For the first time, Soriano hosted the Tuscia in Jazz Festival.  This international festival had been held in nearby Ronciglione for the past five years, but apparently that town had complained about the noise and decided they didn’t want it anymore.  The festival promoter, Italo Leali, was faced with the chore of finding a new host last year.  According to Italo, he chose Soriano for several reasons:  It has very good access to Rome, Florence and Italy’s main freeway, it has enough restaurants and hotels to support such a large festival, it has the character and ambiance essential to such a festival, and it has appropriate venues (large piazza, etc) for such a festival.  For all intents and purposes, his reasons are in sync with my own reasons for promoting Soriano: Character, Beauty, Proximity and Infrastructure.

The festival was not at all what I had expected.  I honestly thought that it would be a cute little festival with a few nights of music, headed by some local Italian jazz musicians.  Instead, it turned out to be a major International event. 

Roughly 1,400 musicians from across the globe appeared in a series of concerts every night for nearly a full month.  Some were young musicians that came to learn in the workshops or participate in competition for the Jimmy Woode prize, and some were seasoned jazz musicians that saw this as a truly international event.  Some of the bigger names included Jimmy Woode's daughter, Shawnn Monteiro, Benny Golson, Joey De Francesco, Jimmy Cobb, Buster Williams, George Cables, Bobby Durham, Jesse Davis, Giorgio Rosciglione, Gegè Munari, Eddy Palermo, Piero Odorici, Massimo Faraò and John Kinnison.
Aside from the nightly concerts, every night after midnight, Soriano’s Rotezzia Pub, a large pub that is made from a series of connecting grottos and caverns, would host the nightly jam sessions.  Here, artists would get up and perform at random until daybreak every night.

In all, it is said that 70,000 spectators came to Soriano for the concerts.  In fact, Soriano reached critical mass by the second week, when there were no more rooms available and people were renting spare bedrooms out of desperation.  Word to the wise:  Reserve early if you plan to attend in 2008.

The festival built up to a single ‘main event’ night one Saturday, when Soriano hosted its ‘Notte Bianca’  (White Night).  On this night, all stores were open until 5:00 AM, street vendors were out all night, several outdoor taverns were erected to serve grilled sausages, pasta, etc., and six stages were setup all over town to host an all-night event with 40 concerts.

All in all, this was by far the most impressive event I have ever seen in Soriano.  I’m already counting the days till next year’s festival….  It was a huge success, and will be here for at least the next five years.

This has perhaps been my busiest summer ever here in Soriano. So much so, that I have had no time to blog… how typical of me! That said, I’ll try to do a series of posts over the next few weeks to recap the highlights of this awesome ‘Summer Sorianese’

Olive Garden is one of those places that really sets my blood to boil. Every time I hear the word 'Hospitaliano' I begin to cringe and twitch. When I hear them say 'When you're here, you're family', I can't help but visualize the corporate offices of a chain with nearly 700 cookie-cutter restaurants. I'd just love to show up there one day waving my hands saying 'Ciao!!! It's cousin Michael'. I wonder what kind of Hospitaliano I will receive when I help myself (as family would) in their executive lunchroom at the corporate HQ. Better yet, after you leave an Olive Garden, how many people that work there know your name, let alone consider you family? Do we actually buy into this stuff?

OK, marketing marketing marketing. But now their commercials focus on their 'Culinary Institute' in Tuscany? They imply that their chefs all go there to learn how to make true Italian food with the freshest of ingredients. They learn from a local grandmother, then come back to their local Olive Garden and you get the benefit of their newfound talents. Yeah, Right! This is just over the top. Is Olive Garden actually trying to imply now that they serve authentic Italian food? Do they really want us to believe that it is the real thing? Fresh? We are talking about a Boil-a-meal-in-a-bag-then-serve chain here, people. Their recipes are at best 'Italian Inspired', but by no means Italian. It would be like having someone serve you a sausage and call it a hot dog.

Their latest commercial talked about how their chefs came back from Italy with their new recipe, 'Chicken Crostina' . Ummm... sorry folks, no such thing, and I can most certainly guarantee that the grandmother shown teaching the chefs in the commercial wouldn't put an Olive Garden Chicken Crostina in her mouth to save her life, let alone teach anyone to make it.

