Rome

I had a big agenda for Rome:  

1. Cacio e pepe (an cheese and pepper pasta made by emulsifying pasta water, oil and/or butter, and cheese)
2. Bucatini alla Amatriciana
3. Pasta carbonara
4. Tripa alla Romana (Roman-style tripe) (that’s cow intestines, for you knuckeheads out there)
5. Codo alla vaccinara (braised ox tail with celery)
6. Carciofi alla Giudea (deep-fried Jewish style artichokes)

These are also things that simply must be eaten while in Rome. I’ve had the carbonara before (and I also make it myself), but everything else would be new. Oh, I also wanted to go to the Borghese Gallery, Trastevere, and the Jewish Ghetto while I was there, too.

I made pretty good time, and was able to tick off all the items on my list. The ox tail and carbonara, were great, and the rest was varying degrees of tasty. On top of the to-do list, I also covered deep fried squash blossoms stuffed with cheese and anchovies, and pollo alla Romana, neither of which was special. The thin-sliced beef tongue with mustard sauce from the wine bar also gets and honorable mention, although that is not a typically Roman dish. The Cacio e Pepe I actually had to take two different stabs at. The first time I had it was at the hidden place without a sign in the Jewish ghetto. The fried artichoke and fiore di zucca there were great, and the taste my pal Christian that I met there gave me of his meatball with peas was phenomenal, but the cacio e pepe was a huge disappointment. It was dry, like they had just cooked noodles and sprinkled cheese on. There was no emulsion, and really no sauce at all. Not only was this not what I was expecting, it wasn’t that great. Having already filled up on two different fried antipasti, I didn’t even finish it all so I could save some room for my secondo (more on that later). So the next day I went back to the fancier place with the good carbonara and codo I had been to the day before, hoping they would have a better take. This place came through. The sauce was tasty, light, and had a perfect emulsion, making it not too thin, and not too thick, heavy, and gloopy. I’ve been experimenting with this dish at home, and this definitely gave me the standard which I’m shooting for. I was also able to pry some intel from the waiter on how they prepare it, so I can better replicate it at home. There are a couple minor differences in approach between theirs and mine, so hopefully I can tune mine up a bit.

I find that people appreciate the amount of interest I show in the local food, and that’s what sparked the conversation with Christian at the place in the Jewish ghetto. We ended up having a lively chat, with him translating the admonitions I was getting from the waitress for not finishing my cacio e pepe because I was saving room for my meat course. I was able to follow the conversation a bit in Italian, and asked Christian to confirm that they were in fact talking about what I big pussy I was for not cleaning my plate. He informed me, “No, this doesn’t translate directly; in Italian you don’t call someone a ‘big pussy’, you say they are a ‘half pussy’”. So I’m apparently a half-pussy. These linguistic differences really are charming, aren’t they? I guess I should get ‘half-pussy’ carved on my tombstone.

Walking out from lunch, I then got the most quintessentially Roman moment of the trip as Christian, who was in town on a business meeting from Parma and was dressed in a suit, went to refresh himself in the fountain in the square. Seeing well-dressed business men giving themselves a spritz in the public fountain just isn’t something you see in Chicago.

So that wrapped up the trip. Lots of good food, no new Italian shoes, and met lots of new people. Meeting all the new people was great. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the shoes next time.

Firenze and San Gimignano

In Florence, I saw what is quite possibly the single greatest thing I had ever seen in my life:

Porchetta!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And not the half-ass porchetta I’ve made by wrapping a pork loin in a large sheet of skin-on pork belly, but a honest-to-god whole deboned pig body with the head still on rolled up in its entirety like a huge, pig-headed torpedo. Boom!!!!!!!!!!!! It was pretty tasty, too. Note quite so impressive, however, was the steak Fiorentina. It was pretty much a plain, not particularly high quality steak. My expectations actually weren’t all that particularly high, but I figured it would be a crime to have come to Florence twice and still never had it. All my Italian peeps had always said that while lots of our vegetables are bullshit, we do have better steak than in Italy, and I can see why. It wasn’t bad, but when you’re 22-euro steak is significantly outshined by the bruschetta with cavolo nero and white beans you had for antipasto, you’re not really getting your money’s worth. Other meal highlights were a tripe salad, porcini soup, and grass salad I had for lunch on Saturday, and the pizza that Caterina’s cousin Guiseppe took us out for Saturday night.

San Gimignano, was a pretty cool little place, but lunch there was a disappointment. I was jazzed to hit this fancy-pants restaurant my gourmet travel guide had written up, but it didn’t quite live up to the billing. The town definitely did though—very picturesque, and very, very touristy. The bus ride out there and back was also a nice way to check out the Tuscan countryside and to help out a group of Malaysian tourists with travel trip for a future trip to the US.

