A Sad Goodbye to BV 1.0

When I say to my friends, “Man, I have been through some weird shit” not a single one of them disagrees.  In a way, I feel kind of bad because “he”, my 2008 Chevy Express cargo van, (who I always thought of as male) took up with me.  Particularly how it all ended.  

Two events really.  The first, I was in Chicago, attending Pokémon Go Fest.  Parked in an area I have stayed before, but one street over.  Just the far side of the Fulton Market District.  It has always seemed a pretty safe neighborhood.  But, paying to park had spread into the area I really like.  Gentrification and big new buildings.  Being homeless is one thing, paying to be homeless is a step too far. So I was pushed over a few blocks.  At six am the morning I had tickets to attend the fest, I was awakened by the sound of breaking glass.  

This is a situation I have spent countless hours thinking about and planning. Usually those hours while I am trying to sleep.  Thinking about all the wise things I would do.  On the panel beside my bed I had two, red, covered toggle switches.  Just like you could imagine firing a ballistic missile.  One switch turned on an incredibly loud siren mounted under the van. The other, some blindingly bright red and blue police lights mounted on the dash pointing backward.  But then when the moment actually arrived, did I trip any’a that shit?  No, of course not. 

So here’s what happened. I was low key awakened by hearing the noise of something touching the van.  I think the criminals pulled on the back door latch. Living this life you stay always kind of tuned into this sort of stuff.  But after a while, you don’t stop to listen and plan every time an acorn hits the van.  You become used to some incidental noise.  That back door was always a weak point. My design, built more around keeping warm, didn’t allow for any security fix I could see.  They broke the latch, but inexplicably the door didn’t open.  

They broke the drivers side window and simultaneously attempted break in of the cargo side door.  That’s when I became totally awake.  The side door was totally Fort Knox with metal screens over the windows and a big sliding latch. Again, they broke the door handle and even got the door to unlatch but it wouldn’t open.  Typically, the house is protected from the cab by the bulkhead door.  Here’s where we stumble headlong into complacently. 

On the bulkhead door I have a deadbolt that drops into the 3/4” hardwood floor.  With that in place there is no way that door is opening.  Fort Knox. I lock that deadbolt religiously.  But this night I was laying in bed when I thought of it.  It had been a great day! “Oh!” I thought to myself, “I forgot to close the deadbolt”. I was cozy, and happy, and tired.  Getting out of bed, leaning over the toilet in its deployed position in front of the door, seemed far too much effort and in almost ten years I had never had an issue.  So I just curled up and went to sleep.

I have a son who is a pilot.  It gets drilled into the brain of every pilot trainee that it is never a single isolated mistake that causes a crash, it is a chain.  Never just one thing goes wrong.  

The glass broke. The driver’s door opened.  Nearly immediately the bulkhead door began to open.  And then jammed.  I was saved by a toilet.  The door wouldn’t open.  I yelled “Hey get outta here!” with more fierceness than what I, in my planning, was worried I would lack.  I knew I was a weak link in that particular chain.  But I pulled it off.  I leaped outta bed to barricade the door if I needed to.  I didn’t.  They were bugging out. They called me a pussy as the four of them were climbing into their getaway vehicle. The event was over. 

Broken glass everywhere in the cab.  Cleanup. I found a Mexican auto glass shop and an hour later I had a new window. Then at ten I was standing in Grant Park looking at me phone as my game filled with suddenly visible gyms and Pokestops.  Just like I’d planned it.  

Now you gotta say …that’s some crazy shit right?  Well that’s the mundane half of the story.  

During the summer I live in a bigger camper in the north woods.  Quiet and peaceful.  The total opposite of how I live the other six months of the year.  This spring  I bought a new van with the thought of building it out in the early summer.  The kink in the plan was having trouble hooking up with my hardwood connection.  He is Amish.  Un-callable.  I can send him a postcard saying what day I am coming to visit, but even with this he will still either be there or not.  I had stopped at his sawmill three times and each time he had not.  The project was stalled.  I parked my van in front of a friend’s house in the city.  I got a text from my friend who returned home on a Sunday night, the van was gone.  

