Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Real Reason??

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in Holidays, Italian festas, San Maurizio di Monti, Uncategorized

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When we returned from our jaunt to Germany we found the ‘Soccer Field’ fully decked out for our village’s Festa in honor of San Maurizio.  At Last the Committee has a spacious area in which to prepare and serve food.  It is so much easier than the old narrow fascia on this site, and much roomier than the small house and little paved courtyard around the corner which the Committee has used for the last couple of years.

Behind the ‘Amici’ sign is the new cabin which is fully equipped as a kitchen.  The tables are obvious.  Behind the tent and truck in the foreground there was a solid dance floor put down and a small stage for a band erected.  Sunday was the night for the Great Pyrotechnic Show.

Alas, as so often happens in September, it rained.  It seems like our Festa has been rained out a lot in the last few years – and what a pity it should happen the first year we have new festa grounds, I mean ‘a new soccer field.’   It cleared at the end of the rainy Sunday, but the men who set up the fireworks had not had an opportunity to do so, so the show was cancelled.

So… soccer field?  festa field?  both?  I vote for the last.  We have yet to see any soccer played here, but that doesn’t matter.  Building this public space took a lot of time (25 years, according to the Piazza Cavour web site) and a lot of citizen participation and volunteer work.  It surely contributes to San Maurizio having a sense of community.  In my dark heart I imagine that there was some grant money out there available to build soccer fields and our Festa Committee thought ‘what a good idea.  A soccer field is an ideal spot for a festa.’  If that’s what happened, I say more power to them (and I have to be honest: I have no idea what the stated purpose of the Comitato Amici di San Maurizio might be).

Surely someone will organize a soccer program one of these days, and in the meantime we can spend the next year looking forward to La Festa di San Maurizio, 2012 edition – please let it not rain!

Golf in Bavaria

22 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in Bavaria, Golf, Holidays, Photographs, Uncategorized

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(Click any photo for a larger, clearer image)

Hi everyone, we’re back.  I may as well ‘fess up right away that our brief toot in Bavaria was primarily a golf/beer vacation.  We had two days of driving, one up, one back; and three days of golf for the Captain (one for me; I decided walking with a camera was more fun).

It came about this way:  last year we were in the same general area and stopped in a town called Wasserburg where we enjoyed Maxlrainer Beer for the first time.  In fact we enjoyed it so much that the Captain did a lot of research on it when we got home and discovered – oh joy! – that there is a golf course right next to the brewery.  That pretty much solved the question of how to spend this year’s vacation.  Wasserburg, by the way, is gorgeous in its own right, and has one of the most imposing bridge entries we’ve ever seen to a town.


The Captain followed up his research with some emails and further searches on places to stay.  Thus armed we set off, opting to take the long route through Switzerland.  It added an hour or two to the drive but added unbelievably gorgeous scenery, as well as giving us the opportunity to boast about having been in five countries on the one day drive (Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein (!), Austria, Germany).  Try doing that from the U.S.A.

Switzerland is beautiful and ridiculously expensive.  They can’t help it; it’s their franc.  If only they’d joined the European Union they too could be enjoying the financial crisis.  But no, they decided to keep their own strong currency, and boy, does the Euro or American traveler feel it.  A very simple lunch set us back over E 30, and we had to pay E1 to pee.  It’s also mandatory to buy a road sticker for the car (E 40).  It’s good for a year, which is fine if you live near Switzerland or go there frequently, but not of great use to us.  On the other hand, it seems a very reasonable fee when compared to what the Italian Autostrada charges each time we set tires on their macadam.  The Swiss sticker is worth every penny; there are simply not words enough to describe the grandeur, the beauty and the sheer visual pleasure of the Alps.

Liechtenstein is an interesting country.  Double landlocked (a landlocked country completely surrounded by other landlocked countries) it has an area of just over 160 square kilometers, a population of 35,000, and over 73,000 holding companies.  Tax haven, anyone?  Unsurprisingly it has one of the highest standards of living in the world.

Busy city scene in Schaan, Liechtenstein

Austria also requires a road sticker in lieu of tolls.  It cost E 7.90 for a 10-day pass.  And Austria, too, has beautiful alpine scenery.   In fact, the whole drive there and back was pretty spectacular.

Sunset in Pettnau, Austria

The highlights of our three days in the region were 1: Playing golf on gorgeous farm country courses (Schloss Maxlrain, Schloss Elkofen and Gut Thailing).  They all seem to be pretty new and all are beautifully maintained.

Typical view from a golf course fairway

It wasn’t THAT hard!

2.  Meeting Herr Braeger, former brewmeister and now CEO of Maxlrainer Beer, who gave us over a half hour of his time and many glasses to take home.  He gave us some history of the area and the brewery as well (brewery, golf course, castle, town – it’s all owned by a Prince and Princess!  Really!!)

Herr Braeger and the Captain

Silly sign at Maxlrainer BrewPub points the way to the loo: “If you must, here you can.”

