skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Almost since I arrived in Italy, Vayla and I have been talking about going snowboarding together. Until recently though, he's been busy studying for his ship captain's exam. Last Thursday he finally took the exam, and passed. He is now officially Captain Vayla and can drive (pilot, sail, maneuver?) any boat up to 20 meters in length anywhere in the world. Except off the coast of Somalia. There are pirates there. With the test out of the way and the weekend free, we planned a trip for Saturday.
As incredibly poncy as this sounds, this was the first one day snowboarding trip I'd taken in Europe. Everything else has been multi-day stays at various resorts. It felt familiar to be packing gear for just a day, meeting at seven, stopping for a quick breakfast along the way and changing in the parking lot. Could have been Meadows except instead of the Johnsons or Heinrichs or Ash I was with Vayla. The cronies may have changed but the scenery was similar. With new snow recharging the area on Thursday and Friday and relatively mild weather Saturday this timing was fortuitous and the day fantastic.
Frontignano is a little resort near the little town of Ussita in the Apennine Mountains (not spelled like it sounds but spelled like it looks) about 130 kilometers and 2 hours from Ancona. It's a bit bigger than Skibowl and a little smaller than Meadows. It has one quad, two singles (which I'd never seen before) and a few other doubles.
As fun as it looks.
The overall terrain is relatively intermediate with some offerings of good steepness and tree sections. For a day area it's plenty entertaining, the crowds are small and relaxed, the tickets are cheap and they have a sandwich at lunch that was amazing - big slices of crusty bread toasted over a coal fire with fresh grilled sausage from the same fire and thick slices of cheese slowly melting over the top, all made to order. The Bombardino I had for the mid-afternoon was lethal and delicious.
More please.
Slip sliding away.
Just another day hanging out in Italy.
Gratuitous Scenery Shots
Heads-up that this will be my last post for a few days because tomorrow morning early I board the train for Courchevel, France to visit this vision in pink:
I can't say how excited I am to see her even though she'll probably kill me for posting this picture. It's worth it. I just hope I can keep up with her.
Warning on ticket: Please do not touch or harm the natural environment in any way. Use of cameras or flashes is strictly prohibited.
Ummm, Valentina took the pictures inside the caves. She's the criminal. I would have taken my own, but moments before boarding the bus to the caves, my camera developed (GET IT!?!?) a conscience and refused to work so I had to rely on her to illegally document this natural wonder.
The Frasassi Grotte are some of Italy's largest and most famous caves and are located in the municipality of Genga, which is located in the province of Ancona, which is located in the region of Marche and to drive there from here is about 66 kilometers and takes about an hour. I went there last Sunday, the 7th, with Valentina and Giordano where we met Simona (who we work with) and her ragazzo Simone. The sciencey stuff: discovered and explored by a group of Ancona speleologists between 1948 and 1971, the caves are rich in water and particularly well endowed with stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the stalactites, or is it stalagmites, the ones that go up not down, are over 20 meters in height and considering that they grow 2mm per year, in a good year, that's both impressive and a testament to patience and perseverance. For some other sciencey reason, perspective is distorted in the cave. The caverns are huge it would seem, in fact, the entire Duomo from Milan would fit in the largest, with room to spare. (Make impressed noises now, our tour group did.) One of the pointy things that was pointed out to us by our guide was apparently over 100 meters away and was over 2 meters tall even though when I put my hand in front of my eyes and held my fingers apart to measure it, it only looked to be about 2cm tall! We were all suitably impressed.
There isn't much else that can be said about the caves that the photos don't say better. Actually, there is a lot more that can be said because the guide that was included in the cost of our 15 Euro ticket (along with the bus transfer to the caves) didn't stop talking during the nearly 3 hours we were on the tour. Like everything here, why use a few words when lots and lots will do? His constant narration may have been informative, but the incredible natural beauty said everything far better than he ever could and many times I wished he would have just been quiet and let us take in the surroundings and listen to the drip of the water slowly forming and growing the stalactites and stalagmites. Fortunately for me, he spoke in Italian so I could occasionally tune him out and take it all in. Unfortunately for her, Simona speaks Italian (go figure, along with English and Japanese) and had to listen and nearly lost her mind.
Simona
Valentina also speaks Italian (along with French, English, Spanish, German, Turkish, Farsi, Hindi and Esperanto [I exaggerate somewhat]) and was in heaven. She didn't leave the guide's side and asked very insightful, and frequent, questions. They bonded. There is however, more that can be said about the afternoon, post spelunking.