Well cities, you know.  Places turn no parking.  Streets are cleaned.  Maybe the neighbors complained.  The van had been towed before.  Monday morning I called the city impound lot.  They didn’t have it.  Ok, now we’ve got a different deal.   I called the police and reported it stolen. 

Thursday the impound lot called me.  “My van had been recovered.  Here is a phone number to call and get more information.”  I was a little confused.  I wasn’t really sure what additional information I needed.  But when I called the number and it was for the city of XXXXX police homicide division.  Oh my. 😳

They told me yes, they had my van.  It was on an evidence hold.  No they couldn’t tell me anything about it. Yes, they would call me when they were done.  That’s where it sat.  For months.  Then the leaves started changing. I started to feel some pressure.  In a short time I needed to be on the road and living in the new van.  But that project had stalled now for new reason.  Originally I had planned on selling the old van intact.  Even though it was. 2008 with 328,000 miles, it had value as a stealth camper.  With the uncertainty of its condition, it might be a salvage operation.  

Pestering the cops, getting transferred to captains who never answered their phones.  I started leaving messages on voice mails.  Eventually someone replied.  My van had been involved in a “shots fired incident”.  The officer didn’t know the condition.  He said he would try to get it pushed through the crime lab and get it released.  Two days later it was.  

I went and took a look.  It was a salvage.  One tire, the rear driver’s, was flat and the rim bent. Body damage on the opposite rear corner.  My guess is it was pitt maneuvered by a police car during a chase and hit a curb.  There were eight bullet holes that I could find. All the holes were entries. I was impressed; The bullets that came through the windshield were stopped by the Weather Guard bulkhead divider!  There’s an advertisement for them!  Importantly there was no blood.  No brain matter.  Whatever went down, and if someone did die, they departed the van un-punctured.  

I salvaged a lot of van building parts.  Of course all the stuff I really cared about was stolen. My favorite electric guitar.  The one I rebuilt and repainted myself.  A ruby ring I had inherited from my uncle and had promised to pass on to my youngest son.  Some original paperwork proving something I own.  No value now but odds are high someday that will change and now I can prove nothing.  A Waterford crystal shotglass.  Sentimental items.  Half my life really.  It was a rough time for me.  

Other odd things were left. The guitar, as valuable as it was to me, might be worth $300. But the composting toilet they left is worth thousand.  I removed my nice kitchen countertop.  Three of the four under-bed storage drawers.  I found a bullet!  The new LiFePO4 batteries were still there.  That was another thousand dollars.  All my artwork and magnets from my travels were pulled down from the walls but then I found many of them in a bag in the back.

They didn’t allow me to salvage the roof rack and solar panels.  I was super bummed about that.  It was too late to have a new frame built for me.  I am living on the road now with no solar.  It sucks.  The van had a new dealer sticker on the back door.  In the span of four or five days it was stolen, valuables removed, title forged and then sold to a dealer then to someone else who likely couldn’t figure out why the cops were chasing him in the new van he bought.  I wish the van could talk, we could share our wild life stories. 

In the end I stood at the front with my hand on the hood.  I said my goodbyes to BV 1.0.  I said I was sure sorry how things had turned out.  I expressed confidence life wasn’t over.  I bet the impound lot auction won’t be the end.  I hope I remembered to say thank you for the good times we had together.  

Chapter Closed

I have been sick for a couple of weeks.  Still not 100%, but I am rolling up on being back in the states for a month now.  I gotta get this whole Italy thing wrapped up so I can move on to some van stories.  After leaving Taranto, Francesco, and the whole cooking experience, our first stop was Bari.  I was interested in this city for a couple of reasons.  First, because I was told it was really beautiful.  Which now that I have been there, I would classify as something of a stretch.   Really it is a very 80s modern, and frankly kind of ugly city, but contains an attractive historical district complete with tiny, curvy little streets.   It was a good practice for Venice which was coming up.  Also like Venice, it was good for discovering places you can only find once.  We found a four dollar margarita but then by the time we were thirsty we couldn’t find it again. 

