Thursday, September 9, 2010

Rockin' out in Paris





When we were in Greece in June and Emma found the website for the Rock en Seine festival, we had our tickets booked, flights locked in, and organised to cut our time on the Italian farm down to 3 weeks, all within 90min. Sometimes acting on decisions this quickly turns out to be a mistake. This time there were no regrets.

What could make a week in Paris even better? Spending 3 days of it rocking out with 105,000 Parisians to some of the best bands in the world, and discovering some new ones that you’d never heard of before. What could make it even betterer? Having former flatmate, swimming buddy, and Facebook Friend (:P) Georgie take a few days off her work in the French vineyards to come and rock out with us.

Highlights:
  • Escaping the real world and becoming Rock and Roll with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. These guys ARE rock. They’re bad(note to Mum: this means “good”) - not because they are scary or mean (they’re not) but because the are wild, they rock out and love their music, and they just don’t care.
  • Coming close to escaping consciousness in the 2nd row, centre stage of Queens of the Stone Age (number one priority - stay on your feet and out from under those of others). Up until this point we thought that French rock festival crowds were soft and not nearly as rough as those in NZ. This is true, except for when Josh Homme has the microphone, and plays the crowd into a frenzy even better than he can play his guitar. A lot of fun, and not nearly as bad I just made it sound - if someone falls then the writhing mass of humanity suddenly stops and clears a circle of air, helps them up, pats them on the back, then continues the craziness. So yes, maybe the French are soft, but they’re nice too.
  • Chilling out on the grass and eating a huge dish of Paella that would fuel us on through the night
  • Seeing that some Old Rockers still have it - Mr E led The Eels in his white jumps suit, huge beard, aviator sunnies and bandanna, taking the crowd on a rollercoaster ride from jumping up and down to swaying ballads to the soothing and ever popular Beautiful Blues. Who cares that he’s about to celebrate his 50th birthday? Not him.
  • Watching Wallis Bird, a tiny little Irish girl who could probably fit inside her oversized guitar, run around the stage playing all her bandmates instruments and getting the crowd up on their feet despite being the first act of the afternoon. Other great early acts revealing exciting talent were The Black Angels and Wayne Beckford (just thought I’d include these to share with those of you who are inclined to google/you tube/myspace new stuff)
  • Being there to see bands such as LCD Soundsystem, Crystal Castles and Beirut prove that they’re not just incredible recording artists, but really know how to tweak their music and make it a great live experience too.
  • Seeing Kiwi boys Fat Freddy’s Drop get the French crowds going in Paris
  • Showing French security how Kiwis apply the BYO philosophy to avoid paying NZ$15 for a beer inside the festival. Or rather, not showing them.

Pics: Mr E and The Eels, the crowd loving LCD Soundsystem, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club working the crowd

Eating Dangerously



Staying with Emma’s Mum’s friend’s daughter’s former flatmate was on of the best things about our time in Paris. Sure, we didn’t know him that well when we first got there. But we weren’t going to let things stay that way, and neither was he.

Over one of Damien’s famous quiche dinners, his friends offered to come back the next night and cook “a traditional French meal - it’s VERY French.”. We weren’t worried, until they said, “don’t worry, it’s not dangerous - but we won‘t tell you what it is or what it‘s made from”.

Our task was to contribute the wine, so we went to the local wine shop, but when new asked what goes well with Andouillette, the sommelier gave a little chuckle before recommending a couple of bottles.

While waiting for Katie (Damien’s friend who is excellent at making much more than quiche) to prepare our meal, we weren’t allowed to see in thee kitchen, and all doors in the house were closed to stop the smell destroying all textiles.

We were even told that there was a backup dinner in the fridge in case we couldn’t handle what was being created in the kitchen.

But I don’t think they quite understood it when I had said “I like all food - ALL food”. The Andouillette was deliciously rich, the sauce was superb, and perfectly complimented by the accompanying sides and wine (if I may say so).

We were even luckier than you might be thinking to be treated to this meal, having committed a serious food crime just days earlier. Being in France and having access to a decent kitchen, we thought that we would make crepes for breakfast. Our fillings were inspired by our time in Greece, where we had cheese(feta), ham, tomato and mushroom crepes, so we found our way to the supermarket to grab some ham, camembert, and tomatoes, and returned to cook up a storm for ourselves and our kind host.

Damien was far too kind and accepted his crepe with a smile and a “Thank you”, and even finished the whole thing. We sat and finished a number of them.