After the 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour(!), we went to lunch. Finally! Giordano, who had been to the caves before and knew about this restaurant, had made reservations for us and had promised we were in for something special. The restaurant is called La Torre, is quite small, and is wildly popular in the summer with tourists but in winter was mostly empty except for our party of five and a few tables of residents from the town. Their specialty is cinghialle (wild boar) and tartufo. They were happy to welcome us and the meal was special.
Mmmm, lunch.
Both ingredients feature prominently on their menu, except there was no actual menu, just a few dishes of the day recited by the waitress/bartender/attentive mother. Everything was served family style on platters and single portions were easily big enough to share with everyone. Our first course was three kinds of pasta - ravioli stuffed with truffles with a truffle and butter sauce, triangles (like ravioli, but with three sides and so the logical name) stuffed with boar with the same truffle sauce, and pappardelle al cinghialle which was the best thing I've eaten since I've been here. The pasta was handmade and the sugo was tender, rich and devastatingly unhealthy. Before bringing the second course, our new mother made sure we'd had enough and offered to bring more. I think our refusal for extra made her worried. For our second course we had roasted potatoes, roasted boar, and a platter of grilled meats with lamb chops, pork skewers, boar ribs and boar sausage. It was primal and delicious. Dessert was homemade tiramisu and the meal finished with coffee and digestifs which was locally made and bottled grappa flavored with holly or some other tree branch.
On the left, the infamous (or more than famous) grappa. How do they get the branch in the bottle?
They left the bottle on the table so that we could feel free to drink however much we "needed" to ensure we would digest our meal properly. Apparently we "needed" a lot but we all digested well. Afterwards we took a walk through the town to clear our heads before driving back to Ancona.
The road back to Ancona
San Vittore alle Chiuse. Nice apses!
Downtown Genga
The spelunkers, digesting and discussing caves, cold and our place in the universe.
Happy Birthday Sarah Roth-Rosevear!
Happy Birthday Jeffrey Scott Lewis!
Happy Velentine's Day all you lovers.
What happens when you take five Italians, one American and drive 500 kilometers to the north of Italy? “White Days”, that’s what!
The Boys of "White Days"
A month or so after I arrived in Ancona I met a guy named Stefano through our mutual friend Massi and we happened to start talking about my snowboarding trip to Chamonix earlier in the year. He mentioned his family had a house in the Dolomites and would be happy to invite me out sometime. I didn’t think much of it until a couple weeks ago when an email arrived inviting me to “White Days”, a guy’s ski weekend scheduled for the last weekend in January. Time to zip-up the puffy coat, strap on the board, shred the pow-pow and hit some sweet jumps.
Stefano and Dan
For the drive, we go north through Bologna (remember the arcades?), on through Brescia, turn right and head 40 or so kilometers into the Alps. The last part of the drive follows roads so narrow they give goats the creeps. On your way you’ll pass turns for the Gavia and Mortirolo passes. The Gavia is one of the most famous climbs of the Giro d'Italia. The Mortirolo is considered by many to be the toughest climb in Italy and on the list of the hardest climbs in all the Grand Tours. I admit I geeked out a bit when I saw the signs, especially knowing that on Saturday, 29 May, the second to last day of the Giro, Stage 20 will be following much of the same route as it races up the Gavia, through Ponte di Legno and on to the finish in Tonale. Road building philosophy seems to dictate going through, not around the mountains. The tunnels are endless. It’s not very Zen, but it is very efficient. Past village after village, each one smaller and a bit more charming than the last until you think you’re lost and driving in circles and you would swear you just saw that house and cobbled street minutes ago. And then you’ve arrived.
The village looks like a cliché to be honest but an Italian one, not Austrian or Swiss and takes its name from the bridge (Ponte) in the center of town. It's a nice enough little bridge that leads to the main piazza and church. As you cross, you see the birth of the Oglio river through the joining of the Frigidolfo and Narcanello streams. The Oglio eventually makes its way to the Po River and then the Adriatic Sea. In terms of size, the town feels a bit bigger than Government Camp but more developed and done in the style of Rustic Alps instead of Pioneer Pacific Northwest. There are the requisite souvenir and clothing shops for the tourists and butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers for the locals.
For you nerds, let me tell you a bit about the ski area. It’s really two areas in one, Ponte di Legno and Tonale separated by a ridge of mountains but joined by a 15 minute cable-car ride or an impressive 11 kilometer ski track. Together they make up a pretty big ski area. It is almost all above the tree line piste skiing. The runs are all quite long which encourages that particular European trait of stopping every 100 meters or so to gather and discuss life, turns, melancholy and fashion (or something like that). One piste is called "The Wall" (although that might just be Stefano’s personal name for it) and is supposedly one of the steepest on-piste runs in Italy at 62 degrees or something.
