about it and will be
taking tons of pics so check back later and I will have (hopefully)
updated the blog and pics.
Now we get to see if this even works, or if I've just been typing for
30 min for nothing....
supposedly this will post what I email directly into the blog. The
reason for this is that, no matter what I do, it appears that google
and, thus, "blogger" have committed suicide in the country of Italy,
at least for me. My Gmail works, googlemaps works, but google web
doesn't and blogger works until i try to post something, then it dies
again...very frustrating.
Anyway, so here it goes...
Last night we made the pizzas. I really hope no one from the cooking
school ever reads this, but...Valentino's kick these pizza's a$$, 500
year old wood burning brick oven and all. I did learn some things,
though. For one, apparently in Italy, they use rolling pins to flatten
out the dough for the pizza...you couldn't pay me to do this. I don't
care if that's the way they do it here, I think it's wrong - hand
tossed is better. However, I learned one thing I really have to
experiment with. We had this one pizza that was a sauceless pizza with
a mix of a soft cow's milk sheese called stracchina (probably not
spelled right) with sausage that had been taken out of the casings and
folded into the cheese mixture. This was then spread directly on the
raw dough and baked in the oven...soooo unique and amazingly
beautiful. Since stracchina is not available at all in the U.S. I'm
going to have to start experimenting with some other soft chesses to
try to find one somewhat like this, because this pizza is sooo unique
and delicious, I KNOW it'll be a hit.
The only other part of the night is I somehow managed to knock the
6-foot long pizza peel in the 5x5 tiny 500 year old room where the
oven was into a bowl full of sauce, sending the sauced flying over the
entire room, walls, ceiling, floor, everything, but mostly on my
face...awesome....
I have never felt so uncool in my life and that's saying something
when you're a conservative metalhead who likes to cook more than
anything else in life. When this is combined with me cutting my finger
a few days ago, spilling a glass of juice all over the table this
morning, knocking a spoon of the counter onto the floor this morning,
and completely missing my flip while flipping a fritatta at lunch
today and getting half of it in the pan and half on the stove...I
really suck right now. I think a large part of it may be the fact that
everything in this country is designed for little graceful people -
little and graceful being two things I am most certainly not. Still, I
have to admit, I'm kind of mad at myself and feel like freaking
Godzilla roaming the Tuscan countryside and destroying everything in
my path. I think before I come back to Italy next time, I'm going to
lose 80 pounds and take a year of yoga and ballet....
Sooo, that was last night. I must say, though, seeing as how I've just
finished my last cooking lesson of the week, I have LEARNED SOOO MUCH!
I feel I came into this place a pretty good cook and will be walking
out of here a pretty great cook, armed with so many little vital hints
and tricks and techinques I've never heard before, along with a
truckload of recipes and some great friends here who are more than
willing to answer all of my questions along the way...God bless the
internet and email.
Anyway, today we made fritattas, tiramisu, and a porcini risotto, a
saffron and yellow onion risotto, and a gelato made from the custard
for the tiramisu. I have to say, I HONESTLY BEAILIVE I could become
RICH just by opening up a store and selling the gelato made from the
tiramisu custard. It is simply one of the most amazing things I have
ever tasted and I PROMISE I will be recreating it when I get back,
because this needs to be spread around the world. I truly believe that
if we dropped some of this gelatto di marscapone on Mecca, we would
instantly be able to live in peace with the Islamic world.
So right before lunch, actually, (I'm getting a little messed-up
timewise here), we toured the olive oil production rooms here at
Campromano. You can see the pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag . It was lot of fun
and really interesting. More interesting, though, was the olive oil
tasting we had afterward. Apparently I'm the only American here who
really enjoys drinking olive oil, but that's the others' problems. It
was really gret to learn about how the different regions create
different oils from different species of trees, and how the amount of
rainfall affects the flavor of the oil. For example, if there is
little rainfall, the oil will be much more fruity and spicy, whereas
if there is little rainfall, then the oil will be much smoother and
have a delicate flavor. Also, I learned the whole "cold press" thing
is BS. It may have been important 100 years ago where people would
warm the olives by the fire so that the oxen pulling the grinding
stones would have an easier time extracting the oil from the olives.
However, now that it all done mechanically, no one would ever do that
anymore so it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's info like this that I
have entire journal full of already after a week.
So, that' about it. I'm going to be heading to Pietrasanta, a famous
marble sculpting town in the nearby marble mountain just north and
east of here - the same marble mountains where Michelangelo got his
marble for his masterpieces. I'm really excited about it and will be
taking tons of pics so check back later and I will have (hopefully)
updated the blog and pics.
Now we get to see if this even works, or if I've just been typing for
30 min for nothing....
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Angry fishermen and confused old Italian women
First off... sorry for the last post...kinda sucked. I didn't think it was possible to have lightning knock out the electricity, and, thus, the internet, twice in the same day, and both times while I was in the middle of typing this blog.
Second: Yesterday we went to Forte Dei Marmi.
Bad News: My pictures of this little seaside town north of Pisa were miraculously deleted from my camera somehow as a result of the power outages and confusion that followed.
Good News: If I were going to lose any pictures in this entire trip, I would choose the pics of Forte dei Marmi because I can describe the pictures and the town to you quite easily...Rain, expensive cafes, expensive cars, German tourists, male German tourists wearing capri pants and sleeveless shirts, German tourists with socks and sandals, expensive clothes stores, more rain, beautiful Italian women, skinny Italian guys wearing clothes I would only wear if i were the beautiful Italian women walking with them, rain puddles, African immigrants selling umbrellas, pretty houses for super rich Italians from Milan which were boarded up because the "season" is over, and wet German tourists. And that's about it...
Ok now we're at the present. Today was different from the other days. Today we went to Viareggio to visit the weekly market/bazaar that takes place there this morning and will have our lessons this evening. Tonight we'll be making pizzas and biscotti among other things. All I know is one of the former chefs here is now the manager at Cosimo's in Sarasota, FL that came in second to Valentino's in the contest for best pizza in the area, so we'll see if I'm impressed or not haha. Once you've had the best in Sarasota, you become quite a pizza critic...
Anyway, Viareggio was WONDERFUL! Click the link at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag to see the pics...