But the next evening when his friends were over, we had strips torn off us for committing such a crime: Crepes are from Brittany, and Camembert is from Normandy. Apparently French cuisine doesn’t look kindly on “fusion cuisine”. Eek!

Picture: Food criminals, and unrepentant to boot.

Stairs, and stairs, and stairs...





Perched on the side of mountains and cliffs that fall away into the sea, our home for 3 nights was the perfect place to do nothing. Because to go anywhere meant climbing stairs, and lots of them. We just hung out reading books, magazines, talking with the other travellers who had been put in our 7 person apartment about everything from politics(especially interesting with Americans, Aussies and a Chinese Masters student) to pizza, and from the future global economy to counting the reasons why the two American guys who had just flown in from Amsterdam were never, ever going back again (for a fourth visit). Call of the night goes to "Chinese Guy" (he told us his name, then told us not to try and pronounce it) when we got onto the topic of different political systems (both power structures and electoral processes), when he stood up with his tongue in his cheek and left the room to get some food, "we only have one party, so we don't have to worry about voting!".

Except for one day, when we felt obliged to do the 10km trail that visits the other four cliff-clinging villages (and for which the National Park is named after and best known). Four months of relative laziness takes it’s toll when climbing 368 stairs at a time, and although the views along the way were incredible, we would have run into the water at the finish if our legs would have allowed it.

Picture: Gasping for breath at the top of nearly 400 steps (not as young as we used to be)

Science or Art?




So it’s the home of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and many more Big Daddies of culture, but after we had run around to see all these past masters of their respective arts, Emma and I hid away and geeked it up inside the Galileo museum of science and technology. That’s right. And we’re not even that ashamed of it.

Seriously though, this city was a very cool place, and does a good job of making you fall in love with Renaissance architecture and art (even if just temporarily). Luckily, back in the days, the line between art and science was a bit more blurred than it seems to be these days, and we could still pretend to be trendy and cultured rather than just plain geeky by rating the Galileo museum as our favourite non-food-related location in the city. Seeing just how much of what we rely on everyday (and learn in high school and university physics classes) was first discovered and developed hundreds of years ago with the crudest (but at the same time, most elegant) technology kept us spellbound for hours on end.


Pictures: Sweet bridges and buildings, and well what is it? It tells the time, the day, the date, and where all the planets in the solar system are and will be moving to. But in it's time, it was also considered art.

Great cars, terrible drivers






I’m no die hard fan, but I’m pretty sure that the Ferrari team is a pretty big deal when it comes to Formula One. I’m also pretty sure that neither Michael Schumacher nor Reubens Barrichello - the only two Ferrari drivers that I can name, one of them probably the one of most successful in the history of the sport - are of Italian descent.

Now I know why. Italian drivers, and consequentially the challenge of driving on roads full of them, is life threatening at best.

It’s not often that you have to check your ribs for bruising after a hug, but it was a valid concern after having Emma hold on while riding on the back of our scooter along the cliff side roads of the Amalfi Coast. And I’ve never concentrated so hard behind the wheel as I did while driving the Fiat Panda on the narrow cobbled mountain roads around our farm in San Giovanni. No matter how short the journey, I would feel mentally exhausted and totally amped as I clambered out of the tiny car, mopping the nervous energy from my forehead.

Scooting around cities in Thailand wasn’t nearly as scary - at least the chaos there is (paradoxically) predictable. Italian roads seem to be a race, with no rules. People overtake on blind corners with less than 20m of clear road, often with opposing traffic. Mountain villages are full of (two way) streets that are only wide enough to fit a single, very small car, causing endless jams while normal size cars reverse around blind corners, or when miniature cars like our Panda meet other Pandas head on.

Driving NZ roads will forever be boring after this.

5 Reasons to work on an Italian Organic Farm and AgriTourism Project….





Before leaving NZ I was sure that I didn’t want to own my own property (especially one with land requiring maintenance) for a long time. After working on Sebastiano’s farm in Southern Italy for 3 weeks, I’m looking forward to having my own place where I will be able to grow and eat my own food, and - cheesy as it sounds - get my hands dirty in the garden. There were plenty of other great things about our time on The Petrelli Farm, so I’ve done my best to round up the Top 5...