So what is this 'Cooking Institute' all about? I did a little research, and I put some two and two together. It appears that someone in corporate found an independent cooking school in Tuscany and made a deal with them. Olive Garden ranks all of their chefs and managers (as any corporation would), and the top 100 win a one-week trip to Italy the following year. It appears that they send 10 of their people at a time. It sounds like a great performance perk, and they are certainly getting a ton of marketing mileage out of it. However, I can pretty much guarantee that they come home and look at the food they make at their local Olive Garden and simply shake their heads, having finally experienced the real thing. In any case, they then go back to their 'line chef' system and feed you the same junk they always have. Sigh.

On Tuesday, December 19th at around 4:30 PM we sat at the departure gate in Los Angeles waiting to board our flight.  It had already been a very long day for us, and we were looking forward to a 10 hour flight to London with a connection that would take us to Rome.  It was me, Paola, our 17 year old daughter, and our 7 year old son.

I remember thinking and commenting at that time that if all went well, we would be getting in our rental car at Rome in about 16 hours, then make the hour and fifteen minute drive to Soriano, and finally be in our own beds.  The worst case scenario was that we would miss our connection.  After all, we only had a one hour layover at London Heathrow, so we might miss our connecting flight and have an additional 2 hour delay.

That worst case scenario was a dreaded thought at the time, but looking back, all I can say is:  IF ONLY!

The flight to London was uneventful.  I didn’t sleep, but I rarely do.  Still, I had a decent seat and the crew was good, which can make all the difference.

About 20 minutes before we were scheduled to land, however, the announcement came over the intercom stating that we would have to circle over London for 45 minutes before landing.  Oddly, he also assured us that we had enough fuel… duh!

OK, at this point we figure we will either miss our flight or with any luck, our connection will be late, too… IF ONLY!

The Adventure Begins
We landed.  We were about an hour late, but we had been told that many flights were also late. Cool.  We got off the plane and proceeded to the transit area where we would find our gate and figure out if we would make our flight.  It is 6:30 AM on Wednesday back in Los Angeles.  I have now been up for 24 hours.

The moment we got to the transit area, we were greeted by hundreds and hundreds of people looking just as confused as us.  Something was clearly not as it should be.  We couldn’t find our flight on the monitor, so we proceeded to an ‘Information’ line.    I kept looking at the monitor and every few seconds the word ‘CANCELLED’ would appear next to a scheduled flight.  Not good.

After a bit a woman comes to us with a sheet of paper.  She said that some flights are being cancelled due to fog.  As it turns out, ours was one of them.  She explained that we would need to proceed to baggage claim, get our luggage, and then go to the British Airways ticket desk to get ourselves rescheduled on the next flight to Rome.  At this point we are not happy campers.   How inconvenient that we have to get our bags, go through customs, and navigate Heathrow to get a new ticket… only to come right back here.  Why can’t they reschedule us here? Whatever… we’ll deal with it and get to Rome a bit more tired… IF ONLY!

We made the trek to baggage claim and waited… and waited… and waited.  No bags.  Finally someone explains that we were given bad information.  Our bags were in ‘holding’ and would be automatically placed on the next Rome flight.  Well, that certainly makes more sense.  He explained that we did still need to clear customs and go to BA ticketing.  So we left.

We went through customs and entered Heathrow.  For those that don’t know, Heathrow is enormous and very confusing.  We walked and walked and walked and walked to find British airways ticketing.  When we got to the general area, we were greeted by thousands of people crowding the terminal, looking as confused as we did.  We finally found a BA employee who explained where the line was for ticketing.  She warned us that the line was ‘dreadfully long’ due to the fog problems, and that everyone we saw in the terminal was in the same situation as we were.

We went to the end of the line, and it was by all definitions ‘dreadfully long’.  We figured that we would never make the next flight.  I was then informed that what I believed to have been the end of the line was merely a break in the line to allow people to cross to the exit.  The end of the line was ‘down there’.  As I ventured ‘down there’ I would get to what I thought was the end, only to find it wrap around another corridor… and another… and another… and another.  My conservative estimate is that the line was roughly 3/4 mile long.  This does not look good at all.  As we stand in the line, we move forward roughly 50 feet in a half hour.  It didn’t take long to do the math on this one and figure out that we were not going anywhere today.

I decided to venture toward the front of the line to hover and gather all of the intel that I could.  The first thing that really struck me was that all of the airport employees were just as confused as we were.  They were overwhelmed and had no plan of action.  They were winging it.  The next thing to happen was ‘The letter’.  They began to hand out apology letters.  I truly felt bad for these people, as they were dealing with thousands of angry travelers while they were doing the best they could…. And the best they could do at this point was an apology letter.