So let me paint a mental picture of my day in Viareggio for you... Imagine me, 6'4" 250, strolling around taking pictures of seafood, cheese, vegetables, etc. while old Italian women stop and look at me with strange looks, some pointing, most frowning, all very puzzled. A few brave ones decided to come and explain to me what a tomato was as I was buying it...
Old lady: "Es pomodoro"
Me: "Si, pomodoro"
Old Lady: "No es pomodoro"
Me: "Si, pomodoro"
Old Lady: "Ughhhh"...and she walked away
Additionally I was cursed at today and given "the Italian salute" by a fisherman guy who was selling fresh fish out of the back of his three-wheeled truck I presume is powered by a rat who is fed spaghetti and then runs on one of those mouse wheels in order to start the motor...or at least that's how I hope in my heart they work. Anyway, I guess he didn't like me taking a picture of his catch or something, but I figured it was time to run away at that point haha. You can see the pic I took of him...have it labeled...revenge.
Honestly, it's for experiences like these that I came to Italy. And I loved Viareggio for this reason. I got to see how people actually live and take part in their daily lives by actually shopping myself for produce in their market, which, subsequently, is reminiscent of Godzilla stomping through downtown Tokyo. I wouldn't have it any other way. It was great.
Oh, and by the way, it was absolutely beautiful. Palm trees, sand, sun (which has been rare since I've been here), and those Italian women...I have to admit, they are driving me insane. They're like sirens who cast their spell out at you, but then there's an invisible force field around them I presume beams out directly from their striking eyes. They are flat out evil. And wonderful. But, mostly evil...mostly.
So, that's about it. Make sure to check out the pictures I've been taking. I love it when people write comments, and just know I've read all of them and it makes me smile to see one from you all each time. Gonna take a siesta now...haven't been sleeping well.
I'll try to update later on the pizza experience.
Ciao!
Second: Yesterday we went to Forte Dei Marmi.
Bad News: My pictures of this little seaside town north of Pisa were miraculously deleted from my camera somehow as a result of the power outages and confusion that followed.
Good News: If I were going to lose any pictures in this entire trip, I would choose the pics of Forte dei Marmi because I can describe the pictures and the town to you quite easily...Rain, expensive cafes, expensive cars, German tourists, male German tourists wearing capri pants and sleeveless shirts, German tourists with socks and sandals, expensive clothes stores, more rain, beautiful Italian women, skinny Italian guys wearing clothes I would only wear if i were the beautiful Italian women walking with them, rain puddles, African immigrants selling umbrellas, pretty houses for super rich Italians from Milan which were boarded up because the "season" is over, and wet German tourists. And that's about it...
Ok now we're at the present. Today was different from the other days. Today we went to Viareggio to visit the weekly market/bazaar that takes place there this morning and will have our lessons this evening. Tonight we'll be making pizzas and biscotti among other things. All I know is one of the former chefs here is now the manager at Cosimo's in Sarasota, FL that came in second to Valentino's in the contest for best pizza in the area, so we'll see if I'm impressed or not haha. Once you've had the best in Sarasota, you become quite a pizza critic...
Anyway, Viareggio was WONDERFUL! Click the link at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag to see the pics...
So let me paint a mental picture of my day in Viareggio for you... Imagine me, 6'4" 250, strolling around taking pictures of seafood, cheese, vegetables, etc. while old Italian women stop and look at me with strange looks, some pointing, most frowning, all very puzzled. A few brave ones decided to come and explain to me what a tomato was as I was buying it...
Old lady: "Es pomodoro"
Me: "Si, pomodoro"
Old Lady: "No es pomodoro"
Me: "Si, pomodoro"
Old Lady: "Ughhhh"...and she walked away
Additionally I was cursed at today and given "the Italian salute" by a fisherman guy who was selling fresh fish out of the back of his three-wheeled truck I presume is powered by a rat who is fed spaghetti and then runs on one of those mouse wheels in order to start the motor...or at least that's how I hope in my heart they work. Anyway, I guess he didn't like me taking a picture of his catch or something, but I figured it was time to run away at that point haha. You can see the pic I took of him...have it labeled...revenge.
Honestly, it's for experiences like these that I came to Italy. And I loved Viareggio for this reason. I got to see how people actually live and take part in their daily lives by actually shopping myself for produce in their market, which, subsequently, is reminiscent of Godzilla stomping through downtown Tokyo. I wouldn't have it any other way. It was great.
Oh, and by the way, it was absolutely beautiful. Palm trees, sand, sun (which has been rare since I've been here), and those Italian women...I have to admit, they are driving me insane. They're like sirens who cast their spell out at you, but then there's an invisible force field around them I presume beams out directly from their striking eyes. They are flat out evil. And wonderful. But, mostly evil...mostly.
So, that's about it. Make sure to check out the pictures I've been taking. I love it when people write comments, and just know I've read all of them and it makes me smile to see one from you all each time. Gonna take a siesta now...haven't been sleeping well.
I'll try to update later on the pizza experience.
Ciao!
Best.Meal.Ever.
Ok its Thursday Morning, my computer is acting like it's on life support, and this is the posting of the 2-part entry I never could actually post yesterday because the internet went out both times I tried to post it. My computer is so messed up right now for some odd reason I can't even seee what I'm typing until about 30 seconds after I type it. Anyway, I'm off to Viareggio to go to the market this morning. Hopefully my computer will have recovered by later....Here is from yesterday...
I just got done with our lunch following our lesson today. Today, the main star was multi-colored ravioli with a spinach, ricotta filling simply tossed in some melted butter, sage and salt and pepper, then topped with some freshly grated Parmesan. What I have learned... I feel I'm somewhat of a natural at making fresh pasta and its really fun and surprisingly easy, and I plan on doing it often when I get back. What I've also learned, making multi-colored ravioli is somewhat difficult and, even though they were great, I honestly can't tell you the effort is worth it. But, that's just me - I dont find making ravioloi different colors by adding strips of different pasta that has been naturally colored is worth the effort and mess - it all tastes the same to me.
Anyway, joining us today were two German tourists from Hamburg who are staying here at the agriturismo farm (a farm/bed & breakfast) and they asked to join us today and Sandra let them. While they were quite funny and goofy and reminded me of why I love the German people so much, thankfully, Elena's theory was wrong for today and they didn't die. I have expected some sort of knife or burn accident, but, alas, all is well.