3.  Staying one night at the Pension Egglhof, one of the most understatedly elegant places we’ve ever stayed. It was built five years ago as part of a larger farm operation.  If a nail was used in construction, we couldn’t see it. It gave every appearance of having been built in the old-fashioned way to resemble an old-fashioned structure.  But it had every modern convenience, including a fantastic glass sink and Wi-Fi.

Door to room at Pension Egglhof; note fresco of angel on wall

Behind the Pension…

4.  Eating and drinking traditional Bavarian fare.

Schweinshaxe! Out of focus due to excitement.

Fish and… not chips. Brown meat in brown sauce (ox, actually)

5. Asking for directions to a well-hidden gas station and having a map drawn for us on a piece of pine board.

I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the animals and flowers we encountered on the various golf courses.  If you’d like to see some of them, as well as some more shots of the lovely scenery, click here  (click on ‘slide show’ for best viewing).

Much of Bavaria is rural, with hills, farms, lakes and mountain and offers many opportunities for outdoor recreation.  If that’s what you like to do, I can guarantee that you, too, can have an excellent vacation in Bavaria.

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Stuffed Grape Leaves

11 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Food, Gardening in Italy

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Grapes.  Italy is covered with them, and this is the season when they come into their own.  All around Toscana and Piemonte the grapes are being harvested and turned into wine.  The markets are full of plump pale green eating grapes, sweet, succulent and seedy.  Delicious!

About five years ago our friends Rick and Marisa gave us a small vine of what’s called American grapes here – the sweet purple Concord grape from which grape jelly is made.  Every year it grew a little more, but remained rather small.  (One reason it did so is because some critter kept eating the new shoots each year.) Suddenly this year it exploded (as you can see above) threatening to engulf our terrace.

With great excitement we watched as many panicles developed little hard green orbs which gradually swelled and began to change color.  There were so many!  One day I hunted through the vines, mentally counting jars of jam, and, after a taste, decided that the fruit needed one more day of hot sun and then it would be perfect.

The next morning I gathered up a basket and the secators and headed down for the first ever vendemia.  But wait.  Where were the grapes??  With mounting horror I realized that there was not a grape to be seen.  The panicles were still there, their little stems taunting me, but not a one carried a grape any more.  Who was the villain?  We suspect a rat, literally, as they like sweet grapes we’re told.  Must have been a rat smart enough to finally figure out that waiting for the grapes in August was better than eating the new growth in May. But oh, grrrrrr.  I was so annoyed.

But then I got thinking, all is not lost.  We might not have grape jam this year, but the Captain makes wonderful stuffed grape leaves.  So instead of harvesting grapes I harvested a couple dozen beautiful leaves and called the head chef to report what had happened.  He made a detour to the local Middle Eastern food shop and picked up a kilo of of frozen lamb and that night we sat down to a delicious meal.  It has always puzzled us that in this country of grapes there do not seem to be recipes for the leaves.  But thank goodness other cultures have developed them, and that night we were the beneficiaries.


You can find the recipe the Captain uses here.  It is taken from a book called Finest in Middle East Recipes; Exclusive ideas for Better Cooking, by Yasmine Betar.

You’ll notice from the photo that the Captain’s copy of this fine book is the New Edition – 1968 (originally published in 1957).  The author is so modest she doesn’t even put her name on the cover!  The title page lures one on with the promise of “Over one hundred Recipes, Simplified, With suggested menus, Their uses origin and history… Also spicelore and herbs, Some stories of folklore origin.”  The inside of the book is as delightful as the outside:

The illustrations are by Leo Sarkisian, who is well-known as a collector and recorder of African Music.

Ms Betar was born and grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a Lebanese food marketer.  She learned food from her father and its preparation and lore from her mother.

The Captain has altered her recipe a bit, but it is still mostly hers.  If you decide to make these stuffed grape leaves you’re in for a real treat.

Diving for Pearls in Zoagli

05 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Customs, Italian habits and customs, Italian men, Uncategorized

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Nah, I’m just kidding, they don’t really dive for pearls in Zoagli, at least I don’t think they do. But they certainly do dive.  The young neophytes start from the passagiata walk, a gorgeous path that has been constructed where the sheer, steep cliffs meet the rock strewn sea:


And if you think mothers object to their children jumping from a great height into what looks like a pile of rocks, guess again.  Mom jumps too!


Once they’ve mastered the low dive, they move up to the medium dive.  This young man dove from the ledge above the heads of the three people standing farthest along the sidewalk; he not only had to clear the sidewalk, he had to get far enough out to miss the rocks just below the walk.


Then there’s the…. High Dive.

See the boy in the green trunks with his friend about twenty feet above the passagiata?  This stops my heart every time I see it – there’s no margin for error in this jump.

And there he goes!

The photo is out of focus because the whole thing makes me so nervous my hands shake.  But look!  He’s arrived safe and sound!

Jumping from the high rocks seems to be a rite of passage for Zoagli teenagers (mostly boys, though I’ve seen girls jump too).  It makes me kind of glad I didn’t grow up on a rocky sea coast.  No.  It makes me very glad I didn’t grow up on a rocky sea coast!