41.

March 2, 2023

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:14

That was Chopin's Prelude number three in G major. I am currently pairing Chopin and Bach preludes written in the same key. So at the end of this podcast, you will hear Bach's prelude number 15, also in G major. Welcome to Tom's Podcast No. 41, the first of four about a trip my wife Eve and I took to the Salento Peninsula, the very tip of the heel of Italy. We went there to visit our daughter Julia, Juliet and her uh husband Jem, who have a small small business in the town of Lecce, in the very southernmost part of the heel of Italy. So today's podcast describes the train trip to get there. On Monday, February 13th, we left the Cord station in the early afternoon. We drove ourselves and our suitcases in our micro EV Citroen Ami to the station and left it there for our friend Cheryl to pick up. She is pet sitting Mocha, our 10-year-old dog, and Ella Bella, our year old Siamese cat. We began the trip using the regional train, which is part of the TER system. It took but an hour to reach Toulouse, a trip that we know quite well after living here for four years. We had an hour and a half layover in Toulouse, so we imbibed two cappuccinos at the Paul restaurant in the train station. I say imbibe because enjoyed would be inaccurate. The brown concoction tasted more of cigarette butts than coffee. We took a Tejeve Tre Grand Vites from Toulouse to Lyon, Tejeve, which Tre Grand Vites means very fast speed, but today it should have been called the Teelve Tre Lent Vites, because they were experiencing all sorts of delays in the stretch between Castelnaudary and Carcassonne, two medieval towns that are on the route to the Mediterranean. It was my first time catching a glimpse glimpse of either town. I knew Castelnaudary by reputation because as a four I'm a great appreciator of the town's most famous gift to mankind, the baked bean, goose, and sausage dish known as Casule. We crawled 40 kilometers southeast to Carcassonne, a medieval town famous for its futile resistance to an army organized by Simon de Montfort and Pope Innocent III in order to massacre Cathars, millions of them, a sect of Christians who believed in equality, which of course was totally anathema to the Catholic Church at that time. The train turned east and bordered the Mediterranean in an area known as the Camargue, famous for its rice. So when you buy rice that's French in France, it comes from the Camargue. The train curved northeast through Arle, famous for its intact Roman amphitheater with a road that goes all the way around. And then directly north along the Rhone River through Valence and finally on north to Lyon. We arrived at night, and because of a paucity of taxis, we elected to walk through a confusing array of buildings, passages, and streets to the city's highest building, which houses our destination, the Radisson Hotel. Our hotel room was on the 37th floor of a cylindrical building that towers at least 50 floors over one of the original parts of Lyon known as Parc Dieu, or God's area, a center of big business. In this case, now God is the Euro. The hotel's reception desk was on the 32nd floor. Our room was adequately spacious, and because we rented it through booking.com, we only paid half price. We quickly threw our belongings in the room and then walked downstairs and then out on the streets to find M restaurant where Eve had made a reservation. Lyon is often cited as France's food capital, and our dinner did not disappoint. We shared a leek entree, in France entrees are appetizers. I have no idea how they made the entree, but the cook stacked small leeks, cooked leeks, inside a ring of cooked leek skin, then sliced this crosswise to create a stunning leaky mosaic garnished with a delicately herbed sauce. For main dish, Eve enjoyed a briefly cooked pigeon, essentially a pigeon sushi, with mushroom puree and a red wine sauce and three long spears of a mild flavored variety of turnip. She loved it. And I loved it too because she gave me some. I ate re also known as skate, uh, a fish that cruises along the bottom that has big wings. Um and uh it was uh served with, it was poached and served with um baked fennel and a risotto made of cooked eincorn, wheat, and pureed spinach. It was fantastic. Uh we shared a bottle of Mâcon Chardonnay, whose crispness contrasted with a faint sweetness that complemented all three dishes. For dessert, Eve tackled a 20 centimeter high Trille chocolate trille tower, whose chocolate mousse lower floors contrasted with the whipped cream upper floors. My dessert, an ode to the chestnut, featuring various chestnut purees and creams, was disappointing. A week before I had tasted a much better rendition of this dessert in a restaurant in Albi. Tuesday morning, we splurged and ate breakfast in the hotel's two-story breakfast room, one side of which consisted of 20-foot windows overlooking the Pardieu Cartier. Most of the city consists of the usual three to four-story limestone buildings built in the 18th and 19th centuries, topped with red tile roofs. Not particularly beautiful or notable, but in the distance the Rhone River peaked through gaps in the buildings, and a hill on the other side of the river provided a nice backdrop with its broadcast tower. The quality of the room's atmosphere, of the breakfast room's atmosphere, far exceeded the quality of the food. To eat there cost 25 euros each. I'm thinking 24 euros were for the view and 1 euro for the world's worst scrambled eggs ever and tough tater tots. We walked back to the train station and took a TER or Transport Express Regional to Chambéry, located in the foothills of the French Alps. After half an hour, our mini train entered the foothills of the Alps. The mountains and their valleys reminded me of West Virginia, hills punctuated with cozy values valleys and villages. If such a thing even exists. Mario is not findable on the web, so I just sat there remembering the good old days, wondering if he's still alive. I just reminisced and felt sad. Ten minutes