(continued later after dinner)....
Just got done with dinner tonight: first course was buccatini (kind of a fat, hollow spaghetti) tossed with an amazing amatriciana sauce cooked down with pancetta. Second course was a pan seared beef roast topped with red wine and green peppercorns served with a side of roasted potatoes, bell peppers and eggplant. All washed down with a river of wine... great meal.
Ahh, the electricity is going out as I speak this and we have to leave the kitchen area where I am right now so I'll try to do a big post tomorrow. Just know all is well except for this weather. Ive been in some insane thunderstorms this week. Anyway, gotta go, getting yelled at. Bye.
H
I just got done with our lunch following our lesson today. Today, the main star was multi-colored ravioli with a spinach, ricotta filling simply tossed in some melted butter, sage and salt and pepper, then topped with some freshly grated Parmesan. What I have learned... I feel I'm somewhat of a natural at making fresh pasta and its really fun and surprisingly easy, and I plan on doing it often when I get back. What I've also learned, making multi-colored ravioli is somewhat difficult and, even though they were great, I honestly can't tell you the effort is worth it. But, that's just me - I dont find making ravioloi different colors by adding strips of different pasta that has been naturally colored is worth the effort and mess - it all tastes the same to me.
Anyway, joining us today were two German tourists from Hamburg who are staying here at the agriturismo farm (a farm/bed & breakfast) and they asked to join us today and Sandra let them. While they were quite funny and goofy and reminded me of why I love the German people so much, thankfully, Elena's theory was wrong for today and they didn't die. I have expected some sort of knife or burn accident, but, alas, all is well.
(continued later after dinner)....
Just got done with dinner tonight: first course was buccatini (kind of a fat, hollow spaghetti) tossed with an amazing amatriciana sauce cooked down with pancetta. Second course was a pan seared beef roast topped with red wine and green peppercorns served with a side of roasted potatoes, bell peppers and eggplant. All washed down with a river of wine... great meal.
Ahh, the electricity is going out as I speak this and we have to leave the kitchen area where I am right now so I'll try to do a big post tomorrow. Just know all is well except for this weather. Ive been in some insane thunderstorms this week. Anyway, gotta go, getting yelled at. Bye.
H
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Accident-prone Germans and seafood overload
Man, what a day! This is going to be hard to keep under 50,000 words but I'll try to make it manageable -here goes...
Woke up today at breakfast with some great news...Sandra and Tony, the two main chefs, wanted me to help them prepare dinner for tonight. Mind you, this was no ordinary dinner. This was a dinner I imagine to be along the lines of something the ancient Roman emperors would eat if they were training for sumo wrestling...or for the birthday of the brother of an Italian chef (Sandra) and their entire family. Wow...more on that later.
Anyway, today's lessons taught me so many new and interesting things. I have my bechamel sauce down pat, learned how to preserve fresh herbs PERFECTLY in the freezer for the winter (something I learned today that I imagine might save me in food costs the cost of this entire trip), learned how to make PERFECT gnocchi (something I've had some difficulty with in the past), and I also learned to make "pasta foro" (probably bastardized the "foro" part) which is the single greatest pastry dough in the history of the world. Also, I learned how to cook Roman gnocchi which are really basically polenta coquettes topped with Gorgonzola and Parmesan and baked in the oven...foodgasm. Anyway, so we made all that, I didn't stab myself today, and the best part...we got to eat it all afterwards and no words of mine could ever do this food justice. Hopefully I can recreate it to somewhere near what I've been eating here at Toscana Saporita. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to myself and others to not recreate these recipes again and again.
Anyway, after lunch, Sandra and Tony put me to work. I got the job (the one they didn't want to do) of scrubbing and de-bearding enough blue mussels for twenty hungry Italians when the request of the birthday-boy was specifically blue mussels...translation...alot.
So after the arduous task of cleaning the mussels, I then helped stuff them with a mixture of bechamel sauce, breadcrumbs, tuna, and shrimp and then submerged them into some spicy marinara to bake in their closed shells in the oven...All I know is that if reincarnation is real, I'm switching from wanting to be a dog, to wanting to have the pleasure of being one these lucky mussels covered in a bechamel stuffing and drowning in the world's finest marinara...wow.
It was at this time that I had to leave the prep work (for now) to go with the one and only Elena and the others to visit Pisa. Honestly, I wasn't too excited to see Pisa. When I was younger with my parents in Italy, I remember getting off the tour bus, getting hounded by gypsies, going Godzilla-style fighting off the waves of annoying Japanese tourists taking those lame pictures (you know the one, where you are "holding up" the leaning tower of Pisa in the background) and then getting back on the bus feeling unimpressed and slightly violated. WOW WAS I WRONG...
First, however, we went to a little town basically between here and Pisa called Torre Di Lago. It was pretty (you can see the pics as well as all the others at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag), but it wasn't to interesting other than Jiacomo Puccini, the Italian composer, lived there. Now, he is super-famous here, but, honestly, I'd never heard of the guy in my life so it didn't really mean anything to me ,and I had to say it here because I felt like I had to pretend I knew who the hell this guy is all day and its been annoying haha.
Anyway, then we went to Pisa. Good news: the tower is still there, leaning, same as last time. Better news: NO gypsies, very few annoying street vendors, and the city itself, the place where no actual tourists go bc it doesn't have a leaning tower of some sort, is AWESOME. Man it was beautiful, and really just a great city. I was soooo delightfully surprised. However, even better was another priceless gem I learned from Elena, our tour guide, who I've gotten to know well, seeing as how I'm traveling alone and the other groups of two with us have each other to talk to.
Anyway, it went something like this:
Elena: "Harrison, what nationality is Sonntag?"
Me: "Well, actually, it's "Sunday" in German."
Elena: "Ahhh, deutsche, huh?"
Me: "Yes ma..."
Elena: "That's too bad, the Deutsche are accident prone."
Me: "What? Haha, well I guess I could see..."
Elena: "No! You 'no understand.'Every week in Italy, some Deutsche tourist drowns in a lake, gets swallowed by a wave at the beach... they always are dying."
Me: "Um, well, I guess they are just adventurous or something."
Elena: "No, it is DNA, also. They just do stupid stuff. Like they walk on top of a city wall, they fall off, it's just natural for them. They can't help themselves. Harrison, don't do this."
