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.
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