My main reason for traveling to Bari is due to it being the burial spot of Saint Nicola.  In America, this is the person we call Santa Claus.  The cathedral was interesting.  Very simple white stone on the outside.   On the inside, it was again a very simple in design with stone arches between the center columns.  But the ceiling was astounding!  Almost entirely gold.  The crypt in the basement was beautiful as well.  So much of the beauty of a church can be in their basements.  There were a number of paintings and statues of Nicola.  …I just wanna say, he was a lot darker skinned than we Americans have been lead to believe.

We went out for pizza one day.  Nothing special.  I cooked one night and the second night we were back out.  We had a good meal at Trattoria La Baresana.  I had a really fresh, wonderful salad with lovely, tender artichokes.  Then a pasta with oil and tomatoes.  Most of the other entrées contained squid or mollusks. 

Our next town… Honestly, I ended up here by mistake, was Lecce.  It was the first place I booked in Italy.  Then, shortly before leaving the states, I realized I was staying there because I can’t spell.  I had intended to go to Leuca, another hour south and on the coast.  It is the spot where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet.  Sometimes there is an interesting color difference between the two.  Ah well.  That’s why there’s next year’s trip.

The black truffle pasta at Doppiozero.
It had a flavor so much different than
truffle oil.

On first arriving in Lecce I had an amazing black truffle pasta at Doppiozero, next to the church at via Guglielmo Paladini 2.  It is a little over priced and the restaurant was very popular with tourists.  I have only had truffle oil in the past and I have really wanted to like it.  I have tried fairly hard in fact.   But I find its flavor off-putting.  Still, I am not going to give up.   I keep trying it from time to time.  That’s what led me to the discovery I had this day.  On the pasta there were paper thin slices of truffle and I loved it!  The flavor was so much less intense than the truffle oil.  After our cooking experience with squid, then the city of Bari all I wanted from lunch was pasta that didn’t have arms.  I got so much more.  Very happy.

The AirBnB was most worthy of its honor, being the first one I booked.  The primary architectural feature of many buildings in Lecce involved lots of arches.  This stonework apartment had high cathedral domes over the two main rooms.  It was a fascinating living space with a small kitchen off to the side.   I do miss American kitchens.  I was able to cook two dinners in it, but it was a study in planning as I juggled one square foot of counter space to make the small space work.  Honestly, back home my cutting boards are larger than the countertop of this kitchen.

Lecce was beautiful.  Very similar to a town I was in last year in southern Sicily, Noto.  It was filled with intricately carved, sand colored buildings.  The insides of some of the cathedrals are unbelievable.  The arches and complex curves in the stonework were positively mesmerizing.

Our last destination stop was Venice. It is a beautiful city.  I love taking black and white photographs there.  Something about them appears even more timeless than what I can produce in the other cities.  They are instantly recognizable, and black and white removes all the distraction of the bright colors,  simplifying the photos to their design.  

Last year I heard Venice as a destination, during the time I would have been there, had some problems.  A year long draught, a stalled barometric high pressure zone, and an annular tide all overlapped.  Many of the canals ran dry.  What was uncovered did not smell good.  This year I am happy to report, everything was just fine.  There were a lot more people than the last time I was there in 2022.

I had one movie location I wanted to track down.  In the opening of _The Italian Job_ Donald Sutherland and Mark Wahlberg are walking across St Marks Square toward the pillars where thieves would have been hung in the old days.  We did make it there but it was a mass of people.  Briefly we landed in a cafe until The Nerdist leaned over to me, menu in hand, and said,  “They want sixteen euro for a cup of coffee!”  We moved on.

After Venice we had a day to kill in Florence and she was able to experience a few wine windows.  Then it was on to Fiumicino the location of the Rome airport and then on home.  First stop was Boston where I had a massively overpriced lobster roll.  Then on to St Paul Minnesota to stop in the office and have a coney at the Gopher Bar.  The Italian adventure was over.