This is when I just laughed really hard and she gave me a funny look lol.
Anyway, it's starting to rain and the only place to get internet is outside here (great setup lol), so I'm going to have to postpone the telling of the grandest feast ever. If you check out the pics, I promise you, you will not have to eat the rest of the day. Ciao!
Woke up today at breakfast with some great news...Sandra and Tony, the two main chefs, wanted me to help them prepare dinner for tonight. Mind you, this was no ordinary dinner. This was a dinner I imagine to be along the lines of something the ancient Roman emperors would eat if they were training for sumo wrestling...or for the birthday of the brother of an Italian chef (Sandra) and their entire family. Wow...more on that later.
Anyway, today's lessons taught me so many new and interesting things. I have my bechamel sauce down pat, learned how to preserve fresh herbs PERFECTLY in the freezer for the winter (something I learned today that I imagine might save me in food costs the cost of this entire trip), learned how to make PERFECT gnocchi (something I've had some difficulty with in the past), and I also learned to make "pasta foro" (probably bastardized the "foro" part) which is the single greatest pastry dough in the history of the world. Also, I learned how to cook Roman gnocchi which are really basically polenta coquettes topped with Gorgonzola and Parmesan and baked in the oven...foodgasm. Anyway, so we made all that, I didn't stab myself today, and the best part...we got to eat it all afterwards and no words of mine could ever do this food justice. Hopefully I can recreate it to somewhere near what I've been eating here at Toscana Saporita. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to myself and others to not recreate these recipes again and again.
Anyway, after lunch, Sandra and Tony put me to work. I got the job (the one they didn't want to do) of scrubbing and de-bearding enough blue mussels for twenty hungry Italians when the request of the birthday-boy was specifically blue mussels...translation...alot.
So after the arduous task of cleaning the mussels, I then helped stuff them with a mixture of bechamel sauce, breadcrumbs, tuna, and shrimp and then submerged them into some spicy marinara to bake in their closed shells in the oven...All I know is that if reincarnation is real, I'm switching from wanting to be a dog, to wanting to have the pleasure of being one these lucky mussels covered in a bechamel stuffing and drowning in the world's finest marinara...wow.
It was at this time that I had to leave the prep work (for now) to go with the one and only Elena and the others to visit Pisa. Honestly, I wasn't too excited to see Pisa. When I was younger with my parents in Italy, I remember getting off the tour bus, getting hounded by gypsies, going Godzilla-style fighting off the waves of annoying Japanese tourists taking those lame pictures (you know the one, where you are "holding up" the leaning tower of Pisa in the background) and then getting back on the bus feeling unimpressed and slightly violated. WOW WAS I WRONG...
First, however, we went to a little town basically between here and Pisa called Torre Di Lago. It was pretty (you can see the pics as well as all the others at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag), but it wasn't to interesting other than Jiacomo Puccini, the Italian composer, lived there. Now, he is super-famous here, but, honestly, I'd never heard of the guy in my life so it didn't really mean anything to me ,and I had to say it here because I felt like I had to pretend I knew who the hell this guy is all day and its been annoying haha.
Anyway, then we went to Pisa. Good news: the tower is still there, leaning, same as last time. Better news: NO gypsies, very few annoying street vendors, and the city itself, the place where no actual tourists go bc it doesn't have a leaning tower of some sort, is AWESOME. Man it was beautiful, and really just a great city. I was soooo delightfully surprised. However, even better was another priceless gem I learned from Elena, our tour guide, who I've gotten to know well, seeing as how I'm traveling alone and the other groups of two with us have each other to talk to.
Anyway, it went something like this:
Elena: "Harrison, what nationality is Sonntag?"
Me: "Well, actually, it's "Sunday" in German."
Elena: "Ahhh, deutsche, huh?"
Me: "Yes ma..."
Elena: "That's too bad, the Deutsche are accident prone."
Me: "What? Haha, well I guess I could see..."
Elena: "No! You 'no understand.'Every week in Italy, some Deutsche tourist drowns in a lake, gets swallowed by a wave at the beach... they always are dying."
Me: "Um, well, I guess they are just adventurous or something."
Elena: "No, it is DNA, also. They just do stupid stuff. Like they walk on top of a city wall, they fall off, it's just natural for them. They can't help themselves. Harrison, don't do this."
This is when I just laughed really hard and she gave me a funny look lol.
Anyway, it's starting to rain and the only place to get internet is outside here (great setup lol), so I'm going to have to postpone the telling of the grandest feast ever. If you check out the pics, I promise you, you will not have to eat the rest of the day. Ciao!
Monday, September 14, 2009
People from Lucca have "short arms and deep pockets"
I learned this gem today from our tour guide Elena wh explained to me that it was simply a matter of human evolution relating to the stinginess of the Luccan people.All I know is that they make some awesome food with those short arms, but more of that later.
Today in class we made tagliatelle (a homemade pasta basically like short, flat fettuccine) with a sauce of wild asparagus to go on it. Additionally, we made a baked fritter of some sort consisting of sliced fennel bulb that had been blanched and then tossed with olive oil and Parmesan Reggiano and salt then topped with another layer of parmesean and baked in the oven. AWESOME... Also, we made a mocha-gelato that made me want to cry.
But, the real story was... I somehow managed to have an onion out of my hand and subsequently slide the edge of the knife right into the top of my left index finger. It didn't want to stop bleeding at first, but stopped after about 20 minutes and now I can hardly notice it, so it's all good, albeit embarrassing.
Anyway, after our cooking lesson and lunch we went to to Lucca about 30 minutes east of here in the foothills of theApuan Alps here in Northern Tuscany. Lucca is really cool place, and aside from the rain and lightning that has been coming down like nothing I've ever seen in my life since last night when it woke me up at 5 am, Lucca is EXTREMELY beautiful. (new pictures up at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag )
The real story was the food, however. Besides the already mentioned cecina, I had the greatest foccacia in my life drissled with olive oil and topped with roasted tomatoes. Also, I had brigidni which are basically like crispy fortune cookies infused with anise giving them one of the strangest and most beautiful flavors I've ever experienced. Anyway, it's time for dinner now and hell hath no fury like Italian woman who has guests late to her table, so I have to get going.