Aside from not coming through on the bistecca alla Fiorentina, Florence also failed to deliver on the shoes. I basically had two high-level objectives for this trip. 1: eat and drink and much good stuff as possible. 2: get some stylish Italian shoes. I’ve been looking in every major city I’ve been to so far, and nothing. They’ve got lots of nice stuff, but not items that are my style and what I’m looking for. Leather goods are big in Florence, so that may have been my best shot. Only Rome left at this point.

Bologna and Ravenna

Rolled into Bologna after Turin. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some tagliatelle al ragu. It didn’t disappoint. I also had the milk-braised pork loin I was dying to try. I had tried making this at home, and had screwed it up in fine fashion. Never having actually eaten it prepared by anyone else, I wasn’t really sure what the actual target was, though. It turns out I didn’t screw it up nearly as bad as I thought. More surprisingly, I discovered that my Bolognese sauce holds up pretty well against the standard.

The next day, I took a day trip to Ravenna. The big attraction there is all the old Byzantine-era mosaics scattered across a couple old religious sights. They were certainly something. Most notable in the frescoes was Jesus’ full-frontal nudity in two different baptismal scenes. The savior had some pretty impressive abs, but let’s say that his another endowments were somewhat less impressive. One would think the son of the all-powerful being that created the universe would be hung a little lower. Jesus’ junk aside, the mosaics were pretty impressive, particularly considering their age. Most were clocking in at around 1400-1500 years old.

The next day I caught up with my friend Caterina in Bologna. The major part of the plan was to check out the market. My gourmet travel guide had really trumpeted Bologna as THE place for food-geek shopping. I must say I was a bit underwhelmed. They had some pretty beautiful little shops (one in particular had some of the prettiest pancetta I have ever seen pressed old-school style between a couple tree branches), but nevertheless it didn’t quite live up to the billing. I personally found the market in Padova to be more impressive. It was still worth checking out, though.

Other eat-treats I had in Bologna included the gnocchi al gorgonzola, and a roasted rabbit. I was actually dying to try the coniglio (rabbit) alla cacciatora, but apparently they only make that in the winter. Ditto for the ossobuco. Major downer. I was thinking I was going to miss out on the stinco di maiale, too (slow-roasted pork shank), but luckily I was able to find it at another place. And it rocked. It wasn’t as good as the skin-on roasted pork shank with kraut I had in Bolzano, but whenever you put a whole roasted pork shank in front of me I’m going to be a pretty happy guy.

The Rick Steve’s vs. Lonely Planet Death Match

This trip has finally allowed me to answer the eternal question of which guide book is best. I have always been a Rick Steve’s traveler, and have used his books for every European trip I’ve taken. However, he only covers Europe, so whenever I’ve traveled in Asia or South America I’d used Lonely Planet. I never thought it was as good, but thought maybe that wasn’t a fair judgment since having only used LP to travel in the developing world and only having used RS in Europe I was comparing apples and oranges. There were other things that always made me suspicious of Lonely Planet, most notably the fact that they regularly include coverage of places which Rick Steves doesn’t even include in his book aside from saying “This place is a tourist trap and a headache, don’t go there”. I appreciate these little insights.

However, on this trip, I’m getting to places in Italy that aren’t covered by RS, so have used LP in those locations (Rick Steves only covers enough location for about 5 weeks in a country like Italy, which I’ve already shot over between my two trips). So we now have an apples to apples, Italy guide to Italy guide comparison between Rick Steves and Lonely Planet, and the verdict is in: Lonely Planet sucks balls. Use Rick Steves whenever you can.

Piedmont

I made Turin, Piemonte my home base for the next couple days. I had one primary objective to accomplish while I was here—drink as much Barolo as my wallet and liver could tolerate until I had to leave for Bologna. The stuff is rarely available by the glass or in a tasting in the US, and when it is, it’s invariably at a price that even by the glass will completely destroy your budget. To that end, on my first day here I took a day trip to Alba and Asti. Alba, as in barbera d’Alba, and Asti, as it Asti spumanti, moscato d’asti, and barbera d’Asti (which is entirely different from barbera d’Alba, you brutes!!!!!!). While I’m a big fan of barbera and it’s a regular drink of mine at home, I was planning on concentrating all my euros and available liver points on the blockbuster Barolo and Barbaresco wines of the region, and was hoping to taste as many as I could while there.