It Was An Experience

It is really hard to put into words the next adventure I was involved in.  Sure, I could say it was a cooking class, but in fact it was so much more.   I have now taken several cooking classes in the three years I have been traveling to Italy. But this was really next level.  From the very beginning it was different.  Any of the other classes I have taken I show up, everything we need is laid out on a table.  We cook.   Here, we were just sort of plunged into this man’s life of pulling a meal together.  Actually living the life of another culture and I thought that aspect of it was amazing!  

The night we arrived we discovered was Woman’s Day in Italy.  (Yes, I queried. They have Mother’s Day as well)  The upshot was, restaurants were packed.  It took three calls to find a place that would take us in as a favor to Francesco.  Of all things, a very large Irish bar.  I was quite pleased that Francesco was joining us.  I had a cheeseburger because I was craving.  I was a month in at this point remember, and I was hoping to get lucky.  I totally should have had a pizza.  Burgers in Italy come from grass fed beef.  Farm boy that I am, I a corn fed beef fan.  I think the grass fed tastes dry and gamey.   The bun was oversized and dry.  Probably because most people are smart enough to not order a burger in Italy.  Francesco ordered some battered potato wedges that were wonderful.  The potatoes were so fresh, so much just potato flavor!   Italy is so good at getting fresh food to peoples’ plates.  

So good in fact it made for a surprising problem the next day.  I wanted to buy some tomato seeds and bring them back.  In America, every grocery store, hardware, home supply,  garden store, farm store, gift shop and countless others all carry a full compliment of garden seeds.  In Italy seeds are tough to find.  I think it’s because in America, having a garden is almost the only way to get really fresh produce.  I look at the stuff we saw in a fresh market and think, on my best day as a gardener, I could maybe grow something that looks this perfect.  It is essentially just as fresh and I don’t have to do all the work.  Yes, now I understand why gardening is not as popular.

Francesco also suggested just buying some tomatoes and removing the seeds, allowing them to dry.  I immediately thought, wow, that is a huge difference in Italy.  In America it is illegal to buy tomatoes at the grocery story, dry the seeds and plant them.  Seeds can be copyrighted in the US and farmers can tell you seed companies like to make examples of people.  Would they go after a gardener?  Who knows?  But my life is a living example of how crazy the US court system is.

My sad burger experience two wonderful
whole grain pizzas at the back of the frame.

Over dinner, we were involved in an Italian stereotype I had often read about.  We spent a significant part of the meal talking about the next day’s meal!   One of the first questions, did we want to have meat or fish?  Now when I answered fish, I was thinking of things swimming around and having scales.  After being in Agropoli and now in Taranto even further south, I should have thought to ask more questions. I had warned him I was a no mollusk guy.  He remembered that from our initial booking.  I didn’t want to come off a picky eater.  I prefer “choosy” anyway. 

Marble streets of Taranto.

Coming out of the restaurant we had an amusing bit of confusion.  Francesco turned to me and said, “You like crap?”, uh, what did this man just say to me?, I shook my head in confusion, “You like crap? Crap?”  I again was clueless, because I was not going to have a crap conversation with anyone. Then he went on, “Crap!  Crap! They spread’a chocolate on them’a!” I was enlightened.  Crape.  Yes!  He took us out for crapes.  

I forgot what time it was in the morning we were in the car.  I remember it being early, so I just checked the timestamp on the photo.  My first pictures were taken at 9:40. Ok, so it was still morning.  We went to a fish market.  Everything there had been caught that day and it was a beautiful selection.  We were there to buy squid.  I didn’t realize there are different species(I think) and different parts of a squid you can buy.  I also don’t know where the octopus line occurs.  I think I saw some things that qualified.  Francesco picked out a lot of squid, two different types.  I spotted some wonderful looking salmon steaks.  I haven’t had salmon cut that way in many years.  We added those in. I can’t remember what we paid.  It wasn’t much.  Maybe twenty euro(?) Maybe thirty? I should have noted that. Francesco told us we had gotten a discount based on his good name.

We dropped the fish off at the apartment and this is where the trip to the ceramic town in my last post fit into the day.