later, we coasted into Chambéry, which is about 15 miles south of Aix-les-Bains. We disembarked and entered the station where we consumed a barely paddleable lunch and then boarded the train for Milan. The train left about 1.30 and huffed and puffed up the grade, following a serpentine network of interconnected valleys to the town of Modon. Between the ends of small chains of mountains we saw much higher mountains covered in snow and glaciers, the High Alps. We followed the Arch River, which was lined with vacant, ugly industrial buildings, not torn down, just left there. The Arch River's water is blue green because of dissolved minerals. Starting in Modan, and as we progressed toward the frontier with Italy, snow began to appear first in shady areas, and then right before we entered a tunnel that joined the two countries, the snow had reached a depth of about a half a foot. Emerging from the tunnel, we were in Italy. There was no longer a river to follow. Instead, our train followed a deep, wide valley that opened out onto the Po River Plain, where forty percent of Italy's agricultural products grow. We turned eastward again, rode through Turin, the home of automobiles Nuga and the famous Shroud. Our train ended its voyage in Milan, another important industrial city. We saw very little as we had only 90 minutes to transfer to the Lombrate railway station from which the train to Bologna would depart. The trip from Milan to Bologna lasted only a couple hours. Bologna is on the southeastern edge of the Po River Valley, near where the Mediterranean empties into the Mediterranean. We arrived around 8:30 p.m. and took a taxi to the restaurant, La Taverna di Roberto. Eve had arranged a reservation for 9:30 as it was Valentine's Day and there were no reservations available before that. And besides, we only had a few minutes to even get there. The restaurant is in the historic center of Bologna. There are lots of academics here, as the university is the oldest in the West, having been founded in 1088 on the model of universities in Andalucia, a civilization in southern Spain where Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted peacefully. That Halcyon time. Our taxi driver, charming and gracious, deposited us just outside Roberto's taverna with two suitcases, three carry-on items, and winter clothes. But no one took notice. They were too busy celebrating Valentine's Day. Eve very carefully inserted our luggage in a nook at the end of the bar. The owner led us to a back room whose ceiling was 20 feet above the floor and crossed by a 300-year-old massive wooden beam. The walls were covered with shelves of old bottles of wine all lightly coated with a dusty patina. Our waiter, when informed that Eve had a gluten intolerance, immediately responds responded Senza glutine i con ragu bolognese. We started with a light and flavorful apertivo, Italian for appetizer, a raw mushroom salad, which we shared. Her primo piato or first course was the pasta. The ragu alla Bolognese sauce was much browner and meatier than the bolognese sauce that I was accustomed to making. I ordered a cotoletta alla Bolognese, a regional specialty consisting of a breaded veal cutlet topped with prosciutto and mozzarella, and on the side spinach sauteed with garlic and a couple sauteed pom coin de rue, which are potatoes that are cut irregularly and fried slowly in oil or clarified butter, until crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside. We had a lovely local red bolognaise wine, which we polished off, but we couldn't enjoy dessert as the kitchen had closed. Our hotel being five blocks away, the time being 10 45, and I having informed the hotel that we would arrive by 11 p.m., we studiously rolled our suitcases along dark and stony roads of sleepy Bologna. And thanks to Siri, we had no problem finding the hotel located on a street called Draperia, named after a district where in medieval times people sold woolen fabrics. The hotel's lights were on and we just had the lug our bags up a few flights of marble stairs. Our room was a bit tight and overheated, so we opened the window to the street and let in some blessedly cool air. During the night, however, the room chilled, but neither of us felt like getting up to close the window. At 4 30 a.m., however, our reluctance to close the window was rewarded with sounds of many things being dragged and dropped in the street. Those things turned out to be fish, ice, and boxes. Thirty different kinds of fish laid out on boxes full of ice. And across the street, a produce market. So we didn't sleep well. But we had that morning we walked around in the center of town. We saw the classic two towers, one of which is over 300 feet high, and the other leaning more than the Tower of Pisa, only 150 feet high. It is thought that in the Middle Ages, Bologna bristled with many dozens of such towers, all built for defensive purposes. At 1130, we set out for the Bologna Central train station, a 30-minute walk from our district. We obediently followed Siri's verbal instructions along the Via del Independenza. But then she had us turn right, dropping us south of the train tracks in an area devoid of signs. Silently desperate and hauling two suitcases and three carry-ons, I gave up on Ciri and started asking human beings, in my pidgin Italian, not to be confused with the bird, for the location of the Bologna Central station. It turned out to be separated from us by a very long fence and a lot of train tracks. We walked along said fence until we found tucked away and unsigned a train platform, and with that came the usual monitor with partenzi or departures. The train left at 1 45 PM. It cruised southeast to Rimini, a city devoted to the pleasures of the beach. Apparently the Italian bathing practice consists of standing knee deep in water and talking on the cell phone or to a neighbor neighboring scantily clad body. We bordered the Adriatic coast for seven hours, stopping in seaside towns such as Pizarro and Ancona, Pescara, and Termoli. For four of the seven hours we followed