Unfortunately, Italians aren’t quite on the tasting bandwagon yet. In both towns, I was unable to find a place where I could get wines in tasting portions. I found a place in Alba that was selling by the glass, but drinking whole glasses at a time you burn through your euros and liver points pretty quickly (not to mention wearing out your palate too fast), and the options there were middling. I asked at the TI, and they said the towns of Barolo and Barbaresco each have a place you can taste their eponymous wines, but these are extremely remote and have completely irregular hours. It sounded like these were a similar setup to the deal I found in Montalcino when I was there back in 2006, and was exactly what I was looking for, but really wasn’t doable at the time. It almost sounds like you’d have to have a car to get there, and by the time I tasted I would be so blasted off my ass that driving would be out of the question, anyways. It was still a good trip, however. I had the best meal yet of the trip at the osteria in Alba I went to for lunch, which included the local tajarin pasta and a killer melon soup with berries that I’m definitely going to recreate when I get home. Best of all, there were pouring a Barolo by the glass which I drank with my veal secondi which knocked my socks off. The veal was unimpressive, but the wine would have made the trip worth it by itself. It was also nice to see the rolling Langhe hills and all the vineyards from the bus going place to place. Asti was also a neat little town.

The next day seeing Torino was on the agenda. Turin is a pretty interesting place. Its heyday came much later that that of most Italian cities, and as such, it feels much more like Vienna, Paris, or Buenos Aires that it does Florence or Rome. There’s lots of art nouveau and other turn of the 20th century style architecture there. This is most clearly evident in all the beaus-arts and art nouveau cafes in the city. So as an obligatory start to the day, I hit one of the quintessential cafes for a cappuccino and a pastry. These people sure know how to do coffee and donuts.

It’s clearly evident when walking around Torino, though, that the former elegance of the city is somewhat faded. Aside from being one of the culinary capitals of Italy (due to its Barolo, Barbaresco, white truffles, and being the home of the international slow food movement), it’s primarily and industrial city. Fiat is based here, and Torino is referred to many as the ‘Detroit of Italy’. The comparison is apt. While is doesn’t have the kind of extreme urban decay that Detroit has experienced the past four decades, the impact of the slow decline of the Italian manufacturing sector is plainly evident. The locals are also very matter-of-fact on this subject (if anything, I’d say there a little overly harsh). While still a very pleasant place, it’s clear that the economy is not what it once was and that the money no longer flows like the fine espressos in all the city’s aging, gilded cafes. Everything I read about Torino compared it to Paris or Vienna in style, but due to the economic factors it reminded me very much of Buenos Aires, both being cities that were booming in the earlier 1900s and with architecture to match, but that are well past their economic primes.

I would be remiss not to mention the important religious artifact in Torino, the shroud of Turin. They’ve got a whole museum dedicated to the thing, which I wasn’t sure if I was interested enough in investing the time in seeing. They did have a copy in the Torino Cathedral that I checked out, and that decided it—I was not going to be spending my time in the shroud museum. There were a bunch of people praying to it, and it took a not insignificant amount of willpower to not be a snotty prick and point out “Um, dude, you know it’s a copy, right?”. Was it even a good copy, or more appropriately was it done to scale? If it was, then Jesus must have been about 20 feet tall because he had a head the size of a pony keg. It was an impossibly clear and crisp image, too, right down to Jesus’ groovy, retro-style porn ‘stache which you could see as clear as if a very talented artist had made a detailed pencil sketch on paper. The impression of the copy left me finding the thing to be only slightly more credible than the images of the Virgin Mary people find in potato chips and are selling on eBay, so I decided no shroud museum for me.

Even better than the Selleck-eque porn ‘stache of the savior was lunch on Tuesday. The dining guide I’m relying on for lots of food-related advice on the trip, “Italy for the Gourmet Traveler", had a recommendation for a very casual osteria in a working class neighborhood far off the tourist path. I show up at the place, and at first was a little confused as some guy who was sitting down eating with his wife asks me “mangiare?” Huh? The guy was the owner, manager, waiter, and host for the place, and was just sitting there chowing away on his lunch. Come to think of it, though, these probably aren’t appropriate terms. The overall experience was much more like going and eating over at somebody’s house that it was to actually eating at a restaurant. Every single person eating in the place was either family or an old family friend that lives in the neighborhood. The food was surprisingly good for as cheap as it was. Because I was apparently the first tourist that had ever set foot in the place, they were pretty interested in me and we spent a good three hours hanging around, eating, drinking, and yapping the afternoon away. By the time I stumbled out of there around 3:30, I think I had had a conversation with half the damn neighborhood. Good times.