Today in class we made tagliatelle (a homemade pasta basically like short, flat fettuccine) with a sauce of wild asparagus to go on it. Additionally, we made a baked fritter of some sort consisting of sliced fennel bulb that had been blanched and then tossed with olive oil and Parmesan Reggiano and salt then topped with another layer of parmesean and baked in the oven. AWESOME... Also, we made a mocha-gelato that made me want to cry.
But, the real story was... I somehow managed to have an onion out of my hand and subsequently slide the edge of the knife right into the top of my left index finger. It didn't want to stop bleeding at first, but stopped after about 20 minutes and now I can hardly notice it, so it's all good, albeit embarrassing.
Anyway, after our cooking lesson and lunch we went to to Lucca about 30 minutes east of here in the foothills of theApuan Alps here in Northern Tuscany. Lucca is really cool place, and aside from the rain and lightning that has been coming down like nothing I've ever seen in my life since last night when it woke me up at 5 am, Lucca is EXTREMELY beautiful. (new pictures up at http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag )
The real story was the food, however. Besides the already mentioned cecina, I had the greatest foccacia in my life drissled with olive oil and topped with roasted tomatoes. Also, I had brigidni which are basically like crispy fortune cookies infused with anise giving them one of the strangest and most beautiful flavors I've ever experienced. Anyway, it's time for dinner now and hell hath no fury like Italian woman who has guests late to her table, so I have to get going.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
"People are like coffee-pots."
...Or so I was told today by Elena, our Italian- cougar woman- mother of two- tour guide from Viareggio. Her explanation was, "People are like coffee-pots. You cant just pick one up the first time and expect to make good coffee," she explains to me as I show her how to use a percolator coffee pot in the kitchen of the little villa where I and the other "students" are staying.
"You have to get to the know the coffee pot in order for you and it to work well together. You know, they all have different quirks and need to be treated differently. Just like people. You have to get to know a person and all of his or her quirks and likes and dislikes before you can truly get along seamlessly with that person."
Either that is extremely profound or just freaking hilarious...either way, it's awesome.
Let me back up, though... First, our plane out of JFK to Pisa was delayed two hours because we had to go back to the gate for maintenance after there were some electrical failures in the back of the aircraft's cabin, and people were complaining of "smelling burning"...awesome. Electrical fire on an airplane!!! Not exactly something that makes one feel comfortable before flying across the Atlantic. To make a long story short, though, the situation was fixed and I somehow managed to get a few decent hours of sleep when I didn't have any big Italian women stumbling down the aisle bumping their oversized handbags into my shoulder.
So, anyway, I finally landed in Pisa and after a very stressful hour of waiting for my two bags, the very last bags apparently, to get off the plane and work their way around the luggage carousel, I was greeted by Elena as I walked through the doors out of the baggage area. Her initial reaction was (in broken English)" I would be pissed Ive had to wait three hours but I would have waited for you all day," (self-call) and so it began haha. She is hilarious and she LOVES me, haha. Apparently, to one fifth of the human population I look like Brendan Fraser, the actor of so many Oscar-worthy movies such as "George of the Jungle" (as Elena reminded me), Encino Man (truly awesome), and Bedazzled (sucked). For the other 4/5 of the human population, they think the first 1/5 must be smoking crack. I and most everyone close to me belongs in the 4/5 segment, but still, I'm amazed at how often I hear this.
Moving on....I'm very much looking forward to hearing more of her life lessons for me and it doesn't exactly hurt that hanging with her is somewhat of a much-needed confident boost (dont worry, I'm not into 50 year old married women with children).
Anyway, we wound through back roads north along the Tuscan coast for about 40 minutes traveling from the Pisa airport and then turned about 1 mile inland and up a giant hill (mountain) to the villa of Campo Romano where the cooking school is located. It is called Campo Romano because it was the location of an ancient Roman soldier camp as they worked their way up the Tuscan coast. Coincidentally, the town at the bottom of the hill is called Stiavo which apparently is some sort of local dialect of the word "slave" because while the Roman soldiers were up on the hill camping, their battalion of slaves got to hang out down at the bottom of the hill.
And it is BEAUTIFUL here at Campo Romano. You can find the pictures I'm taking here: http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag
So far they consist almost primarily of the grounds I'm staying at including the amazing views and vegetation. It's a working olive oil farm, but also contains grapes, lemons, limes, fennel, tomatoes, basil and numerous other amazing items.
The real story, however, has been the people. Besides Elena, I've also run into the owner of the property, one of the single nicest human beings I've ever encountered in my life, a man who must be well into his eighties by the name of John Franco. I literally had an hour long one-on-one conversation in broken English/Italian/Spanish? with this guy sitting on a bench overlooking the grove of olive trees covering the hillside with the distant marble peaks of Carrara in the background, the exact same marble mountains from Michelangelo personally inspected and chose the marble for each of his masterpieces.
Among the many things Mr. Franco taught me today is that the cows wont be very good eating this year. The reason is that the area is undergoing a drought right now, and, you see, when there's a drought, the olives wont get as big and fat and juicy and full of nutritious fats and vitamins. Apparently the cows of the area eat the fallen olives and it makes up a substantial portion of their diet. Unfortunately for the cows (and us), the cows are getting skinny wimpy olives so they are not as fat and healthy as most years. Thus...not as good beef.
I am being 100% honest when I tell you that listening to this guy talk about the land and the food was one of the greatest highlights of my life. It was simply beautiful, and I'll never forget it.
So, as for the actual "school" I'm at, I think it's going to work out very well. Better than I could have imagined, actually. I am one of 5 "students" to be taught bu 4 chefs!!! Additionally, and it's a long story I will tell over the next week, I really hit it off with the two main chefs of the place, one of which happens to be the boss of this whole Toscana Saporita school, the other happens to be an awesome guy named Anthony originally from West Paterson, NJ who apparently worked out at Carini's gym while I was there and whose Dad owns Capo's grill which I used to eat breakfast at all the time after I worked out. Oh, and also, he happened to go to Wayne Valley, the same high school I graduated from except he's 4 years older. That and he's cool as heck and REALLY knows Italian food.