On the way back I was attempting to practice some Italian and one of my sentences was to inquire if wine needed to be purchased.  I think he caught the gist by the third repetition.  The one phrase I have practiced and gotten good at is “Lo dico correttamente?”, “Am I saying that correctly?” I think sometimes this is the first point they realize I was attempting to speak Italian in the original sentence.  

We did need vino so he took us to a wine shop nearer to the town center.  There, an old man extolled in Italian, the values of three bottles of wine coincidently at the top of our price range.  This was more expensive, again I don’t remember how much.  Maybe as much as sixty.  I am almost always willing to spend more money on wine.  It was a great experience.  All three wines were really good.  The Nerdist ended up really liking Primitivo, a grape common only in Apulia vintages so she discovered a new favorite to ask for that night.

Next we were in the car to a fresh market.  Fruits and vegetables.  Almost everything in there had been raised within a couple of kilometers and picked fresh that morning.  The produce was stellar.  Perfect.  Every single bit of it. Most of my travels have been to bigger cities where they have more, but smaller versions of this type of produce market.  The quality and variety of what they had was greater and higher quality than I have ever seen.

I loved this whole experience of going to these places with the chef.  Generally I show up at the class and everything had been obtained, it’s time to cook.  Seeing where the food comes from and seeing how perfect and fresh it is.  Seeing what to pick out and learning what things were the best  really added value.   At all of these places he seems to be well known.  Another one of Francesco’s side hustles is as a private chef.  People hire him to come into their homes to cook for events.  Not totally _Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous_, but it sounded like he has had a few pretty classy gigs.

This year I have taken two cooking classes, both of them taught by men named Francesco.  Their teaching styles could not have been more different.  Francesco The First gave a short demo and then we did all the work.  His contribution was to look over our shoulder and say “Perfecto! You professional!”.  But Francesco The Second here in Taranto talked and taught while he prepared the meal.  My hands at no point touched food.  The Nerdist was assigned the task of pealing the shrimp.  One thing we learned, shrimp that fresh peal much easier.  Much different than what we get in the midwest.

The tomatoes we purchased were beautiful.  Perfect red, fresh and naturally ripened.  We were creating a sauce and so the first step was to cook them in a covered pan.  Once they were cooked he used a hand blender to turn them to a sauce and had us taste it.  They were delicious.  But he said, wait.  Then he pressed the sauce through a fine sieve to remove all the skins.  I couldn’t believe how much that changed the flavor.  They were much sweeter.   Francesco explained most stomach issues people have with tomatoes are caused by the skins.  Sieving like this makes it easier to digest.  Interesting. 

A little surprising was Francesco’s cavalier attitude toward cross contamination.  When I am cooking I am very, very conscious of what cutting boards, plates and knives have touched raw meat or any type of protein.  Paranoid, actually.  Anything that has, I wash with soap.  His attitude was to just rinse things off with water.  Only use a small amount of  soap in final cleanup.  He thinks soap sticks to everything and flavors the food.  

I never wash my coffee cup with soap for the same reason.  *I think* it tastes like soap for a few cups after it is washed.  I guess I see his point.  The produce in Italy is so fresh, and has so much flavor, maybe adding traces of soap would stand out.  Will it change how I cook?  No way, I would be scared of food poisoning someone.

Americans eat nothing like Italians.  So much food and spread over hours.  Francesco continued to provide great conversation.  The first course was shrimp.  They had just been caught that morning.  I have never had shrimp this good before in my life.  They were so incredibly tender.  Delicately seasoned to really highlight the shrimp flavor itself.  There was so much flavor!  A ribbon of a thick, balsamic vinegar to swish them though.  Outstanding! My favorite dish of the meal.

Before I start I am going to preface this whole thing by one statement.  I have eaten calamari, in the midwest, a few times.  I hadn’t been a fan.  I am glad we cooked them as part of the class.  I feel like I have now eaten them at their absolute best.  Still I didn’t care for it.  I don’t understand the appeal.  But that’s a *me* thing.  If you enjoy this type of seafood you are going to love this class because the food quality is so outstanding.  