Lake Como

After Verona I headed to Lake Como for Alessandro and Christina’s wedding. Lake Como was a very picturesque, relaxed place. It would normally be a little too slow and sleepy for me for a vacation destination, but the main event there was, of course, the wedding. Alessandro and Christina really raised the bar on the wedding. The ceremondy was in an old baroque church in a nearby town, the reception was a block away in a castle high on a hill overlooking the lake, and they had great wine and killer food. Normally, wedding food is at best middling, but some of the best things I’ve eaten while here were included in the spread. Probably my favorite was the lardo, which is a prosciutto-like cured meat made from the part of the pig that is all fat (yes, it literally is cured pig lard). The baked ricotta was also killer. The bride and the groom both looked great, too!

The day after the wedding. I headed into Milan for just one night on my way out of town. Alessandro’s buddy Andrea that I had met at the wedding had invited me out to catch up with him and his friends, which was a great time. I was also very pleased with the fact that we went to only the second bar I’ve ever been to outside of the US that has decent bourbon.

Verona, Padova, Vicenza, Bolzano

Verona was a great choice for my home base for the next 5 nights. Despite all the touristy Romeo and Juliet schlock, it’s a charming little place. Even with all the hokey tourist groups chasing after kitsch from a fictional story written 400 years ago by an Englishman that probably never set foot in the city, it had a vibrant local scene. I think it was a good move to get here a week earlier than I had originally intended to avoid the huge opera festival that is held in the city’s 2000 year Roman arena, as well (made it a lot easier to get into the restaurants I wanted to without having to fight with all the opera geeks flooding the city and packing the 25,000-seat stadium).

From Verona, I took a few day trips to the surrounding area. One day I went to Padua (Padova for the locals) to check things out there. Being a Sunday and given the fact that Padova is a bit off the main tourist trail, the city was almost completely dead. It was a little eerie. You hardly got a whiff, even of the 60,000 students from the local university that are typically overrunning the place. The real issue, though, was that I realized only after heading there that the famous market in Padova isn’t open on Sunday. I still got the see the big sights (Scrovengi Chapel and the Basilica of St. Anthony, but no market. All the restaurants I wanted to go to were also closed! I decided to save that for another day and get to Vicenza to check out the snazzy architecture there before heading back to Verona for the evening.

I was pretty jazzed about seeing the market in Padova, so I headed back the next day. It ended up being a good move, as I was able to make a friend on the train ride there, too. I spent a couple hours checking out the market and chowing down of some of the local produce. There was lots of pretty interesting stuff, but the big winner there was all the horse meat, a regional specialty. Butcher shops has huge chunks of horse steak, massive equine ribs, and lots of this stuff called sfilaccii, a finely shredded, smoke, dried horse meat that you can toss in little salads.

Not feeling like chomping down on uncooked horsemeat at the market, I caught up with my friend for lunch, had an amazing pair of octopus with some kind of tomato and balsamic vinegar sauce and grilled polenta, and also some of the local bigoli noodles with a tomato-based duck sauce. After that, I got a little local tour of the town. The highlight was watching one of that day’s doctoral graduates from the university be humiliated in the fashion traditional to the University of Padova. She had to dress up in a goofy cardboard box costume and read a large poster with her “biography” on it while doing shots and while her friends dumped handfuls of flour and ice water down the neck of her costume. Apparently it is typical for the poster biography to have lurid details regarding past sexual escapades and other private matters in it. All of this is done in front of the graduate’s entire family, who were there for the more formal parts of the graduation process. My friend, also a graduate student at the university, said she had mixed feelings about her impending graduation date.

On the third day in town, I caught the train up to Bolzano. Being a former part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it feels a lot more Germanic than Italian. For lunch there, I chowed down on a massive, slow-roasted skin-on pork shank with sauerkraut and the local speck-infused dumplings. Go figure that on my trip to Italy so far the single best thing I’ve eaten was essentially German food (although the octopus from Padova was a very close second).

While in the area, I was also able to take a wine-tasting trip to the nearby Valpolicella wine region. Given the fact that many of the winemaking techniques in this area are very unique, if was both informative and tasty (for those not in the know, they actually lay the harvested grapes out to dry for a few months and raisinate them a bit before pressing to make the local amarone and reccioto wines). We also got to see quite a bit of the countryside.