the Adriatic and for hundreds of kilometers we saw stone pile walls about twenty feet out in the water, perhaps an early attempt to block the inevitable rise of the water caused by the melting of Greenland and the Thwaites Glacier in the Antarctica. Most of the beaches along the route were populated by either apartment buildings or cabanas rented during the summer months by city folks who thirsted for days of walks on sandy beaches, cooling breaths of sea breezes, and operal spritz and proseco negroni cocktails. Just south of Termoli began the province of Apulia, known in English as Puglia, in French as Le Puy. The capital of Puglia, Apulia, Puli, Le Puy is Foggia. In the past it was called the granary of Italy, but it has since become the tomato growing center and process production of Italy. A friend of mine from Ghana paid his last two thousand dollars to cross the Sahara, sit in a camp in Libya waiting for a bubble boat to take him across the Mediterranean. The boat before his had sunk, and more than two hundred Africans looking for a better life had perished. His boat did not sink, and as he had hoped, they were picked up by a passing Italian ship and ferried to Calabria, from where they were transported by bus to Foja and deposited in a migrant workers' camp. The plan was that he would join hundreds of other Africans looking for work in the tomato fields or tomato plants around Foja. He chose instead to go to Naples where he obtained fake ID and flew into Copenhagen and then to Sweden, where he eventually married a Swedish woman. The rest of his fellow migrants stayed in Foja. When you eat pizza in the EU, the tomato sauce covering its crust may well be from the fields of Puja, a Foja, Apulia, I'm sorry, and processed in a plant in Foja, all picked and processed by African migrants who did not drown. We passed through Bari, which is the second most important economic center in southern Italy after Naples. Bari gets its name from the Greek colony that existed until the third century BC when the Romans took it over. It has a population of 350,000 and a port that goes back to Greek times and that serves shipping to southeastern Europe. After the fall of Rome, Bari was ruled alternatively by the Longobards, a Germanic people, by the Saracens from North Africa, by the Normans, the blonde blue-eyed Vikings, and who had settled in northwestern France and became quote unquote Normans. The Basilica of St. Nicholas purportedly holds his bones in the altar, although that is now contested. But it's um for a church to have bones in its altar, uh, especially famous bones, uh, that brings in a lot of money. Uh churches that had uh so that's you know what all the relics were all about was making money for the church. Uh so they could uh have beautiful paintings and sculptures, etc., and eventually great organ music. We continued southeast along the Salento Peninsula, which is the heel of the boot, to Brindisi, a city of 87,000 that gets its name from its harbor, which apparently resembles a deer head. The city is an important generator of electricity for all of Italy. Finally, we arrived in Lecce a little after 9 p.m. Of course, it was dark. We exited the station, and within five minutes, Juliet and Jem show up to bring us to their house. We walked from the train station to um our house, which we had rented, uh a B and Bare Bed and Breakfast called the Longobard Suite, after those Longobards who invaded. It looks like an old stone barn with 25-foot vaulted ceilings. There are virtually no windows, and the door gives out onto a small square that mainly serves as a parking lot. Well, that's it for today's blog. And now for a brief description of what's going on with Project Hope and Fairness. First, we received our second grant of$32,000 from Project Redwood at Stanford University. In addition, we have been promised a matching grant by one of our$30,000 from one of our generous benefactors. With these monies and others, we will uh and your donations, uh, we will establish a third site of chocolate production in Côte d'Ivoire. This will be in Ndusi, a town located near the big commercial capital of Abidjan. I call it the Cocosati Center, but I'm sure the name will eventually be changed, something maybe more in keeping with uh the people who are running it. In any case, later in the year, possibly in September, uh, maybe even in June and in September. We're talking about two different trips now. Uh, we're going to go to um uh uh to help uh to the villages and to establish this third chocolate production center. Um between now and then, Damien, the chocolate co worker that I uh my chocolate co co worker. Partner in chocolate crime. We will be setting up a small boutique, chocolate and pastry shop in downtown Cord, catering to Cordy Accordians, Cordasians, and tourists. We will specialize in African chocolates coming from the villages and in international pastries made with b uniquely with butter, no shortening allowed. With organic sugar, because as you know, white sugar involves the death of animals, and therefore if you're vegetarian, you should never eat white sugar, or if you have any feelings toward animals. And besides, uh organic sugar is much better tasting and it works just as well. Um it's just more expensive. Uh and then um also we're going to be making our pastries with spelt flour, which is um has no omega gliodin protein in it, unlike all the wheats that were grown after World War II, which uh people have developed severe uh sensitivities to, not really allergies, but a sensitivity that can be quite bad. Um and uh anyway, we're using spelt, which is a 5,000-year-old wheat um that has alpha and beta glyodins, which do not cause reactions. Um so anyway, that's what's going on, and uh that's it for now. Uh the next blog we'll start in Lecce. Uh, and there are going to be three more blogs about our trip to Italy, and I'm going to start them in about a the next blog in about a week. Uh, so we now finish our this podcast with box prelude number 15 in G major from the well-tempered clavier.