Second course was a pasta with the sauce from the roasted tomatoes.  Some large tube (Calamarata) pasta along with some of the squid.  The sauce was delicate and sweet.  Now I wonder.  When Francesco had us taste the sauce to decide if we should remove the skins, the skinless tasted much better off the spoon.  But once mixed with the pasta?  I bet I made a mistake there.  I bet coupled with pasta it is important to have that little extra punch the skin flavor contributes.  I will do some research this summer.

Third was a baked calamari with red and yellow peppers.  We made the pankko from some bread on hand.  Again, so much better than we buy boxed from the grocery store.  My second favorite dish, it also had the thick balsamic around the edge.  

Radicchio is no cabbage!  There seems to be 
three different styles, from what looks like purple
romaine to this which Francesco says is the best. 

There was actually a fourth course but we had to surrender at the end of the third.  Francesco announced it was siesta time.  A great idea!  We reconvened at nine joined by Francesco’s girlfriend for dinner.  Salmon steaks with a side of baked radicchio, a vegetable I have never seen in America.  I expected it to taste like a cabbage and it did not.  It is actually in the chicory family.  I liked it a lot.  The salmon, a touch heavy on fennel but otherwise very good.  Very flavorful.

A little of the remaining tomato to
use as a dipping sauce.

For dessert we had a lovely chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse center, along with some scratch made chocolate pudding on the side.  A spritz of whip creme on top and served on plates Francesco had made himself.  It was fantastic.  The perfect wrap up for the night.  I think we had some grappa and then it was just a matter of waddling back into the hot tub for a bit and calling it a night.

I asked The Nerdist the next day, do you feel like we cooked everything we bought?  She said, no, I think we bought more.   So Francesco will lift a fork a couple of days in our honor.  Ah well.

Here is the deal, at some point Francesco is going to be reading this and his blood pressure going up and down the whole time.  But for the rest of you out there, in the end, you have to look at this experience on the whole.  I think you will really enjoy yourself.  Let it flow over you.  Go into it with the perspective of this is going to cost me a little more than what I originally expected.  I admit, my budget is *super* tight.  The extra won’t be outlandish.  You might not even notice.  Sadly I am in a section of my life where I have to.  

I had such a good time.  I just found myself willing to play along.  When I got on the train the morning we left, I was totally exhausted.  Yet realizing I had one of the most amazing, culturally immersive two days of my entire life.  What am I earning money for if not for this?  I think you will feel the same.  

Not Just Your Typical Faceplate

Before I leave the United States I book the BnBs in the *must have* cities.  But then leave a lot of gaps for on the fly decisions.  One of the must haves this year was the city of Lecce on the southern heel of Italy.  This was the very first one I booked six months ago.  Unfortunately the apartment we were staying at in Napoli was booked or I would have liked to have stayed a couple more days.  Instead we had to move, and if we are moving, we decided to just hit the road for another city.  After her long flight and partial recovery, a number one priority of The Nerdist, my travel companion, was a hot tub.  So she found a place in Taranto and we booked the four days between Napoli and Lecce.  

In my mind we would go to Taranto, Lecce, up to Bari to see the tomb of Saint Nicola, the legend that grew to be Santa Claus in the US.  Then a couple of last days in Firenze before heading to Rome to catch our return flights.  It was the night before we were to leave Napoli, over pizza, when she asked, “When are we going to Venice?”

Two years ago I went to Venice and honestly, I didn’t care if I ever went back.  At the time there were not a lot of restaurants open.  It was still early post pandemic recovery in Italy.  The apartment we were in was at water level, it was damp and moldy.  I never do good with mold.  Additionally, the wifi wasn’t working.  I  contacted the host a couple of times she mostly just told me to wait and it would be available shortly.  It never was.  When I marked her AirBnB down a star in my feedback she wrote me a nasty message demanding I change my rating.  It wasn’t nice.  And no, I didn’t.  This being Italy, I couldn’t be positive there wasn’t a contract out for my life. 😀

Additionally, last year I heard several of the canals had gone dry because of a perfect storm of a high pressure cell that settled over the city, the draught, and the annular tide where the sun and moon combine forces to change the tide.  With the water that low, from what people told me, the smell was horrible.  I could believe it.  That was my excuse for not going last year.