Dan shreds "The Shute" just below "The Wall"
Stefano Sending It
Saturday, Sunday and Monday followed a familiar routine. Greet the sun around 8 and eat a breakfast of fresh pastry and bread from the bakery, get dressed and be on the lifts by about 9. It was cold (down to -16 on Monday) but bluebird (a new expression for the Italians, along with the concept of a Butterface) with no wind and no new snow. Perfect for the on-piste skiing which they love but less than ideal for me and my hope for lots of fresh powder and off-piste shenanigans.
Where's the nearest piste?
Our first night there we checked out the pizza and club scene, both disappointing. The beers in one liter mugs were not. On our second night we went to Cà del Re, a restaurant chosen by Stefano and that he has been visiting for years. The building and interiors were hand-made from stone and wood and the contrast with the white linens, cutlery and crystal was stark, forming a great setting for the meal that followed. Dinner was informed by suggestions from the chef and a few special made dishes: a bottle of red wine from the region, bruschetta with tomatoes and anchovies, tagliatelle with chestnuts and shaved radicchio, stuffed gnocci, steak fillet, venison with polenta and more porcinis, chestnut torte with chocolate sauce, cremalatte con mousse di fragole, winter fruit in a warm chocolate soup, grappa. It was a fantastic dinner that in this case supported the on-going boasting I constantly hear from my Italian friends regarding the superiority of Italian cuisine. We returned to Ancona late Monday afternoon and in the setting sun saw Lake Iseo surrounded by the glowing Alps, a fitting backdrop for a long weekend of snowboarding with five new friends.
The past two weeks in Italian lessons I’ve been learning the passato (past tense). It's just like French and makes sense but takes a bit of thinking to figure out the right combination of verbs and endings and of course most of the most common verbs are irregular so they don’t follow the standard conjugation rules and have to be memorized. This week I started learning all the exceptions to the rules. But now at least I can not speak in the present and the past.
Up next we take illegal photographs in the caves of Frasassi and eat wild boar in Genga.
I’ve fallen behind on updates to the blog and there is nothing worse than a stale blog besides maybe what they call bread in this region which truthfully more closely resembles a stale blog than bread. And in case you think I’m being uncharitable, everyone I’ve spoken to who comes from outside of Marché agrees with me which I think you’ll agree qualifies as a rigorous, scientific study whose results cannot and should not be argued with.
I have a couple big adventures to write about but I’ll save those and their accompanying pictures for later this week and instead clear the decks with a couple smaller topics.
About that Super Bowl. I did manage to stay awake the entire game which I was quite proud of. The feed was the American one, but Rai 2, an Italian station provided their own announcers who seemed to be both knowledgeable and obsessed with highlighting every time either offense came out in the I-formation. Whenever you went to commercial in the US, we cut to a long shot of the field with the time filled by more commentary at which point I would switch to MTV for a few minutes. Marco and Massimo, our Italian studio hosts, made pre-game picks with Marco taking the sure bet by backing the Colts and Massimo going out on a limb with the emotional pick. You could almost see Marco smirk but Massimo had the last laugh when all was said and done and the Saints won. For how pervasive American culture is here (books, music, movies, McDonalds) I was a little surprised at how little anyone knew or cared about the Super Bowl or even Football Americano. Puts the World Cup into perspective.
And speaking of pervasive, I went to see Avatar on Tuesday last week. Interesting note about cinemas in Ancona. We have the highest per capita number of cinema seats in all of Europe with 126.9 seats per 1000 residents. The next city on the list is Vitoria/Gasteiz in Spain and those lie-abouts only have 51.9 seats per 1000 residents. Luxembourg has the highest cinema attendance per population followed by Paris, France and Gijon, Spain. They are mad for their movies in Spain as 8 of the top 10 cities in terms of attendance are in Spain. These and many other fun facts can be found in this fascinating survey. Speaking of fun facts and surveys, don’t even get me started on the hours of amusement on offer here where you can rank and compare European cities according to a wide variety of self-selected parameters.
I’ve been resisting going to the movies because they insist on dubbing everything and there are no subtitles. Fortunately, if I’m patient I can usually locate an English version of the movie sooner or later and watch it at home which I prefer. But I didn’t want to miss the 3D experience or the chance to do my part in the global effort to push the film past the 2 billion dollar mark. At 10 Euros a ticket, our group of seven more than did its bit. The movie going experience is strikingly similar to the US except that your ticket is for a specific row and seat which is kind of cool. There is also incessant chatter throughout the film but that may be true everywhere these days. I also found out beforehand that they offer headphones that play the film's original soundtrack. Upon arrival though, I learned a fun, new Italian expression: c’è ma non c’è. Which basically means: there is but there isn’t. They have the headphones; not for Avatar. Oh well. A lot of things in life are c’è ma non c’è. Visually and technically the film was everything everyone has said it is. I give high marks for the natural world they created and I think it's an interesting commentary on our own society that the "fake" world experienced through the avatar came to feel more real than the "real" world. Story wise, I was surprised at how easy it was to follow. I don’t know if that says more about the quality of the script or that my Italian is improving.
