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Published: August 15th 2012
Maria Chiara had been invited to two weddings in Italy two weeks apart from each other in the second half of June, with me as her Plus 1. What better excuse to escape the wettest British early summer in recorded history and get involved in the Italian heat wave!
Maria Chiara comes from Udine in Friuli - it may be very Northern but it can still be hot; during these weeks Italians had to search for increasingly formidable titles for the barrage of weather systems that brought cloudless skies and increasing heat. We arrived at the beginning of the "Anticiclone Africano" (African anti-cyclone) and left during the "Caronte" named after the boatman who rides damned souls over the River Styx on the way to the gates of the underworld!
Italians know how to do weddings. Renaissance churches, receptions in spectacular villas, multiple course dinners, live bands, local wines, elegant women and well-attired men. There is none of the ironic retro-chic of New Zealand or dangerously borderline colour combos of the English here. I took two suits with me, and two new ties - Maria Chiara had deemed all of my 30+ tie collection unacceptable. I played it dead-straight and
thankfully didn't shame myself. Maria Chiara looked spectacular at both weddings, naturally.
The Sunday after the first wedding we headed up to MC's parents' hometown Moggio, a small town nestled in a deep valley just inside the Eastern extent of the Alps extremely near Slovenia and pretty close to Austria. A good few hours were spent with extended family and friends eating prawns with spaghetti in a courtyard along long trellis tables. This was washed down with Friulano, the region’s finest endemic white grape variety, for which my love-affair continues to flourish. That evening MC's father was head-cook, which was extremely fortunate. Gianni is something of a local legend, partly for his remarkable ability to recall when and where to find wild mushrooms within the entire Friuli region, and also the fact that he is one of a dying breed who know the technique of making the famous deep-fried delicacy "frico" using only cheese, with no potato. Apparently large parties have been organised specifically revolving around eating Gianni's famous frico. On this occasion even he needed four attempts to make the perfect frico (which requires exactly the correct consistency of "montasio" cheese) but eventually I did become one of
the lucky few non-Friulani to have tried this culinary miracle.
Our first big jaunt was headed South-East towards Istria in Northern Croatia (also not far away!) The first stop on the way was Trieste. It's no wonder that the two biggest towns in Friuli (Udine and Trieste) don't like each other. Udine is flat, affluent, comfortable and provincial. Trieste is a port town: more international, bigger, hillier, wilder and dirtier. In "Fight Club" terms it was very much like Edward Norton vs. Brad Pitt.
There is no way of getting from Trieste to Istria without driving through Slovenia, a fact that Slovenians exploit by forcing all users to pay fifteen Euros for the two-week permit to use the Slovenian motorway system. Of course they are well aware that 99% of drivers will use this motorway system for no more than twenty minutes. We duly paid the fee and realised too late that we only needed a 2km stretch of motorway before the turn-off for Istria. Those 2km were utterly amazing though, almost transcendental. Please note my sarcasm.
Two and a half days in the Kamenjak National Park, a promontory at the tip of Istria, involved little more
Maria Chiara...
...introduces me to my first "Spritz"
than beaches and food. However, there was one of Europe's biggest Salsa festivals only 50 minutes up the road that very weekend. Knowing MC's addiction and passion from salsa dancing that did seem to me to be a remarkable coincidence. Brushing aside any suspicion I happily drove up with her to Rovinj and wandered its medieval streets for four hours while she got her salsa fix. She found me soundly asleep in the car at 2:30am!
Back in Friuli we had another piece of fortunate timing. Any Italian town of any quality whatsoever has its own annual festival, called a "sagra". That weekend was the sagra of San Daniele which, after Parma, is the most famous producer of prosciutto in Italy. More trellis tables, more feasting, more friulano!
Our second jaunt was deep into the heart of Central Italy, driving in MC's mum’s car listening to radio. On high rotation were Gotye (good), Maroon 5 (bad) and Adele (sad). Our first port of call was Bologna - nick-named the red city. The buildings' colours seemed to have taken inspiration from its world-famous ragu sauce. We toured the town seeing the famous churches (all closed), leaning towers (both closed)
Cypress trees in Tuscany
*Sigh* They make me feel wistful. and world famous restaurant (closed). Don't whatever you do visit Bologna on a Sunday afternoon! Despite that, and the searing heat, we still loved it.
