fast drivers, slow food

okay, time to tell about the weekend. i've kept putting it off all afternoon; it's hard to decide where to start. i suppose that means we should probably just start at the beginning, then.

in many ways, all of last week was somehow odd, in a wonderful sort of way. i mentioned on wednesday that i had done things with friends every evening so far. well, thursday was no exception to the streak; markus did dinner over at his apartment, him and danesh and i, and we threw together a makeshift dahl that was _very_ tasty. then we sat around and talke for a while, and saw a really cool movie, called "mulholland drive." probably i'm going to have to get ahold of the twin peaks collection again, and we'll do the marathon again (none of the people here have seen or heard of it).

friday, i got up early and threw some clothes in my backpack, and enno came to pick me up with the rental car a little after seven (he got a little lost trying to find my apartment in the dark), and we were off. it was a long drive, by european standards (ha!), which means about four hours, but it was fun, and passed essentially without incident, save a touch of laughter and fairly continuous friendly conversation about anything and everything. i'm reminded of something a highschool teacher of mine once said. (there are whole books i could write about him, and how my understanding of how he was actually manipulating us kids has become clearer over the years, but he is not the subject of today's post. maybe some other day; maybe soon.) anyway, he said something to the effect of "a true friend is someone that you can drive for miles with, not even talking, and the silence isn't awkward, because you know each other so well that sometimes there just isn't anything that needs to be said; you already understand each other that well, and just feel comfortable and refreshed in each other's presence, without the necessity for words." now, i don't do too many road trips, but i think i have reached this point with at least one really good friend of mine. we used to spend hours in each other's dorm rooms, half the time working on separate and unrelated projects, but just content to spend time together. (you know who you are; i am talking about you, and i miss you, a lot.) everyone needs a friend like that.

so, the reason i brought all that up was just to explain that while enno and i aren't anywhere near that level yet, i get the impression that there's at least a slight possibility that we might be someday, and i'd like that. very much, in fact. but at least for now, weird silences in the car aren't really an issue, since we're still trying to learn stuff about each other, and basically, it just takes time to fill each other in on 20 some odd years life before we met. not to mention different continents, countries, and cultures. he still looks at me like i'm crazy when i ask him about dutch history and stuff, as if no one with any sense would care about such things, but lately i've been able to get him to tell me some stuff anyway.

a little after eleven, i pulled off the autostrade (we had switched drivers somewhere around the border) and, by all outward indications, into the bumper car funhouse at the carnival. in actualilty, it was just turin, and no worse than any other italian city i've seen (much better than rome, in fact). an added bonus is the fact that it's the only city in europe that i've seen so far where the streets almost resemble a grid. a sloppy grid to be sure, and neither the omnipresent construction nor the excessive amount of insane italian drivers made it easy to get from place to place, but at least it was pretty hard to get hopelessly lost. that is, of course, if you knew where you were to begin with, which, of course, we didn't. we had my map of all italy, which was only really good for freeways, and useless once we got to the city, and his little map of downtown on one page of the tour book, which would have been great, except that we had no idea whatsoever where we were in relation to anything shown on the map, or even if we were off the map to the north, south, east, or west. so we just blindly attempted to head for what we thought was the center, although we got stuck a couple of times due to streets that were one-way or closed for some market thing. also remember that i certainly don't speak any italian, and while wonderboy here is fluent in dutch, english, french, spanish, and probably other languages he hasn't told me about yet, he only _understands_ italian, and doesn't speak it (yet). this is me rolling my eyes. suffice it to say that asking for directions wasn't terribly successful. at one point, we passed a nice looking building with a sign reading "starhotel majestic," to which i joked, "hey, there's a hotel! probably not ours, though," since, of course, it wasn't.

about an hour later, we did finally locate our hotel, and get checked in, and signed up for a parking space. however, driving the car around to the other side of the square, where the entrance to the underground parking structure was, guess what we passed? oh, no, you're thinking. it can't be. but it was. the "starhotel majestic" is about 100 meters from the "hotel roma" where we stayed. i made some sound which was my throat's attempt to referee a groan and a chortle both attempting to escape simultaneously. when i pointed it out to enno, he about died laughing, but also made some apologetic comments, even though it was clearly not his fault at all. he seems so confident most of the time, but there are occasional brief moments when i wonder a little if he isn't hiding a few insecurities as well... i dunno. it's hard enough for me to figure out what it is that _i'm_ thinking most of the time, to say nothing of attempting to second guess what someone else might be thinking.

it was already after noon, and he was starting to worry that we wouldn't make it to the conference center on time for our one o'clock workshop. i kept telling him to relax, and think positively, while we walked as fast as we could to the train station. (how is it that, between the two of us, *i* ended up being the optimistic one? now *that's* strange.) anyway, he didn't know what to do, and wasn't interested in asking for directions, so i figured i couldn't do much damage, and grabbed the reigns for once, marching up to a newspaper stand and, using a primitive mixture of hand gestures and monosyllables, was able to string together "bigletti" and "lingotto." he sold us the tickets, and told us the platform number (numbers i can actually do, wonder of wonders), and attempted to pantomime something about validating them in the machine. we ran to the platform, and the train was about to leave, so i tried to stand in the way of the door to prevent it from closing while he tried to get the tickets stamped. he gave up and jumped on anyway, and then played ignorant naive foreigner with the conductor and talked him into initialing the tickets for a makeshift validation, instead of fining us. ha! he doesn't speak italian my ass! okay, so maybe his italian is nearly as broken as my french, but come on, what the hell is that? okay, i know, green isn't a very good color on me; i'll try to stop. seriously though---functionality in *five* languages?!? what am i supposed to say to that? "hi, my name is chris, and when i was little, i learned to make origami animals from a library book." gimme a break; there's just no competition.