So yeah, months back we had talked about going to Venice but honestly, I had hoped she had forgotten.  And maybe, on her own, she might have been fine with forgetting.  But before she left, talking to her mother, she found out her mother had spent some time in Venice when she was young.  She had some stories about it, and unbeknownst to me it had become a focal point of her daughter’s trip.  For mom, we had to change plans.  So I contacted the Taranto BnB from the pizza table, mentioning the plan might be changing and telling him I would confirm in the morning.   He didn’t respond. 

By morning we had it sorted out and I used the AirBnB app to notify him we would be shortening our stay at his place by two days.  Mom, after all, had to be accommodated.  We were on the train early because it was going to be a complicated travel day.  A train to Salerno, a bus to Potenza, then another bus to Taranto.  I sent through the cancellation of two days and it was refused by the AirBnB host.  This is the first time I have had something like this happen.

He then wrote to me and said he had to turn away another booking, so he was losing money and he wasn’t happy.  I totally understand, but I have read the AirBnB rules.  I had the right to cancel that many days out for no charge.  In fact until noon I could even cancel the whole reservation and only have to pay fifty percent for the first day.  We were signed up to take a cooking class from him the second day so I was concerned that our relationship might be soured by this mix up.  How might that class go if he isn’t happy about being shorted?  I offered a cash compromise.   I would pay him ninety euro, half price for his two lost days.

I had a noon deadline with AirBnB to get a full refund and our train was getting close to Salerno.  A deal had to be struck or not.  She was feeling her hot tub hopes drifting away.  I was actually pushing to cut bait and cancel the whole reservation.  I was thinking we could head to Amalfi instead.  Walk the beautiful coastal trails.  Just as we pulled into the Salerno station he answered and agreed to my pay-half-in-cash proposal.  As it turned out, I am glad.  The next two days were the most memorable of this year’s trip.

This is one of those times where just one installment isn’t going to do it.  Oh no, there is another whole part to this story.  But I am going to skip a whole chunk here.  I will try to get that out shortly.

For twenty euro (remember that) our host, Francesco, picked us up at the bus station and brought us back to his BnB. He is an interesting guy who talked constantly.  His spoken english was excellent.  Understanding my spoken english, not so good.  These days technology can bridge that gap.  We are both listeners though, wanting to learn about his life and city so really it worked out very well.  I hadn’t actually looked at the listing when I booked it.  It wasn’t a apartment like we had been getting but instead just a room.  At that, just a room off of his apartment with a separate entrance.  The dreamt about hot tub was beautiful.  

The next day, part of what we did was an afternoon trip to Grottaglie, also known as “The City of Ceramics” about a twenty minute drive away.  In the car, since I have susceptibility to motion sickness, I was riding in the front seat.  Picture this, Francesco, our host, is taking a computer programming class.  He is learning the language of Python.  I mention I am really interested in microcontroller boards (called Arduino and invented in Italy) and he had played with them some too.  We were off.  In deep conversation of programming ideas and past projects.  This conversation, some of it verbal but at other times via google translate.  Sometimes slowing down, when a particular concept was interesting to him, but at other times, fairly flying down a lane-and-a-half-wide Italian country roads, reading a translate message I had just typed to him.  At one point I thought to look into the back seat.  She was wide-eyed.  I figured she’s here for adventure, if we die, we die.

(Quick interesting side note here.  Just as we drove into the city limits of Grottaglie there were a number of police vehicles pulling over every car and checking documents.  In all my years of travel in Europe I have always carried my passport in my pocket.  This is the first time I was asked for it.  I am so glad I had it and won’t ever be tempted to be lazy about that again.)  