So the combination of all of that, impressing the chefs with my food knowledge, making friends, etc, it looks like I'm going to be spending a lot more time in the kitchen with all of them then any other folks the've had here, and they have personally made it an obligation on their part to show me all of these great dishes I "have to have" in the restaurant. Right now I'm trying to work in an angle for them to let me help them with this "9 courses of seafood" dinner they are preparing for the wedding of the owner's brother. I have a feeling they'll have me working back there doing all the prep work they dont want to. Sounds good to me, though. We'll see what happens. I don't know yet because I just met them and "people are like coffee-pots", or something like that.
http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag
"You have to get to the know the coffee pot in order for you and it to work well together. You know, they all have different quirks and need to be treated differently. Just like people. You have to get to know a person and all of his or her quirks and likes and dislikes before you can truly get along seamlessly with that person."
Either that is extremely profound or just freaking hilarious...either way, it's awesome.
Let me back up, though... First, our plane out of JFK to Pisa was delayed two hours because we had to go back to the gate for maintenance after there were some electrical failures in the back of the aircraft's cabin, and people were complaining of "smelling burning"...awesome. Electrical fire on an airplane!!! Not exactly something that makes one feel comfortable before flying across the Atlantic. To make a long story short, though, the situation was fixed and I somehow managed to get a few decent hours of sleep when I didn't have any big Italian women stumbling down the aisle bumping their oversized handbags into my shoulder.
So, anyway, I finally landed in Pisa and after a very stressful hour of waiting for my two bags, the very last bags apparently, to get off the plane and work their way around the luggage carousel, I was greeted by Elena as I walked through the doors out of the baggage area. Her initial reaction was (in broken English)" I would be pissed Ive had to wait three hours but I would have waited for you all day," (self-call) and so it began haha. She is hilarious and she LOVES me, haha. Apparently, to one fifth of the human population I look like Brendan Fraser, the actor of so many Oscar-worthy movies such as "George of the Jungle" (as Elena reminded me), Encino Man (truly awesome), and Bedazzled (sucked). For the other 4/5 of the human population, they think the first 1/5 must be smoking crack. I and most everyone close to me belongs in the 4/5 segment, but still, I'm amazed at how often I hear this.
Moving on....I'm very much looking forward to hearing more of her life lessons for me and it doesn't exactly hurt that hanging with her is somewhat of a much-needed confident boost (dont worry, I'm not into 50 year old married women with children).
Anyway, we wound through back roads north along the Tuscan coast for about 40 minutes traveling from the Pisa airport and then turned about 1 mile inland and up a giant hill (mountain) to the villa of Campo Romano where the cooking school is located. It is called Campo Romano because it was the location of an ancient Roman soldier camp as they worked their way up the Tuscan coast. Coincidentally, the town at the bottom of the hill is called Stiavo which apparently is some sort of local dialect of the word "slave" because while the Roman soldiers were up on the hill camping, their battalion of slaves got to hang out down at the bottom of the hill.
And it is BEAUTIFUL here at Campo Romano. You can find the pictures I'm taking here: http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag
So far they consist almost primarily of the grounds I'm staying at including the amazing views and vegetation. It's a working olive oil farm, but also contains grapes, lemons, limes, fennel, tomatoes, basil and numerous other amazing items.
The real story, however, has been the people. Besides Elena, I've also run into the owner of the property, one of the single nicest human beings I've ever encountered in my life, a man who must be well into his eighties by the name of John Franco. I literally had an hour long one-on-one conversation in broken English/Italian/Spanish? with this guy sitting on a bench overlooking the grove of olive trees covering the hillside with the distant marble peaks of Carrara in the background, the exact same marble mountains from Michelangelo personally inspected and chose the marble for each of his masterpieces.
Among the many things Mr. Franco taught me today is that the cows wont be very good eating this year. The reason is that the area is undergoing a drought right now, and, you see, when there's a drought, the olives wont get as big and fat and juicy and full of nutritious fats and vitamins. Apparently the cows of the area eat the fallen olives and it makes up a substantial portion of their diet. Unfortunately for the cows (and us), the cows are getting skinny wimpy olives so they are not as fat and healthy as most years. Thus...not as good beef.
I am being 100% honest when I tell you that listening to this guy talk about the land and the food was one of the greatest highlights of my life. It was simply beautiful, and I'll never forget it.
So, as for the actual "school" I'm at, I think it's going to work out very well. Better than I could have imagined, actually. I am one of 5 "students" to be taught bu 4 chefs!!! Additionally, and it's a long story I will tell over the next week, I really hit it off with the two main chefs of the place, one of which happens to be the boss of this whole Toscana Saporita school, the other happens to be an awesome guy named Anthony originally from West Paterson, NJ who apparently worked out at Carini's gym while I was there and whose Dad owns Capo's grill which I used to eat breakfast at all the time after I worked out. Oh, and also, he happened to go to Wayne Valley, the same high school I graduated from except he's 4 years older. That and he's cool as heck and REALLY knows Italian food.
So the combination of all of that, impressing the chefs with my food knowledge, making friends, etc, it looks like I'm going to be spending a lot more time in the kitchen with all of them then any other folks the've had here, and they have personally made it an obligation on their part to show me all of these great dishes I "have to have" in the restaurant. Right now I'm trying to work in an angle for them to let me help them with this "9 courses of seafood" dinner they are preparing for the wedding of the owner's brother. I have a feeling they'll have me working back there doing all the prep work they dont want to. Sounds good to me, though. We'll see what happens. I don't know yet because I just met them and "people are like coffee-pots", or something like that.
http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Well...Here We Are
So I'm sitting in the Delta Club at JFK airport in NYC because I have a 6 hour layover and figure 2 meals, free drinks, internet, tv, and somewhere comfortable to hang out is worth the 50 bucks for a day pass. Before I got to the Club, I was once again reminded why this is my least favorite airport I've ever been to in my life...but I digress...
Anyway, I have to admit I almost feel guilty for leaving the US today. Yesterday, while watching Obama spit in the face of all those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and use our collective sadness about the day to turn it from a day of somber remembrance into day to celebrate Acorn on "National Service (to the State?) Day," I wanted to "get away" from this madness soooo badly! Today, however, I'm now watching the news reports on my computer estimating the Tea Party protest my courageous parents took part in attracted a crowd of 2 MILLION PEOPLE according to ABC NEWS!
Let's put this in perspective...
This is the largest ever demonstration against our government in American history.
