Hannah’s blog - Adjusting to Life in Asti
Whine, Whine, Whine
Friday 1st February
I’ve come to the realization, after we went to yet another Michelin-starred restaurant 2 days ago (I’m not complaining!), that Christian seems to be on a mission to visit every Michelin-starred restaurant in our region and he’ll probably cover the whole of Italy one day very soon! I seriously need to consider selling some of my stuff on ebay now to help fund his new “hobby” and Christian “Italian Wine Expert” Bucci doesn’t go for the cheapest wine on the list!
Tuesday 5th February
Finally we decide to go to the local anagrafe (sort of like a city hall) to be able to register with a doctor, something that Mr Bucci has been putting off for weeks because he wants to do all the fun things first! Where did everybody go?! Is there to be an air-raid for which we didn’t hear the deafeningly-loud siren? We get there and it had just closed for lunch… Grrr! You can’t do anything in this town between 12pm and 3pm because all the shops close for lunch and even the local government buildings close, such as the anagrafe. Does that mean that the national government stops running this country for 3 hours every day? I’d be interested in looking at the national statistics for crime rate and I’d like to bet that it’s at its lowest during those 3 hours of the day…
Christian shrugs his shoulders – never mind, we’ll go to the anagrafe next week (he’s been saying that for the last few weeks…). Problem is that on our days off he won’t get out of bed before 11am, which is why I suppose we never get the boring things done! We’re off to do the fun part again – a trip to Eataly in Turin, something he’s been itching to go to all week. It’s a huge supermarket that only sells top of the range produce, which is mostly Italian but we found some great French and Spanish produce also. Ouch, our pockets hurt! It also has several restaurants inside – one dedicated to fish, one to meat, another to vegetables, etc so needless to say that we had trouble choosing which one to have lunch at!
After all the walking around at Eataly, Christian’s ankle started to give him grief so he asked me to drive home. Well, I won’t be driving in Italy ever again! On the motorway, we came up to a toll barrier and I didn’t know which lane to choose because Christian had his phone glued to his ear as always when I’m driving! I almost killed us in a collision with a lorry because I hadn’t noticed the lorry that I cut in front of that honked and flashed its lights furiously at me. We braced ourselves for the crash then… nothing. We sat there wondering if we were still alive then breathed a huge sigh of relief. After my heart returned (more or less) to its normal rate, we continued on our journey home. We overtook the same lorry that I cut in front of and I noticed that it was Belgian. I told Christian that if it had been an Italian lorry, we certainly would’ve been hit because Belgians tend to be slower drivers (in my opinion).
Our near-death experiences on the road didn’t end there! About 10 mins later I had to abandon over-taking another vehicle as an a**hole (or stronzo as they say in Italian) roared up behind me at lightning speed wanting to overtake. As I went to pull in behind the car that I was in the process of over-taking, the stronzo whipped in beside me in an attempt to overtake on the outside thus almost causing a crash! What’s happening?! I didn’t have these problems while driving in France! I think the truth of the matter is that I’m nervous about driving in this country because Italian drivers just scare the s**t out of me!
Friday 15th February
Aaaaaargh! I found 5 white hairs on my head!!!!!!!!!
I’ve just realized that I feel like Bridget Jones writing this diary except that I’m not whining about how many calories and fags I’ve consumed or moaning about my crap love life, I’m only complaining about Italy.
If I were to write a diary Bridget Jones-style then it would probably go something like this:
This week
Number of near-death experiences on the road: 9
Obscene amount spent at restaurants: € 1531,50
Number of white hairs found on my head: 17
You get the picture.
Tuesday 19th February
We’re in Genova. We ate at a Michelin-starred restaurant (but of course, darling!) where I had raw prawns (yes I do mean not cooked at all!) for the first time in my life. One of the dishes I chose because I thought would be interesting to try: scampi with a foie gras* sauce. Never again! Keep the freshest seafood of quality away from “art”! For dessert I had a panna cotta (a dessert that’s made with cream flavoured with vanilla pods and an addition of a little gelatine) which certainly, had I thrown it at a window would have stuck to the window and rolled down just like these Spider-Man sort of figures that I remember from the 1980s that you used to throw at the top half of a window and they would cart-wheel down on their sticky hands and feet.
*How to pronounce foie gras: imagine that you’ve just seen a gorgeous man/girl and you say “phwoar” then say “grass” without the two s on the end and now say the whole thing: phwoar-gra J
Wednesday 20th February
We went to a wine-tasting of biodynamic wines at the offices (they turned out to be in a beautiful villa!) of one of our wine suppliers. Also in attendance were other chefs and sommeliers (people in charge of the wine list in restaurants) from other Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, so very VIP I must say. We started the tasting at 1pm and didn’t finish until midnight after our evening meal at a restaurant and they didn’t allow us to spit. One of the sommeliers complained that he had never done a tasting without a spittoon (a container for people to spit the wine out into when doing tastings) and our host quite simply said “try it for once!” - the poor guy looked speechless! By the end of the night we were all quite pie-eyed, strangely enough…
During one of our breaks at the tasting, the big boss of the wine agency, who I would guess is in his 50s, told me how happy and in love he is and that he is soon to be married. Then I find out that he is to be married a fourth time to someone born in the 1980s and he said that for the first time in his life he feels old… No comment!
The restaurant was a simple place but with the most exquisite food cooked and served by an oaf of a man with teeth missing. Helping on the floor was also his not-so-attractive wife but both very nice people. They served fish and seafood dishes at very small prices using only the freshest produce. I understand now that in Italy you don’t need to go to a Michelin-starred restaurant for outstanding food of quality and freshness, you can find little gems in the back streets that survive due to broadcasting by word of mouth. They bring out the best in the fresh produce, they don’t smother it with phwoar-gra! However, I don’t find it so in the UK. In my experience , the back street “gems” are best left undiscovered…
Thursday 21st February
We made it back from Genova in the nick of time for work at 9am (nearly 2 hour drive), nursing headaches and feeling ratty from the lack of sleep of the night before…
I’ve noticed that married Italian women wear their engagement ring on their right hand and their wedding band on their left whereas the British sport them both on the left hand. So no worries mum for the unusually-shaped engagement ring that I like (if and when I ever get it!) and getting a wedding ring specially-made to fit around it – I’ll just go Italian-style!
Tuesday 26th February
Finally, the owner of the little restaurant down the road from us has come out of winter hibernation! He and his elderly mother cook wonderful home-cooked food. In the wine world they talk about the “terroir” of a wine and if you could say the same for restaurants then I would describe this restaurant as “terroir” also.
The owner who is really sweet and built like an ox likes to kneel next to me, put his hand on his heart and start reciting a “home-made” poem, something about me being the most beautiful woman of Madonna di Como (the village we live in)… Pur-lease!!!!!! Judging by the many photos of him pinned up posing in his restaurant with various female customers I’m sure that he has recited the same thing to all of them! I don’t feel so special now!
Friday 29th February
Leap Year!
No! I haven’t asked Christian to marry me