  1. Food (surprise, surprise). With 80% of what we ate and drank coming from the fields where we worked every day, and most of it picked within hours of eating, we ate well. This was helped by the fact that Sebastiano (our Host, Boss, and Chef) was exactly the sort of person that you’d hope to find in an Italian kitchen. When we would say, “Seb, this pasta is amazing!“, he would reply, “I know. It is incredible” - this was not just an Italian’s lack of Kiwi excess modesty, as he would go on to credit the ingredients for the quality of the meal (of course mentioning that he had grown those as well). So although I did my best to pick up tips and recipes, it seems that I’ll just have to get my Green Thumbs into action once this travel business takes it’s next break.


  2. Sleep (surprised?). Waking early to make the most of working in the cool mornings, we would take an afternoon siesta that is the only real option once you’ve been toiling (I know, it was as tough as it sounds) in the fields all morning and have a tummy full of goodness from lunch (sparking the inevitable food coma). Another few hours work in the late afternoon would create enough fatigue for another deep, instant sleep at night.


  3. Wine (sorry, still no surprises). Having a number of vineyards, and a brother who won Italy’s Organic Winemaking awards last year, made it hard for the wine from the previous harvest (that we decanted from the huge vats in the cellar) to be a bad drop. Again, “Seb, your wine is really good!”…. “I know - it’s really great”.


  4. People. Seb welcomed us in our (sometimes strange) capacity as a mix of workers, guests, and family, sharing his own friends and family with us.

    His mother Fiarma - a “Real Italian Momma” - comes to live at the farm for a few months every summer, and is the true boss of everything(at least while she is there), including the surrounding villages. We learned to tune out the Italian shouting matches between Mother and Son (both well meaning and very headstrong, with even more than the usual amount of Italian passion and drama thrown in for good measure). We also had many hours of learning about the corruption of Italian politics in Fiarma’s hyperbolic vocabulary, and her endless fight and activism against the “terrible” people in power and their “’orribull” power games. But underneath it all we came to know the soft Fiarma who took us under her wing, brought us treats, and baked us a special soufflĂ© on our last night before asking us to visit her at her home in Tuscany.

    We met Seb’s friends who would visit from around Europe and all walks of life - art dealers, bankers, artists, hospital charity workers, and more - coming for a few nights, or sometimes just a meal (our first being swordfish caviar pasta). Our favourite was a Swedish girl who he had met and invited away for a romantic weekend, we took her into the fields to escape the attention of the Italian Momma, and got to be the nosy workers asking prying questions about their boss’ “other side“.

    Our last few days overlapped with Mariana from Brazil - the next worker - who imparted our now considerable knowledge of the farm’s workings (particularly how best to handle the contradicting double-boss situation, as well as the subtleties of goat milking technique).

    But the most interesting person was Sebastiano himself. An eldest son whose father died young and who never got along with his mother, he was a banker and entrepreneur in London for 25 years before deciding to take over the family’s various neglected plots of land in Southern Italy: His plan, to restore the ruined 17th century buildings and create a boutique AgriTourism project and retreat. With a strong emphasis on organic farming principles and restoring the buildings to their original glory (rather than modernising), the farm is truly a special place, and his vision for the eventual completion of the project is impressive.

    And Seb is manic. Juggling lazy builders. Dealing with endless Italian bureaucracy(NZ has no red tape in comparison). Chasing grant/funding requests (so far he has been granted over 600,000 Euro for development of his project, but seen none of it). Recruiting, training, and feeding workers such as ourselves every 2-4 weeks. Keeping his mother off of his back (or trying to). Running thee farm, milking goats, pruning vines etc. And still inviting friends and visitors to stay. But he loves it. He loves the challenge, he loves that he is doing something that he truly believes in, and that it will be good for others too.

    And every now and then, through his often abrupt manner and general whirlwind pace, you get to see Seb’s soft side. He will stop the tractor, jump off the wheel arch to grab a ripe pear from a tree for you, or put aside a special part of his “amazing” meal for you. He will take you for a 45min bushwhacking hike to his favourite, otherwise inaccessible seaside spot and share it with you. He will drop the brisk, business-like efficiency and put on his favourite alternative 70’s trippy film soundtracks after dinner and talk about his favourite bands and directors over some fantastic wine. Or most often, he will drop what he’s doing to run off and play with his best friend, Baikal.

    No wonder we didn’t miss television or internet while on the farm.


  5. Working the land.

    Spending hours in the vege garden with the chickens and their stray guard dog Phee(this was what we named her - apparently every set of workers renames her something different), who is still a puppy and doesn’t quite have the grunt to scare off the foxes just yet.

    Making friends with the dogs (Seb’s Baikal, a Welsh hunting dog and ultimate best friend whose dinner is cooked and served before humans each night, and Fiarma’s super intelligent German Shepherd, Tsar, whose arthritic hind legs don‘t stop him from trying to hunt the goat and pigs - even though he also gets his own meal of puffed rice and meat cuts cooked each evening too).