This is the largest ever gathering of people in Washington DC for an event in American history.
The "Million Man March" I remember even being FORCED TO WATCH AT SCHOOL as a kid had a crowd DC police estimated to be about 300,000.
The Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama drew a crowd of 1.2 million people, half of which were, as is the case with every inauguration, bused in to take part at no expense to themselves.
AND IVE BEEN WATCHING CNN FOR 30 MINUTES AND HAVEN"T HEARD A SINGLE MENTION OF THE LARGEST MASS PROTEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
OK...feel better now...had to get that off my chest even if only typing into a computer. I promise to try to go against everything inside me and try not to get too political in this blog, but I feel this provides a pretty interesting backdrop to my trip right now. Oh well... back to my book I'm reading for a few hours ("The Food of Italy" by Waverly Root) before it truly starts. Never had much luck sleeping on planes, so which me luck, bc 9.5 hours is a long time when you're 6"4' with wide shoulders in coach class!
Anyway, I have to admit I almost feel guilty for leaving the US today. Yesterday, while watching Obama spit in the face of all those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and use our collective sadness about the day to turn it from a day of somber remembrance into day to celebrate Acorn on "National Service (to the State?) Day," I wanted to "get away" from this madness soooo badly! Today, however, I'm now watching the news reports on my computer estimating the Tea Party protest my courageous parents took part in attracted a crowd of 2 MILLION PEOPLE according to ABC NEWS!
Let's put this in perspective...
This is the largest ever demonstration against our government in American history.
This is the largest ever gathering of people in Washington DC for an event in American history.
The "Million Man March" I remember even being FORCED TO WATCH AT SCHOOL as a kid had a crowd DC police estimated to be about 300,000.
The Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama drew a crowd of 1.2 million people, half of which were, as is the case with every inauguration, bused in to take part at no expense to themselves.
AND IVE BEEN WATCHING CNN FOR 30 MINUTES AND HAVEN"T HEARD A SINGLE MENTION OF THE LARGEST MASS PROTEST IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
OK...feel better now...had to get that off my chest even if only typing into a computer. I promise to try to go against everything inside me and try not to get too political in this blog, but I feel this provides a pretty interesting backdrop to my trip right now. Oh well... back to my book I'm reading for a few hours ("The Food of Italy" by Waverly Root) before it truly starts. Never had much luck sleeping on planes, so which me luck, bc 9.5 hours is a long time when you're 6"4' with wide shoulders in coach class!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Preliminary Itinerary
As my previous travel experience has taught me, I highly doubt this will wind up being the actual itinerary I accomplish after the first week, but this is my goal for now:
Sept. 12 - Travel day. Nashville to New York JFK to Pisa. Arrive the morning of September 13.
Sept. 13-18 - Toscana Saporita Cooking School - Massarosa Italy (40 min north of Pisa)
Sept. 19-20 - Pick up rental car and head to Carrara, northern Tuscan mountain region and Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast
Sept. 21-22 - Bologna and the Emiglia-Romagna region including Parma and Modena
Sept. 23-24 - The independent Republic of San Marino and the coast of Emiglia-Romagna and northern Marches including Fano, Pesaro, Ravenna, and Rimini
Sept. 25-26 - The coast of the Abruzzo region (central, eastern coast) ionlcuding the cities of Pineto, Pescara, and Jesi
Sept. 27-29 - The Gargano Peninsula of Puglia (heel of the "boot") where I will visit Vieste, Foggia, and Lucera (the town of my Italian great-grandfather)
Spet. 30-Oct. 1 - Alberobello and Bari in the southern region of Puglia (the bottom of the heel of the "boot")
Oct 2 -3 - After my longest drive of the trip from Alberobello to the north of the central Italian region of Italy, Umbria, where I will visit Lake Tresimino, Orvieto, Perugia, Assisi and more
Oct. 4 - 6 - The eastern side of Tuscany including Florence, Arezzo, Poppi, Scarperia, Poppi, and more
Oct. 7-9 - The more western and southern side of Tuscany including San Gimignano, Siena, Montepulciano, Certaldo, and Volterra
October 10 - back to a campsite right oustide the city center of Pisa
October 11 - plane ride back to the states and the beginning of my next adventure in becoming a Texan and bringing what I learned in Italy to the people of Austin
You may notice that I've neglected many main tourist areas such as Rome, Venice, Milan and the Amalfi coast, as well as the northern top of Italy. This is for many reasons including TIME, but also, I've been blessed and fortunate to see Rome, and Venice already, and I'm scared to death of driving ANYWHERE NEAR Naples and the Amalfi region. Also, I've chosen areas I'm hoping will help me learn more about the different Italian provincial cuisines I'm most interested in and will be most applicable to my restaurant and, hopefully, career (hence, why I wont be going to the northern regions of Veneto, Piedmont and Lombardy). As far as the Naples region and Calabria, I'm extremely fortunate to be partnered with and to learn from my business partner and friend Mike Valentino who owns a trattoria and pizzeria in Sarasota and has some of the best Neapolitan-American (southern Italian) cuisine and pizza Ive ever had, including during my time in the Naples region as well as my time in the New York/New Jersey area. Also, I have my friend Nicole and her family from Calabria who have taught me a lot about southern Italian cuisine already, and I hope to learn much more from them in the years to come.
Sept. 12 - Travel day. Nashville to New York JFK to Pisa. Arrive the morning of September 13.
