Schengen schmengan

We found out today that Italy is suspending the Schengen Agreement (free-for-all border crossings) from 28 June 2009 to 15 July 2009 during the G8 shenanigans in the Trieste area. This means that all border crossings in and out of Italy will be manned, just like back in the day. This made me wonder if the crossing in the photo will be manned. This is one of the only border crossings from Italy that can only be done on foot.

This border crossing with Slovenia can be reached from the Val Rosandra on the Italian side. The hut is on the Slovenian side and is not in the best nick if some poor sod is going to have to camp out there for a week. On the Italian side there is a small village called Botazzo where said poor sod could get some bread and cheese for his lunch...in between checking passports...

Ferries and food

We started last weekend's food fest with coffee and croissants at a bar near the Trieste train station. We actually splashed out the extra few euro to sit down and enjoy our breakfast - normally we just stand at the bar because sitting down can inflate your bill by quite a bit at some bars. We then caught a train to Cervignano and a bus to Grado. Grado is a lagoon town that used to be an port for ships heading to the once important Aquileia, and is now all about fishing and tourism.

On our way to the beach we couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy half a kilo of cherries for 1.83 Euro (~ 3 Oz dollars, yes, that's right $3, not our first born child). The beach at Grado is very long and divided into the paying section and the free section. You can probably guess which part we chose to swim in. We still can't get past the idea of paying to visit the beach, sure you get to sit in a row of people on identical beach chairs under identical umbrellas but the benefits seem to end there. Actually, I lie, the sign above is a warning for swimming in the free beach area, the English version reads "Danger - bathing not safe for luck of lifesaving service". No that's not my typo. We're not sure if this is an observation on the success rate of the life saving service but with the water only up to belly height for at least the first 100 metres, and not a wave in site, we felt that we'd be ok.

For lunch we chose one of the many fish restaurants. I demolished a delicious plate of spaghetti con vongole (clams) - I think I could taste the sea water, they were so fresh. Marito had calamaretti fritti - these were lovely and tender and fried in a very thin batter. We washed it all down with the vino bianco della casa.

Walking around Grado after lunch, we soon found ourselves at a gelateria. I usually take the Gelato Challenge (randomly trying a favour I've never heard of or tried before) when purchasing a delcious icy treat, however this time went for the never fail option of lemon and strawberry sorbets. We caught a ferry home from Grado (this also would have been a good option to get there, had it been on any of the tourism 'How to get there' sites for Grado). Putting into Trieste, we stopped near the Pelorus - Roman Abramovich's 115 m, $US 3 million yacht, sorry one of Abramovich's yachts...note the helicoptor parked on board...


For dinner that night we made a delicious insalata caprese with ciabatta on the side. With a high yummy to effort ratio, I suggest everyone makes this salad and eats it up (tomatoes - cherry tomatoes are good, fresh buffalo mozarella, fresh basil, a good splash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar)...make it now!

Green Cheese

The past few weeks have been rather busy with my mother (Madre) and sister-in-law (Cognata) visiting and literally sleeping under the kitchen table (our apartment isn't very big!). While they were here we went to the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, Skocjan Caves in Slovenia, Val Rosandra in Italy and Valence in Budapest. We also visited the airport carpark in Vienna...stupid car hire rules...

On the first weekend with our visitors, Trieste kindly put on the event Piazza Europa, a festival celebrating all things European...mostly food! We sampled pork knuckle, pastries, cheeses, salami, biscuits, more pastries, breads, strudels...so many tasty treats. Madre and Cognata found this delicious pesto cheese - delightfully tasty and green.

Weird and wonderful things

We went to the Trieste aquarium the other weekend (and randomly managed to pick a day of "liberta entrata" - yay free stuff!). The funniest animal in the aquarium was the "Jackass penguin", I think named appropriately given the ass wiggling this penguin was doing. Upstairs there is a collection of snakes; being European most of the snakes are quite civilised and harmless. The ones that will give you a decent bite are generally cowards and will slither away. Also upstairs there was an exhibition dedicated to Darwin called "Nature Anomale". Basically a whole lot of stuffed deformed animals on display - two headed sheep, one eyed rabbits, four legged chickens.

After looking at such weird and wonderful animals, I decided to buy the giant bag of stuffing to stuff Norberta and make her a real dragon. Here is Norberta working out how to attach her limbs and wings...and a little while later, giving up and getting stuck into the limoncello!

Grotta Gigante

A few weekends ago we visited the aptly named Grotta Gigante (Giant Cave) in the also aptly named Borgo Grotta Gigante (Village of the Giant Cave). This is the largest tourist cave in the world and with a volume of 600 thousand cubic meters it can fit lots of other large things inside, for example St Peter's Basilica, or 240 Olympic size swimming pools or about 42 billion chocolate truffles...mmm...chocolate.