At one point, toward the front of the line a British Airways employee who was helping another passenger asked me if I had a pen.  I said I would go grab one for him, so I started running back to Paola, who was way back in line still.  I got the pen, gave it to the man, and he told me to stay there next to him.  As it turns out, he was British Airways Executive Vice President for the Americas, who just happened to have flown in from New York that day.  He told me that standing in that line was an act of absolute futility, and then got out his cell phone and called his New York office. He got us rescheduled on a flight the next day and said that BA would pay for our hotel that night.  He scribbled some information on paper and gave me instructions.  WOW!  Good thing we had that pen. 

I got Paola and the kids out of the line.  The apology letter had a list of hotels, but I figured that with the thousands of people that were stranded, we would be wasting our time trying to get one of those.  When I am in London, I usually stay at the Paddington Hilton because the Heathrow Express takes you straight to Paddington station in 15 minutes, and the hotel is an escalator away from the trains.  We quickly booked a room there, called some close friends that live in London and boarded the train.

We spent a nice evening with friends we would not have otherwise seen.  This wasn’t so bad, after all.  We’ll be rested and on a flight to Rome tomorrow… IF ONLY!

That night we were watching the news, and the Heathrow situation was the top story.  80,000 passengers were stranded at Heathrow.  All flights that day after we had arrived had been cancelled, and they expected the fog to last for a few days.  Already, 350 flights had been cancelled for the following day.

We tried to call British airways and the airport over and over to see how we were affected, but their lines were beyond capacity and there was no hope of getting through.  Even the New York office was impossible.  I tried their website, but their system wasn’t responding to the load.  We had no way of getting any information.  The following morning nothing had changed, so we figured our only option was to go back to Heathrow to get the lay of the land.

We woke up (Paola couldn’t sleep that night)   and quickly got showered and to the trains..  Once we arrived at Heathrow, we found that gigantic line again, only now it was worse!  Now there was a giant line that wrapped around outside in the freezing cold fog that brought you to a tent where they would give you a ‘Lottery Ticket’ that would give you the right to be in the ‘dreadfully long’ line.  OK, I’ll hover at the front again and gather intel!  All the while, we are trying to call the numbers we have for BA, but there was just no hope of getting through.

I was able to find out that our flight was, in fact, cancelled.  At best, we might get out in a day or two.  At this point we decided the best bet was to get off the Island any way we could.  The first thought was to rent a car.  We quickly found out that while we could do that, all of the ferries were backed up with people that had the same thought we had.

The next idea was train.  We could take the EuroStar to Paris (Through the Chunnel) then get a train or a car in Paris to Rome.  Or perhaps we could fly from Paris to Rome.  We made some calls and were told that the flight would cost us around $2,600.00.  Screw that… we’ll do the train.  Some calls were made, and we had instructions and times.  We would get to the station in London, and then purchase the tickets through to Rome.  We would take a night train, and arrive in Rome the following morning.  Cool… IF ONLY.

We got our tickets for the Eurostar, but as we entered the station, we learned that you are technically in France at that point, and you had to purchase tickets outside the station.   Unfortunately, we were not allowed outside the station at that point, so we had to buy the tickets once we arrived in Paris.  Keep in mind that we were told that we might not be able to get a ticket for the Rome train, so time was of the essence. 

During the train ride to Paris, we kept calling British Airways in hopes of getting information.  Remember, our suitcases are somewhere at Heathrow, and perhaps they could get us on a Paris-Rome flight.  Nothing. 

Finally we arrive in Paris and start to make a run for the subways so we can get to the station where the Rome train leaves from and try to get on it.  I decided to try British airways one more time and somehow I finally got through.    The woman on the other end suggested that I should go the airport and see if BA would get us on a flight.  She said there were two flights for Rome, but she couldn’t do the booking.

With a quick change of plans, we took the subway to the airport and walked and walked and walked to find the BA desk.  When we got there, we found another long line.  We left long lines of people trying to leave London, and here we found a long line of people trying to go TO London.  Again, I hovered for intel.  Unfortunately, I don’t have much luck finding helpful French people.  After a bit, a very nice Hungarian lady from a different airline decided she wanted to make my day a little better.  She was able to produce four tickets to Rome that night for us.

We boarded the flight and made it to Rome.  We finally made it to Soriano at 1:00 AM Friday morning.  All in all, our day had started 58 hours prior.  That moment back in Los Angeles when I dreaded the thought that my bed was 16 hours away was actually 48 hours away.  It never felt so good.