What followed once we arrived at Nicola Fasano’s factory was incredible.  We were toured through this amazing old building turning out the finest of Italian ceramics.  It was an such a unique experience to see this up close. At the point we were there, the plates had already been formed.  They were getting their initial coat of glaze.  Then we got to witness the craftsmanship that followed.

It was all work at its very finest.  It really was, and yet it is impossible for me to not center on one particular task.  A worker was seated in front of a turntable.  He put a plate on it and then he was able to spin it, using his hand from below.  Then he proceeded to use a squeeze bottle to draw lines, in glaze, at exactly the same intervals, and at exactly the same thickness, all around the plate.  His coworkers are going to tease him because I single this one thing out.  For all I know there are probably way more difficult tasks they preform.  All of what they do is so incredible.  But to me, looking at it with my naive eyes, I thought this was one of the most amazing displays of craftsmanship I have ever seen.

I loved some of the dinner plate designs with faces.  They had dozens and dozens of these designs.  If I had more room in my life for ceramics this shop would have been a very dangerous place for me.  To have a collection of these, all with different looks and expressions, would be so much fun to have set at a table.  When your guests arrive, the fun of watching who picks out which face.  Throwing that new information into the mix of the never ending analysis of your friends.  Yes, very dangerous indeed.

I have my own picked out.  I am currently eating on divorce plates and that has to be over.  They are white, dipped in yellow and I think they are beautiful.  Simple, vibrant.  I can see some pasta, with the primary red of the tomato, contrasting with the yellow of those plates.  The yellow, warming and bringing out the color of the coarse, freshly shredded parmesan.  The knockout blow arriving in the form of bright green parsley.  It is going to be amazing!  Shipping is expensive.  I think I could bring back two placesets a year in my suitcase, but I already carry so much olive oil.  I haven’t gotten that puzzle figured out yet.  Maybe I will pay to check an extra bag.

At one point we even got to meet the owner.  An older, eclectic, long haired Italian man. He asked me where we were from.  Of all the typically simple questions to answer, this one always trips me up these days.  I got around it by saying she is from Minnesota.  Not really expecting any response other than a vague look.  But to my surprise, he responded immediately, “Oh yes, Minnesota, one of my best customers is from there, Williams Sonoma.”  Wow!  I realized I had fondled his craftsmanship before!

Francesco himself has a ceramics side hustle.  He either bought or built a machine, that is essentially a large scale inkjet printer.  The difference is it dispenses ceramic glaze instead of ink.  A mix of modern and ancient technology he uses a computer to print to clay tiles before firing.  He can put any image onto a tile.  A very cool business.

Another interesting thing I observed.  Converting everything to MPH, at one point we driving along at about sixty.  Francesco is talking and waving his arms around.  We come through a roundabout and suddenly we were behind a car doing forty.  We followed that guy for three or four miles.  At no point did Francesco express the slightest irritation.  Zero.  None.  We were simply driving slower now.  There is no part of America I have experienced where that would be the case.  Impatience up to and including gun play?  Not out of the realm of possibility.

People always want me to politically query the locals.  Francesco was quite happy with his country and its government right now.  From his descriptions he seems to be a wallet based voter.  The economy in Italy, particularly in Southern Italy, has been growing the last two years.  Good for both of  his businesses.  The increase in military activity in and around the area has war ships pulling into port. To him that looks like lots of tourists who could care less about the weight of what they buy.  The perfect customers for a ceramic salesman. 

But Francesco is a hustler.  He mentioned at one point that he had to get our room turned around quickly because he had contacted the people he turned down.   They had immediately booked the days I cancelled.  <cha-ching!>  He had just made ninety euro off renting the same space twice.  When he said it I was looking directly at his face and I saw the shortest instant of “whoops, shouldn’t have told them that” cross his face.  But like any good extrovert he jumped into telling a story and conversation moved on.  What can I do but think, well played?  It was a deal I proposed, I couldn’t be upset it had worked out really well for him. 

The day we left we were exhausted.  Francesco offered to give us a ride back to the bus station, “Twenty five euro, the same as picking you up.”  I didn’t say anything but I did whip out my phone and confirm.  <Cha-ching!>