Lake Geneva

The train ride to Lake Geneva was pretty sweet. Lots of good views, particularly when you arrive in the Lake Geneva area. It’s got it all—a huge, perfect blue lake, vineyards all over the countryside (and often even in people’s front yards), castles surrounding the lake, all with a great alpine backdrop. The city I was staying in, Lausanne, was great too. It has a large old center with tons of old buildings, quaint little cobbles lanes, and outdoor cafes. Also, it must be said, that there was a dramatic uptick in the concentration of good-looking women. I think I saw more nice honey-babies in the first ½ hour there than I had in the four full days I’d spent in the other big cities, combined.

Aside from the profusion of honey-babies, there was a dramatic difference in the vibe as soon as you crossed the boundary into Francophone Switzerland from the German speaking side. You could immediately tell that people were much chattier and boisterous. The first train station I was you could see a young couple kissing and flirting on the train platform, something that I don’t think you be too likely to see in Zurich. It was also much more ethnically diverse. Even the architecture was different. On the train, the minute we crossed the linguistic boundary in the countryside, not only did the train conductor start making announcements in French first instead of German, you could also see all the Germanic, half-timbered homes in the countryside replaced by the French, gray-stone style.

The first night in town I took the train into Geneva to meet up with my friend Laure. Being an author, she’s got lots of arty friends, so we started the night hopping through a couple different parties at art galleries. Afterwards, we went out for dinner and headed to a Philipino karaoke bar, of all places. After we closed that out, we hit another club, by which time, of course, I had missed the last train back to Lausanne, so I ended up crashing at her friends place.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a very early start on the next day. By the time I got back to Lausanne, took care of some todos (laundry, workout), and got cleaned up, it was nearly 4:00. No matter, as Lausanne is a pretty small place and it didn’t take too long to see. I polished off the tour of the city with what was definitely the best meal I’ve had on the trip so far. At this very traditional French-Swiss place, I got the ‘calves head’. I really didn’t know what to expect here, but it was apparently a specialty of both the region and the restaurant, and they were also out of horse meat (a common Swiss staple I had yet to try on this tour), so getting it was a no-brainer. I was glad I did. It was essentially just boiled scraps of meat and sinew scraped off of the calves head, served with basic simmered potatoes and a mustardy vinaigrette you pour over the tops. I know it doesn’t sound too appealing, but it was really great. A couple pieces were just pure tendon, fat, and connective tissues, and I didn’t quite finish all of those as they were too rich and gelatinous for my taste, but the parts that had at least 10% meat to them were really great.\

The other big culinary highlight was the market the next day. I had a long train ride with two connections to Verona the next day, and was planning on eating the last of my provisions I brought from the US. As luck would have it, though, when I showed up at the metro stop to catch a ride to the train station, the plaza it was on was filled with the regular Saturday morning market. I was able to pick up a beautiful small loaf of some kind of unidentifiable whole grain bread (it turned out to be walnut), some fraises de bois (the very small, sweet-tart, intensely flavored wild strawberries), and a nice wedge of local Gruyere cheese. I could actually smell the cheese cart well before I saw it. I caught a wiff of that unmistakable funk of ass and rancid feet, so I immediately knew there was good cheese in the near vicinity. What I had was easily one of the best cheeses I’ve tasted in a while. It was a 3-year old Gruyere, so it had been aged more and was much denser and richly flavored than any of the Gruyere I’d had before. It almost reminded me of parmesan, and had a similar crystallization in the cheese and potent flavor. (By the way, if your parmesan doesn’t have crystals in it, you’re eating bullshit. And if you’re, god forbid, eating that abomination that comes in the green can, then you need help.) Along with the small bottle of wine I bought at the train station in order to use up the rest of my change in francs, this made for a pretty satisfying little snack on the train from Lausanne to Italy.

Berner Oberland, pt 2

So I was able to check out Berne and Murten two days ago. The weather forecast for that day was still looking bad and was clearly not a good day for mountain hiking, so I caught an early train from Interlaken and headed to Murten first. It was a cute little medieval town about 90 minutes away. It was quite, but very small. I had the whole town covered in an hour. After that, I backtracked through Berne, the Swiss capital. Berne was definitely the most interesting city I’ve seen in Switzerland yet. It’s an extremely attractive city. It’s maintained a lot of its medieval architecture, is largely traffic-free due to the efficient trams that are buzzing all over the place, and is very compact and walkable. I caught a lunch at an old-school Swiss place about two blocks away from the parliament building. There appeared to be a couple power lunches going on while I was there. I had the typical mix of meats (in this case veal, liver, and kidneys) in a mushroom cream sauce with rosti that appears to be a standard fixture at places serving classic Swiss cuisine. It was good, although not nearly as good as the version I had the night before in Interlaken with pork and morels.