    Convincing Penny the goat to let us milk her each morning so that we can make fresh cheese, while keeping the pigs at bay with their daily ration of pizza crusts from the local restaurant. Very Italian pigs.

    Learning the hard way how not to harvest buckwheat, how heavy hay bales can get after throwing them for two hours, and how many fennel plants it takes to fill even a small container with seeds.

    Learning to drive a tiny Fiat Panda on crazy mountain roads (or fields), through villages not made for cars. Or just learning to sit in the boot with the dogs while Seb treats every trip like a rally stage.

    Getting your hands dirty and earning your dinner.


In short, we loved our break from being on the move, and grabbed with both hands the chance to be part of something rather than just being a traveller who looks in from the outside. We will miss our new found Italian home.

Pictures: Our Fiat Panda, with which I learned to drive like a true Italian, and a standard breakfast on the farm (views over the mountains to the sea included)

Dirty, dodgy, and dangerous



Every person we mentioned it to said not to go to Napoli, but that if we did, to be careful. Apparently it is supposed to be more dangerous than Afghanistan, with numerous stories of muggings, kidnappings, and Mafia.

The only thing in danger while we were there were our waistlines. The birthplace of Pizza (yes, with a capital “P”), we topped off a day of multiple gelatos(including a chocolate fondue one), pastas and pastries with the (reputably) best pizza in Napoli. And yes, it was good. Oh, so good.

Other than food, Napoli was a great change to the usual touristy areas of Sorrento where we had been frequenting. With just the right mixture of funky boutiques, pop culture, and Grit (ambiguously identified as dirtiness, dodginess, danger, hardship and a general lack of polish), we had a day free of museums, American accents, camera flashes, guided tour groups. In short, we loved the lived-in Grittiness of Napoli, and just for our Mothers’ sake, made sure that we were on the train back to Sorrento before it got really dark.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Travellers, Fat Cats and Facetious Ancients


One of the most attractive qualities of a big city like Rome is the diversity of people that are drawn together, and how they choose (or otherwise) to get along with each other (or not). In this respect, Rome didn’t disappoint.

One week in Rome saw us:

  • doing the classic backpacker gig of sleeping in a sauna temperature 13 bed dorm with comatose freight-train snorers from at least 5 different nations
  • Sharing stories on Dave’s concrete floor. At forty, Dave chose to live in Rome for a year. He opens up his underground basement apartment/bomb shelter to travellers to help them out with accommodation costs (and to meet some great people). I would say that we were four people sleeping in a broom closet, but there were two American girls who the actual broom closet. In the kitchen we were two Kiwis, a Brazilian and an American - somehow we managed to avoid sleeping outside in the corridor with the other American guy :)
  • Living the high life in Rome’s coolest neighbourhood (sleeping in real beds!) with Chiara, a film and TV script writer turned short story novelist. We loved Gatto (her parent’s overloved and overfed cat who got grumpy refused to be stroked when Chiara attempted to trim his calorie intake), and endless morning coffees discussing what brought on her latest short story about an eight year old boy murdering his 4 year old sister. Rather than disturbing, we found this plot to be hilarious - Chiara couldn’t be more gentle and kind if she were fictional herself (lucky for us, eh?), so discussion usually centered around where these disturbing thoughts came from.
  • Hanging (in spirit, at least) with Socrates, my most memorable “character” of high school Classical Studies. He brought a smile to my face as we took a water break from the mid summer heat in one of his favourite haunts, with the memory of his argument which hit new levels of facetiousness, “I’m significantly wiser than you because I know that I’m not wise at all”.
  • Cruising through the bedrooms of former Popes to see the interior design skills of Raphael & Co. Unfortunately the Big Man with the Big Hat was away on summer break, but that didn’t stop a 6 person wide, 1.5km queue forming by 8.30am outside the Vatican on the first Sunday we arrived (it’s free entry on the last Sunday of the month). Needless to say, we went off for a gelato and postponed our Vatican experience a few days.
  • Doing what the cool kids do, sharing stories, opinions, laughs and Mojitos with Chiara in the “artist district”. This is where having a local on your side is invaluable - Chiara made relatively short work of dealing with the odd incoherent local under the influence, and we really enjoyed a night in an area well off Lonely Planet’s “off the beaten path” path.

Photo: Emma, Chiara and I in the mean streets of Rome after dark