The cave takes your breath away both because of the beautiful and odd shapes and the shear size. However, you can't help but notice the damage that humans have caused. A lot of the surfaces are covered with soot from the acetylene lamps and candles that were used in the past to light up the cave. Those have been replaced by electric lights, however the electric lights prompt algae growth on the rocks. You really can't win unless the cave is closed to visitors, then the cave wins and we can't be having that.

Tours run every half hour or so and there is a warning before you go in that there are 500 steps down...and 500 back up again. I think a few people on our tour would have done well to heed this sign. The guide gives the tour in Italian but also has tapes in other languages which they play after each spiel. The English tape was a very English sounding lady, quite amusing.

There are a number of experiments run in the cave, mainly to do with the geosciences. One consists of two pendulums which are suspended from the ceiling of the cave and hang to the floor (~ 100 m). These are used to measure very small movements of the Earth's crust and can even pick up the tiny tidal motions of the Earth surface. Very cool.

Outside the cave is a little fast food place, however, despite the sign we couldn't find any bat and ball games, or insects from the gryllidae family. After visiting the cave we went to the gallery of Paulo Hrovatin. This fellow makes beautiful stone sculptures which I've never seen the likes of before, well worth a look.

Lots of cheese (and foccacia)

I just counted the number of cheeses in our fridge, six. Contrary to the name of this blog...lots of cheese for us! So, what cheeses do we have?

Treccione affumicato : treccione comes from the word treccia which means plait or braid, and affumicatio means smoked. So this is a smoked braid of...further investigation reveals that the cheese is called scamorza which is an Italian cows milk cheese (Italian cows mind you!). This cheese can be substituted for mozzarella; being a fan of smoked cheeses I quite liked this one and would like to try it on pizza.

Brie: across the border now to France...Marito can't resist a good Brie. This cheese is named after a town in France and doesn't necessary have to be made from French cow's milk.

How does one milk a sheep?

Pecorino Pepato Frecso: a fresh sheep's cheese with peppercorns. I wasn't a huge fan of this cheese but I would like to try the aged versions. We bought these cheeses to eat with a beautiful home made foccacia. Since being in Italy we've started making our own pizza dough, this is so very tasty and I recommend the extra effort (Jamie Oliver's dough recipe is pretty good). Foccacia is pretty much made the same way as pizza dough, but isn't rolled flat for cooking.

Ricotta: apparently not technically cheese, rather a by-product of cheese making, not bad for a by-product. We got this cheese to make tuna balls but have previously made gnocchi with ricotta, a fast alternative to potato gnocchi. As well as the usual fresh form, ricotta is available baked, salted and smoked, I'm intrigued to try these.

Mascarpone: also not technically a cheese, but a triple cream...need I say more? Yes, use it, it's good. For a few weeks Marito was under the impression that marscarpone was a healthier alternative to cream...ha!

Parmegiano regina forme: the good old parmo, always present in our kitchen (except when nasty cheese ladies have their way). We normally buy about 1/48 of a wheel, I am tempted to buy an entire wheel one day, but probably wouldn't be able to carry it home.

Norberta

I've started knitting a baby dragon for my baby nephew. In Italian the same word, nipote, is used for nephew, niece, grandson and granddaughter. The gender of the person is given in the article before the word, e.g., il nipote for grandson or nephew, and la nipote for granddaughter or niece. Basically if you want to know more information you have to ask questions, this suits the Italian's love of talking.

Anyway, back to the dragon. I'm following a pattern called Norberta, using blue and red wool. I've pretty much finished the knitting and have been on the hunt for something to stuff her with. I found the translation for polyester stuffing, imbottitura in poliestere, and went looking in town. I went into one shop and asked for imbottitura in poliestere and the lady seemed to be ask me if it was for me, pointing at my jacket. I'm not sure why someone would want to stuff their jacket but anyway, I found the word for toy and showed her that. All became clear...she didn't have any, but she wrote down the name of a shop and what I wanted on a card "capok imbottiture - giocattolo" and told me to give it to the shop lady there. She then tried to sell me a "lovely" jacket with sequined writing on the front...not really my thing.

Not knowing what "capok" was I wandered off to find the shop. The lady there pulled out a gianormous bag of stuffing, I asked if I could buy half the bag, but no it was all or nothing. Not really having the need for so much stuffing (unless I did sucumb to the urge to stuff my own clothes) I declined. So Norberta is likely to stay unstuffed until I get back home, or find another source of stuffing. In the meantime, she does make a pretty amusing hand puppet. Here she is modelling a hat I just finished knitting (Urchin). I used Lion Brand organic cotton, it's ridously lovely and soft. The pattern is pretty easy to knit and is knit in wedges so if, like me, you don't measure your gauge you can easily add more wedges if it comes out too small.

Oh, I just looked up capok, and found entries for kapok which is a natural fibre, apparently much better than poly for stuffing toys.