After lunch, I walked around for a couple hours, checking out the town. For a while, the sky had apparently cleared up as I could see the mountains near Interlaken 30 miles away, clear as could be. The mountain was giving me the finger again. Fortunately, it only lasted for about an hour and clouded up again, as I would have been seriously pissed at the Swiss weather service had I wasted a good hiking weather day in the city.

Wednesday was my last shot. I got up in the morning, and saw the sun peeking out and was hopeful. I made my way up the mountain but it was cloudy and raining by the time I got there. That ended up being the pattern for the rest of the day. Sometimes the sun would come out and small parts of the mountain view I was there to see would poke out in small pockets behind the clouds, the rest of the time it was completely clouded over. The side of valley I was hiking on this day had a lift to its highest peak where you supposedly had great views of the three big peaks on the other side of the valley, but I never took it up. While from time to time you had partial visibility in the lower part of the mountain I was on, it seemed that the higher altitudes were completely shrouded. The high-altitude lifts here are actually very expensive (this one would have been about an $80 round trip), so I asked a couple people returning from the peak and they confirmed—you couldn’t see jack up there.

I finished the day by hiking to the small mountain town of Gimmelwald. Most of the towns in the area had long ago gone touristy and been overdeveloped, but Gimmelwald avoided this by apparently pulling some strings to get a bogus avalanche zoning restriction, keeping the big developers out of town. They do see some tourism, having a couple hostels with a couple people selling stuff out of their houses (one was selling fresh alpine milk which I was dying to try, but unfortunately she wasn’t home at the time). It had a pretty amazing setting, with a 400 meter tall sheer cliff on the other side of the valley dominating the view. My guidebook had actually recommended sleeping here, although I’m glad I stayed in Interlaken. While Gimmelwald was a great place to visit, it’s a little too slow, small, and rustic, and had way too many cow pies laying around for me to want to stay there for 4 full nights.

This morning, then, I caught the train out of town. Wouldn’t you know, it turned out to be a perfect hiking day with a nice, sunny, clear sky. I looked at the mountain at the end of the valley as I was walking to the train station, and there it was, giving me the finger again. Unfortunately, my plans aren’t changeable as I’m catching up with my friend Laure in Geneva this evening, and staying any longer would mean that I’d miss out on seeing her (not to mention having to eat my $110 hotel reservation on Lake Geneva). I wasn’t really in the mood for repeating either of the hikes I had taken on the two days I was there, anyways. The hikes were still nice. I got to see all the wildflowers and the fields filled with cows, tingling with the sound of dozens of cowbells, the little alpine towns, and got to see enough partial hints of the scenery that I was able to piece together the whole thing in my mind. In the 4 days though, I never once got the big panorama scene that is really the whole point of coming here. I can’t help feeling a little robbed. I guess that’s how it goes, sometimes. Next time I’m traveling and doing something so dependent on the weather, I guess I can try to build even more flexibility into my schedule.

BTW - photos for this trip are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/SwitzerlandItaly

Berner Oberland, pt 1

So I got into Interlaken two nights ago. This is alps country. The whole point of being here is to get your ass up into the mountains, hike around, and take fancy photos with pretty little meadows of yellow flowers with snow-capped white peaks in the background. In these particular digs, the main event is the three peaks at the end of the long valley which you can see from the town way down below. I had two days planned out. On one day I was going to hit the side of the valley with the big peaks, take some cog-wheeled trains and a couple lifts up the mountain, go for a 90 minute hike on the ridge on one side of the valley approaching the peaks, and from there, catch the train that takes you way up to the peaks of the mountains. They had actually cut a big, 5 km tunnel through the mountain so a train can take you way up into the peak of the mountain at around 1100 feet. It's a pretty slick operation. Particularly when you consider that the built all this crap in the 1800s. These Swiss sure are crafty. They have these special cog-wheel trains that have a 3rd track with teeth in it that a big gear on the train connects to in order to propel it up the mountain. They have to do this because a regular train would never have the traction to get up such a steep incline. In addition to these and array of cable cars and other lifts they also have scattered around, you can get pretty much anywhere on the mountains. Anyways, being able to get to the top of the mountain is really the main event here, so that was planned out for a day (it’s a full day thing, as it takes 2 ½ hours to get there going just one way with no stops for exploring or hiking). I was then going to spend another day exploring the mountains on other side of the valley where there's more great hiking, a bunch of picturesque little towns with tons of cows, some other peaks (albeit ones that aren't quite as high), and supposedly great views of the big boys on the other ridge. In addition, I was going to take a day trip to a nearby city a day while I was here. I'm in the alps three days, so I thought I could do the two days on the mountain, and could hit the city on whichever of the three days I want. That way if the weather was crappy I'd just hit the city on that day, and save the nice weather for the mountain activities.