We ate dinner before the movie at Old Wild West, a chain here in Italy with an outpost in the cinema that I insisted we go to in order to make America night complete. The place does a remarkable job of capturing the feel of an American chain restaurant from the giant wood sign above the bar reading “Oregon – 1858”, the buckets of peanuts to eat and throw shells on the floor (no one was doing this except me), the design of the menu, and the quality of the food. I had a Dakota burger which was supposed to be a bacon cheeseburger and had all the right components but none of the right taste. I would have had wings but they were 8 Euros for eight of them and were not made from the steroid chomping birds used in the US. I think these might have been pigeon judging from their size. My only other disappointment came when I realized I was charged 50 cents each per package of ketchup. This was no Bacon Blue from the New New Old Lompoc. However, it was all worth it watching my friend Sarcan eat his first “jalapeño popper”.
Speaking of food, it’s a topic I’m always debating here. It’s one of the things I miss most, the variety of cuisine options. My friends are convinced America is a culinary wasteland based on their experience eating at McDonalds in Italy and Italian restaurants in Florida while on vacation and they regard any perceived knock on their food as a personal, and national, affront. I’ve eaten well and fantastically since I’ve arrived and the pride in using local ingredients and dishes is rightfully taken, but I would love to have the option to eat something besides Italian food when we go out for dinner. Some of the larger cities have a few non-Italian restaurants but in Ancona it’s pretty rare with only a mediocre Chinese and Indian restaurant on offer. Frankly, I think most people here are so obsessed with their local food culture that there is little interest or desire to try anything else. For me, variety is Chinese versus Mexican versus Thai. For them it’s the difference in preparation of a pasta dish from region to region or even city to city. As evidence, whenever I raise this subject, their immediate defense is to tell me about the excellent Japanese restaurant just outside of downtown. I take great pleasure in first telling them the Japanese restaurant is now an Italian restaurant and then confirming that while they knew of its existence they had never bothered to visit. I’m sure if just a few of these people had ever bothered to visit it would still be doing a bustling business in sushi instead of serving plates of pasta.
This entire debate was neatly summed-up by, of all things, a blog post on a British news site commenting about the new McItaly, a burger from McDonalds now being advertised on Italian television made with all Italian ingredients and endorsed by the government as a way to support local farmers and encourage kids to eat healthy food instead of junk food. It features all-Italian ingredients including Asiago cheese, artichoke spread and an Italian produced bun and paddy.
The original blog post is here.
This bit of incendiary writing grabbed the Italian Minister of Agriculture’s attention so he posted a response here.
The entire kerfuffle was then neatly summarized here.
Of course, the blog comments throughout it all are mostly not to be missed including this bit of wise-cracking:Oh come on, junk food - and bad food - is already easily available in Italy. This myth of all Italian food being fabulous, local, artisanal, so much better than all other food is just that - a myth, a bit of nonsense. Italian cities support crappy bakeries, turning out crappy bread, and buy it because it's local - there's no striving for excellence, no desire to improve...So a burger made with 'Italian' ingredients will be seen as fundamentally more desirable than anything exquisite made by 'foreigners'.
It's 12.30 in the morning, the announcers are speaking Italian and there isn't a buffalo wing or Dorito in sight but it's live and the first drive ended with a 3 and out by the Saints. Super Bowl baby! Here comes Payton.
My friends here can't believe I'm going to stay up to watch a game that lasts three hours and I can't believe they wouldn't. Reminds me of getting up at 3am to watch the World Cup from Asia a few years back. It's what you do if you want to see it. I went to bed at 19.00 to have a nap before the game in hopes that I don't fall asleep in the second quarter and miss it. Raimondo stopped by before going to bed to see the kick-off. He thinks the quarterback is "quite brave" to hold onto the ball with all those large men running towards him. He leaves a noon tomorrow from Milan for a two week vacation in Brazil.
No commercial breaks so while you're watching the latest spectacle from the collective genius of Madison Avenue I'm listening to the announcers and looking at a long shot of an empty field. For some reason they love Reggie Bush and overall seem pretty knowledgeable about the game.
Tre punti per la Colts. Tre a zero Indianapolis. Enjoy the game. And the wings.