Sept. 13-18 - Toscana Saporita Cooking School - Massarosa Italy (40 min north of Pisa)
Sept. 19-20 - Pick up rental car and head to Carrara, northern Tuscan mountain region and Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast
Sept. 21-22 - Bologna and the Emiglia-Romagna region including Parma and Modena
Sept. 23-24 - The independent Republic of San Marino and the coast of Emiglia-Romagna and northern Marches including Fano, Pesaro, Ravenna, and Rimini
Sept. 25-26 - The coast of the Abruzzo region (central, eastern coast) ionlcuding the cities of Pineto, Pescara, and Jesi
Sept. 27-29 - The Gargano Peninsula of Puglia (heel of the "boot") where I will visit Vieste, Foggia, and Lucera (the town of my Italian great-grandfather)
Spet. 30-Oct. 1 - Alberobello and Bari in the southern region of Puglia (the bottom of the heel of the "boot")
Oct 2 -3 - After my longest drive of the trip from Alberobello to the north of the central Italian region of Italy, Umbria, where I will visit Lake Tresimino, Orvieto, Perugia, Assisi and more
Oct. 4 - 6 - The eastern side of Tuscany including Florence, Arezzo, Poppi, Scarperia, Poppi, and more
Oct. 7-9 - The more western and southern side of Tuscany including San Gimignano, Siena, Montepulciano, Certaldo, and Volterra
October 10 - back to a campsite right oustide the city center of Pisa
October 11 - plane ride back to the states and the beginning of my next adventure in becoming a Texan and bringing what I learned in Italy to the people of Austin
You may notice that I've neglected many main tourist areas such as Rome, Venice, Milan and the Amalfi coast, as well as the northern top of Italy. This is for many reasons including TIME, but also, I've been blessed and fortunate to see Rome, and Venice already, and I'm scared to death of driving ANYWHERE NEAR Naples and the Amalfi region. Also, I've chosen areas I'm hoping will help me learn more about the different Italian provincial cuisines I'm most interested in and will be most applicable to my restaurant and, hopefully, career (hence, why I wont be going to the northern regions of Veneto, Piedmont and Lombardy). As far as the Naples region and Calabria, I'm extremely fortunate to be partnered with and to learn from my business partner and friend Mike Valentino who owns a trattoria and pizzeria in Sarasota and has some of the best Neapolitan-American (southern Italian) cuisine and pizza Ive ever had, including during my time in the Naples region as well as my time in the New York/New Jersey area. Also, I have my friend Nicole and her family from Calabria who have taught me a lot about southern Italian cuisine already, and I hope to learn much more from them in the years to come.
Two Days Before the Rest of My Life
It's 2 am Thursday morning. Two days before my trans-atlantic flight to Pisa Italy which will be the starting point of my adventure in a Tuscan cooking school and the subsequent three weeks I will be spending driving a little hatchback Italian Lancia Musa through the Italian countryside on my quest to learn... and, needless to say, I'm having trouble sleeping.
I chose the word "learn" for a reason. This is what I want to do.
Before I'm in the middle of having my hands covered in flour kneading ciabatta or explaining to a confused Italian waiter why I would like to know how the wild boar bolognese I'm eating is prepared, I should make my goals for this adventure and journey clear:
1. I am on a quest for the most incredible food and dining experiences to serve as inspiration for my future restaurant Lucera Trattoria & Pizzeria opening Fall 2009 (tentatively) in Austin, Texas. After an (albeit "short") lifetime of discovering my identity and purpose I have now found it in cooking great Italian food for myself and others. From the bottom of my heart I truly believe that eating is one of the few great pleasures in my life, and with all of my heart and soul, I want to be able to cook and serve food that will allow me to share this belief and experience with others.
2. Right now I have to admit I am quite cynical and upset about the state the world and humanity in general (perhaps this is why I find such comfort and beauty in things like fine food?). I believe, for my own sake, I need to rediscover what is beautiful in life, and I believe that I might just find exactly what I'm looking for in the kitchen of a rural Tuscan trattoria.
3. To prove that the best way to discover what is beautiful in humanity and also to discover one's SELF is not by removing oneself from civilization (re: the book and movie "Into the Wild" and the BS wannabe intellectual ideals it inspired - I hope to someday write a response to that book, and hopefully this trip will provide a lot of material), but by placing oneself into another civilization and the culture of another. I want to experience LIFE in Italy.
4. To have one hell of a time accomplishing these goals. I tam truly blesses to have such a wonderful family that has given me this opportunity, and from the bottom of my heart and I am so incredibly grateful and realize how fortunate I am. For this reason, I want to make the most of this experience I've been given and have the greatest time of my life, which, I know, is what my family wants for me, and I plan on doing just that.
I hope there's someone out there that maybe is interested in expl0ring these experiences and ideas with me. For this reason, I am going to try to update this blog as much as is physically possible, even if I have to go WAY out of my way to find an internet cafe while I'm in some of the more rural regions of my adventure through Italy. For the first week of my trip I'll be in the Toscana Saporita cooking school which has wireless internet, but after that, well, we will find out together.
I chose the word "learn" for a reason. This is what I want to do.
Before I'm in the middle of having my hands covered in flour kneading ciabatta or explaining to a confused Italian waiter why I would like to know how the wild boar bolognese I'm eating is prepared, I should make my goals for this adventure and journey clear:
1. I am on a quest for the most incredible food and dining experiences to serve as inspiration for my future restaurant Lucera Trattoria & Pizzeria opening Fall 2009 (tentatively) in Austin, Texas. After an (albeit "short") lifetime of discovering my identity and purpose I have now found it in cooking great Italian food for myself and others. From the bottom of my heart I truly believe that eating is one of the few great pleasures in my life, and with all of my heart and soul, I want to be able to cook and serve food that will allow me to share this belief and experience with others.
2. Right now I have to admit I am quite cynical and upset about the state the world and humanity in general (perhaps this is why I find such comfort and beauty in things like fine food?). I believe, for my own sake, I need to rediscover what is beautiful in life, and I believe that I might just find exactly what I'm looking for in the kitchen of a rural Tuscan trattoria.
3. To prove that the best way to discover what is beautiful in humanity and also to discover one's SELF is not by removing oneself from civilization (re: the book and movie "Into the Wild" and the BS wannabe intellectual ideals it inspired - I hope to someday write a response to that book, and hopefully this trip will provide a lot of material), but by placing oneself into another civilization and the culture of another. I want to experience LIFE in Italy.
4. To have one hell of a time accomplishing these goals. I tam truly blesses to have such a wonderful family that has given me this opportunity, and from the bottom of my heart and I am so incredibly grateful and realize how fortunate I am. For this reason, I want to make the most of this experience I've been given and have the greatest time of my life, which, I know, is what my family wants for me, and I plan on doing just that.
I hope there's someone out there that maybe is interested in expl0ring these experiences and ideas with me. For this reason, I am going to try to update this blog as much as is physically possible, even if I have to go WAY out of my way to find an internet cafe while I'm in some of the more rural regions of my adventure through Italy. For the first week of my trip I'll be in the Toscana Saporita cooking school which has wireless internet, but after that, well, we will find out together.
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