Of course, this brilliant little plan falls apart if the weather sucks more than one of the three days I'm here. I got in in the afternoon two days ago, explored the lower part of the valley a little bit, and then planned out my time. And the forecast was: rainy on day 1, even more rainy on day 2, not quite so rainy on day 3. Shit. Now I had to roll the dice and see when I want to use my city day. So this morning when I looked out my window and saw the sun trying to peak out and checked the forecast for days 2 and 3 (still very rainy on day 2, still not so rainy day 3), and figured I still needed to save my flex day in the city for day 2 when I’m expecting the worst weather. So I quickly packed up my gear and caught a train up into the mountains. Well, in my case you actually have to catch a couple. I'm staying in Interlaken, which is the big city on the valley floor. (Big as in maybe 3000 permanent residents.) From there, you have to catch a regular train to a much smaller town up between the mountains. From there, you can then start catching your combination of cog wheel trains or lifts to whatever part of the area you're getting to, be it a hiking destination, the resort towns up the mountains, or one of the little alpine herder huts where the people rent out their beds on the side to supplement their income from making selling cheese and milk. So after 30 minutes on a regular train, another 30 on a cog-wheel train, and about 20 minutes on a lift, I'm on my hike. And unfortunately, the weather didn't hold out. As soon as I got to the start of the hike everything got clouded over, and it pretty much stayed that way until I had to leave for the day. The hike was nice, and I only got rained on a bit, but I was deprived of all the great views because everything was covered in mist. Every once in a while I'd see part of the mountains peak out from behind the clouds, but nothing that I could get a decent picture of (hence the complete lack of photos). It was the same deal after I touch the train through the mountain tunnel to actually get up to the peaks. On the southern side it was a little clearer, so I at least got a look at the big glacier there, but you couldn't see squat on the valley side. Major drag. Supposedly, on a clear day you can see all the way to the Vosge Forest in France and the Black in Germany. I stuck around at the top for about 4 hours just in case the weather would clear up eventually, but no dice. I finally had to start heading back down to Interlaken at around 4:00.

To add insult to injury, the sky cleared completely up while I was eating dinner at around 7:30 this evening. I'm actually sitting at the desk in my hotel room writing this right now, looking through my window at the big peaks 5 miles away, and they couldn't be clearer. The mountain is giving me a big middle finger.

We'll see how it goes, though. I was actually rained on the half day that I got here when I was exploring the lower valley, too, so this makes 3 of 4 days that I've been rained on or otherwise screwed over by the weather here on this trip. Not such a big deal in Zurich, but not being able to see anything above 5000 ft really takes away from the experience here. I figure the rain's got to pass at some point, so hopefully I can get a great weather day on Wednesday when I'm back up in the mountains again.

Zurich and Luzern

Got into Zurich late yesterday morning. The flight was good, and with drugs I was able to get a good 6 hours sleep on the flight. Wasn't so lucky with the weather, though. It was clear when I arrived, but by the time I got from the airport to the downtown train station it was raining pretty hard. I checked the forecast on my iPhone and it didn't look like it was going to clear up any time soon, so I bought a cheap umbrella from one of the little stores in the station and headed out.

Wouldn't you know, 10 minutes after I arrive at the hotel (with very wet shoes and luggage), it stopped raining. I checked in, unpacked, got settled and took and nice long shower and refresh, and by the time I was ready to head back out it was just starting to rain again. That seemed to be the pattern the rest of the day. Didn't keep me from seeing the city, though.

Zurich is a pretty swank place. Pretty mellow, though. The Swiss joke that Zürich is 'zu reich' and 'zu ruhig' – that's a play on German words for "too rich" and "too quiet" (so says my guidebook). It's probably not far off the mark, though. It's definitely pretty rich, at least. You'd have to be in order to afford the food and real estate there. The shopping, too. The last half mile of the big shopping street nearest the lake is littered with high end boutiques (Prada, Miu Miu, Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, etc.). It probably has more high-end stores than Chicago, which is saying something when you consider that the population of the city is around 370,000, with only a round million in the entire metropolitan area. A bit off the main drag, some stuff in the window of a jewelry store caught my eye, so I checked that out. The necklace I liked was $4K, and that was pretty typical for just about everything in the store. Sorry, mom, you haven't been that good this year. I'm shocked a city that small is able to support that much high-end retail. Either you've got an awful lot of rich people, or an awful lot of people that spend way more money than they should on clothes. Or both.