we got off the train, and onto the free shuttle to the conference center, where we had to figure out how/where to pick up the tickets we had ordered. eventually we figured out that the problem was that somehow they hadn't charged us for the entrance fee, just the workshops. so we paid, and dashed inside, trying to figure out where to go, getting different directions from every new person we attempted to ask (once inside, though, most people could at least put up a good show of attempting to speak english, which was a great help in and of itself). finally, we found the "theatre of taste" room at about one minute after one. then we breathed a little easier, while waiting in line, and chuckling about having forgotten to adjust for "italian time."

alice waters (http://www.chezpanisse.com) was really cool, but it was apparent to me within the first couple of minutes that these people (including most of the people in the audience with us) simply don't live in the same universe as i do. she served us a jerusalem artichoke soup and a fennel salad with rabbit. it was utterly delicious, make no mistake about that, but even if you add a couple more courses, i'm not sure i could talk myself into paying $80 to go to her restaurant in berkeley. the jerusalem artichokes were interesting; i'd never even heard of them before, and if asked, i'd have said it looked like fresh ginger root, but when they cooked it up, it tasted kinda like a squash, but was green, and mellower but with perkier flavors, if that makes any sense. at one point her chef that was there with her said something about how he thought you got a different flavor out of garlic by chopping it instead of crushing it. i found that intriguing. probably warrents an experiment or two. the rabbit and fennel were definitely good, but not particularly spectacular, as far as i could tell. also, i was still trying to recover from watching them butcher the whole rabbit in front of us, to show us how they used nearly every part, without wasting anything (the small amount that didn't somehow make its way into the dish was collected and taken back to the farm to be used as compost/fertilizer). her big soapbox was about making sure that you use local products from near where you live, and learning to make do and be creative with the seasonal offerings of your specific location (while supporting sustainable and traditional production/farming methods).

then for the rest of the afternoon, we wandered around amoung the different vendor booths, trying the free samples, reading about cool stuff, and talking to the cool people who make the different stuff, from olive oil to real basalmic vinager (like the $50/oz stuff, or the others which were too expensive for them to let us sample) to olives, capers, anchovies, and all manner of strange and wonderful foods, most in their most pure or natural state. sure, i think it would be ideal to use the best ingredients all the time too, but i highly doubt there are more than a couple dozen people in the world who can actually afford to do this. at some point in there, we got some delicious pistachio ice cream, and later paid a couple euros to go into the wine tasting room, and had a few glasses.

as seven o'clock approached, we started making our way back to the pavillion where the taste workshop rooms were. unfortunately, we couldn't get there, since there was a large blockade of uniformed carabinieri (police) in our way. eventually we overheard that it was because prince charles was doing something (we never found out what) that required exclusive use of the street that we needed to cross in order to get into the pavillion. so we stood around chatting for another 25 minutes, and then they let us in, and we took our seats for "mozzarella plus." they walked us around the plate, and explained all the different stages and processes for making mozzarella as we tasted the different products. they were all made from real buffalo milk (as the definition of real mozzarella demands), and without any acid agents to assist curdling. you really could taste the difference. the first thing on the plate was actually a ricotta, but it was so amazing that i would choose a melon baller worth of that stuff over a full dish of ice cream any day. and that's saying something, for me. it was *that* good. then there were a couple of plain mozzarellas, one aged only a couple of hours, and the other almost a whole day (everything they gave us was produced the previous day on the dairy farm). again, fascinating flavors. i think the part that impressed me the most was the fact that eating the small piece we were given in several bites was more than enough to be satisfying/satiating; it was incredibly good, but you didn't feel like you needed more when it was gone. however much you had was perfect. this was very refreshing compared to all the lousy american products (not just cheeses but everything really) that are specially engineered (by evil corporations) to have aftertastes that somehow compel you to keep eating in order to maintain the flavor and stave off the after effects that inevitably leave you wanting more. the last two cheeses were a mozzarella with myrtle (accompanied by a fresh sprig of myrtle), and a smoked mozzarella. all of them were simply divine, but the ricotta remains the way to my heart.

we didn't stay too much longer friday evening; i think we left around 9:30. we were both very glad we hadn't driven to the convention center, as the mozzarella had been served with another three glasses of different (all very impressive) white wines. the bus system took a little figuring out, and then a little more, since apparently most of the drivers were on strike that day, but we made it back to the hotel without problems, dropped our stuff from the day, and went out to walk around the town. at first we were interested in finding a nice little place to grab some foccaccia or something, but you never find the things you want when you want them (but when you're not looking for them, it seems like they're everywhere). so we didn't manage to find food, and instead settled for some nice gelato. not quite as nice as giolitti's in rome, but still very good. a side note about gelato, though; in general, i think it's too soft for my taste. i love the fact that it has fresh fruits and whole bits of whatever in it, but i would prefer it to be frozen harder, like a hard ice cream. but even if it is soft, it's hard to complain when you've got a cone in your hand. [smirk]

it had been a pretty long day, so we came back to the hotel and crashed around 11:30ish, in our very nice little rooms.

speaking of crashing, it's after midnight now, which means i should probably do the same. the saturday half of the story will just have to wait for tomorrow, i guess.