We visited MC's cousin and her boyfriend who have a trendy penthouse apartment on Bellaria on the "Adriatic Riviera". For me, seeing Italians on holiday at the beach was quite surreal. Bearing in mind my home country New Zealand is almost empty, even the nice bits, I had never seen so many people. The beach stretches for many miles, with many thousands of beach chairs and umbrellas of various colours and designs. To meet a friend in New Zealand you would say "we are 50 metres from the big pohutakawa tree with a yellow chilly bin". In Italy it would be more like "we are in the third row on the left hand side of Bellaria Beach Huts 47 just by the petanque pitch and in front of the bar”. I wasn’t complaining though - it was so warm and the water so mild that I was happy to share the experience with 10,000 or so others!
We travelled through Emilia Romana, Le Marche, Umbria and Tuscany through a role-call of romantic medieval
Il Pozzo
Built during WWII and renaissance towns: Bologna, Gubbio, Spoleto, Assisi, Pienza, Montalcino and finally Siena. Where I really lost control and became a gibbering idiot was when I first had a sight of a field filled with sunflowers - possibly the quintessential vista of Central Italy. The novelty never really wore off even after we had seen another hundred or so such fields, framed by ochre churches, corn fields and cypress trees.
On our last day in Tuscany we drove through an array of romantic rural vistas and spectacular medieval hilltop towns. I was also exposed to the best and the worst of Italians, perhaps of humanity in general. We were in search of culinary mementos and followed an “Olive Oil” sign down a country lane to an imposing old homestead. The shop had all manner of goods produced on the farm. We were offered a sample of the olive oil, which we duly bought, and we tried their vin santo, buying that too. When I asked to try one of their red wines, the woman who was serving us had had enough. She wouldn't let me try the wine… wait for it… because "I hadn't tried them in the correct order".
Al fresco football
Spain vs Italy in the European Cup. I explained (with MC translating) that I am a wine merchant, i.e. a trained professional. Her reaction: "then I should have known better". She flatly refused to serve me again, and I changed my mind about the previous purchases. Only afterward in the car MC told me she had said "it's always foreigners" that commit these grievous sins. I had to try very hard indeed to not descend into a very black mood, having been a victim of a racial hate crime. Thirty minutes later we were driving through wine country towards the spectacularly situated town of Montalcino when I spotted the much loved and respected winery Casanova di Neri. We stopped in, and even thought it was late, the export manager was happy to open up the tasting room for us. He told us about the winery and let us try every wine they make (I tried the 2006 Cerratalto Brunello, 100 Points from James Suckling as wine geeks will no doubt know already). When the owner and winemaker Giacomo Neri stopped by I couldn't resist chatting him up. I told him I sell his wine in London and all manner of other schmooze that he blissfully smiled through,
presumably understanding very little. He casually reached over, opened a box, and handed us a bottle of 2005 Tenuta Nuova Brunello, gratis. I was speechless! After that outrageous act of generosity we were very pleased to spend our money here buying a bottle of olive oil, rather than at the previous farm from the devil-spawn snob lady.
Art-wise the highlight had to be seeing the Giotto frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi (n.b. that's St. Francis of Assisi rather than my guy: St. Francis Xavier). In fact, the two of us managed to visit seven churches in one day in Assisi - and survived. For a ninja turtle fan perhaps of greater interest was managing to see works by Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello all in one church, the Duomo in Siena.
There was more insight into the Italian character on the autostrada (motorway) on the return drive to Northern Italy. Between Siena and Bologna the autostrada pushes its way over and through the Apennines mountains that straddle the centre of the boot of Italy. I have never seen such chaos - it managed to be some of the fastest driving I've seen and some of
the slowest too - and indicating a lane-change is for sissies, apparently. No matter what speed you drive you are in a state of peril. Once we finally hit the flat of Northern Italy, the general driving style seemed to change instantly and the driving was normal again. By Italian standards.
In a dodgy bar near the Airport for Venice on our last evening we saw Italy capitulate to Spain in the final of the European Football Cup, but nothing could spoil our mood after two and a bit epic weeks. Italians on holiday seem to be happy doing absolutely nothing as long as it involves plenty of sun, so I must thank Maria Chiara for uncomplainingly appeasing my Antipodean wanderlust. Also a massive "grazie" to the Di Bernardo genitori (parents) for looking after me so well!
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