Zurich is a pretty nice place, though. Not a whole lot in the way of sights, but a very attractive and livable city. I did get a bit out in the styx one night looking for a particular bar and it definitely got seedier; lots of girly bars, Eurotrash, and old dudes walking around with non-Swiss looking women that were apparently hookers. You've always got to sample the local color, you know. I mean sample as in wander and check out, not sample as in…you know.

Today I caught the train to Luzern. While Zurich was pleasant, Luzern definitely has a lot more historic charm. Half the buildings in town look like they were lifted off of a postcard. Just like Zurich, Luzern is situated on a lake where it empties into the mouth of the river. Actually, do you call it a mouth? I know you call the place where a river empties into a lake or ocean is the mouth. Does that mean the place where a lake flows into the river on the other end is, if the metaphor were maintained, ....the bung-hole of the river? It must be because you can't have two mouths on each end of the river. That being the case, why the hell is all the water entering the bung-hole of the river and exiting the mouth. That's gross. It's like the world's most highly-powered enema. Anyways, I'm beginning to figure out that just about every major city is Switzerland is located on a crystal clear, big-ass lake. Good living here, I tell you.

One thing that is not good living, however, is the king's ransom you have to cough up for dinner every night. Basic trattoria or brasserie level cuisine here can often set you back over $40 US for just the entree (no drink, no tip). Last night in Zurich I had some sauteed calves liver with a potato rosti (kind of like a latke). It was quite good, if you're into that sort of thing and like eating cow guts (I do), but this was a very basic, rustic dish made from organ meats, which of course are the cheapest part of the cow. $36. You could probably get something similar in Germany for $10-14 US. It was definitely a good move to bring some food with me on the plane in the spare room I had in my checked suitcase that I'm carrying my suit for the wedding in. Worked out pretty nicely, too. Today, after being gouged $24 for a hearty and satisfying yet grossly overpriced cafeteria lunch (a cafeteria!), I picked up a nice loaf of whole grain sunflower seed bread from a bakery and a couple apples from a corner store the chick at the hotel desk directed me to, and combined that with one of the packs of tuna for a nice little picnic dinner. I would have gotten a bottle of wine, too, as they had some reasonably priced selections at the store, but they were all full bottles and I wasn't in the mood for getting shit-faced by myself (I was also a little annoyed as there were bottles that I’m pretty sure would sell for less than two-thirds the prices in the US). If I can keep finding bakeries that are that good (the bread was awesome), I may just keep doing that every day. At least until I run out of tuna, I will.

Switzerland and Northern Italy

I'm on my way. Coming up to it, I think I was definitely feeling much more blasé about this trip. I messed up my back (again) two months ago, and I think the issues that I was having with it were dampening my enthusiasm for the trip. On several occasions I was seriously considering calling United and cancelling my flight, or since I had already committed to attending Alessandro and Christina's wedding in Italy at least altering it so I wouldn't be away for so long, due to my concern that it wouldn't hold up well with all the packing and unpacking I'll have to be doing on the trip. I got packed up okay, though, and it held up relatively well on the first leg of my flight (I'm currently on waiting for my connecting flight in Toronto's Pearson Airport), so it looks like I'll get by. I realize nobody wants to listen to me bitch and moan about my back, so this will be officially be the last time it will be mentioned on the blog for this trip.

I had a little different packing regime this time. Normally, I just carry a single backpack, sometimes one small enough to slide under the seat on the airplane, but I'm definitely going heavier this time. No way will I stuff one of my nice suits in a backpack for a month, so I've got my usual backpack setup, and a separate hanging garment-bag style suitcase with pretty much only the suit. Well, that, and a bunch of old sunscreen. I normally have to buy it on location because I can't get 3-4 weeks of sunscreen in my little 1 quart baggy of carry-on gels, and as I result, I've had 3-4 half-used bottles of sunscreen, some with labels in completely indecipherable languages, cluttering up my medicine cabinet. I can bring them in a carry on, so I've finally got a good opportunity to use them all up.

The other packing bonus I've got this trip is a bunch of food. I normally bring a little bit on any trip as I despise airport and airplane food. However, my BYOF on this trip is extending into the trip itself. Based on everything I've read, Switzerland is crazy expensive, and I'm in no mood to be dropping $15/day on a basic continental breakfast. So I've packed a bunch of envelopes of tuna, a box of cereal, a big pile of cliff bars, and some protein shakes. That way I'll have more money for drinking.

Should be arriving in Zurich in about 8 hours, and will be hitting Luzern after that. Should get my first real post up in a couple days.