We left Los Angeles on December 19th. We were supposed to arrive in Soriano on December 20th.  We arrived on December 23rd.  The following day one suitcase arrived.  All of our Christmas presents are somewhere in London.  On December 26, another suitcase arrived.  As of now, we have no information on the other four… which have the presents.  I‘m at the point that I am driving to Rome daily to check for the suitcases (they rarely answer the phones), and have gotten on a first name basis with many of the customs Agents at FCO :-).
 
The funny thing is that while it was crazy, especially with a Teenage daughter and a 7-year-old son, we were all troopers and laughed all the way.  Oddly, it is a wonderful memory, and I am sure that I will look back at this as one of the best Christmas Holidays of our lives.

 

A tradition in Italy during christmas time is the living manger.  Many towns go way beyond a simple manger scene, and produce a full scale reproduction of Bethlehem.   What makes it so special in many cases, is that they have the landscape and existing structures to really make it look and feel real.

Some towns do a better job, and others fail by comparison.  This holiday season, there are at least 15 towns doing it, and each one competes with the others to be the best.  Last year I saw the manger at the nearby town of Bassano, and thought it couldn’t possibly be outdone.  However, many people had told me that the one produced in Chia (a suburb or Soriano) is by far the best there was.

I was skeptical.  After all, the people of Soriano would naturally favor the living manger in their own suburb, and Chia is small beyond small.  How good can it be?  Still, this year I decided to check it out.

I went to Chia on December 26, thinking I really wanted to go back to Bassano.  When I stepped into their version of Jesus’ Bethlehem, I was awestruck. They had taken an area of town that was full of babbling brooks, caves, huge rock formations, etc. and literally constructed a massive production.  There must have been 500 people in full dress, each doing their unique job:  Roman soldiers, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Baket weavers, etc. I felt as though I had been transported 2,000 years back in time.

It was so amazing, that I believe a trip from the states just to see this would be worth it. 

As if I haven’t been there enough this year, I am on my way back.  I’ve barely been back a month, and now we have yet another trip planned for December 19th.  This will be the first time we have been there for the holidays in 12 years.  On this trip, Paola and the kids will be coming, and this will be Andrei’s first Christmas in Italy.  Besides spending Christmas wtith Paola’s family, we will be having a New Years Eve party at the villa with a bunch of friends.

The big motivator for going isn’t just the holidays, but the fact that the apartment rentals are beginning to fill up, and there is some unfinished business to take care of.  For one thing, I need to get the computer in Ponticello running, since I blew it up last month.  Additionally, Paola has some decorating to do, and I need to get a solid guest manual made for things like ‘How to turn on the heater’, ‘How to use the Satellite Remote’, etc.  We’ll also be getting some faux finishing done on some walls in Ponticello.

Beyond that, our friend Maurizio is opening up a B&B that is looking amazing, and we are starting to get overbooked during some periods in 2007.  I want to get some pictures of his place so we can start sending some overflow to him.  Additionally, this trip may bring 3 or 4 more apartments into the DiscoverSoriano.com mix, so there will be some checking out of a few places to make sure they meet our standards.

Will post more as it happens…

I’ve been back in Los Angeles for a week now, and last night we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner for the first time since I got back.  This may not seem like a big deal, but for us it is always a tragedy.

The restaurant was Pomodoro in Woodland Hills.  I don’t want to say it is a bad place by American standards.  Actually, it is one of the better chains.  It is just that I was in Italy having the real thing a week ago, and by those standards, even the best place in the states simply stinks.

To give you an example of what I mean, let me go back about a month.  I was having a mega craving for roasted chicken and roasted potatoes.  In the states, we would generally call it Tuscan chicken, since it is generally a central Italian thing.  In Soriano, there is a place that makes roasted chicken and potatoes that are to die for, and this craving I was having needed to be addressed.

We decided to go to a place called Rosti in Westlake Village.  It is a tiny chain of just 4 restaurants.  We had been there in the past many times, and it had always been good.  In fact, it has always been the closest thing to real central Italian food we had ever eaten in the states.  The problem was that I was craving the real thing, not the ‘closest thing’.  I had the memory of Italy in my head, not the memory of a cheap imitation of Italy.

So we go to Rosti and order Caprese, followed by roasted chicken and potatoes.

The Caprese was a disaster.  But t wasn’t their fault… it was ours.  We had the memory of the real thing.  Caprese is pretty simple… it is hard to mess up.  I mean, Mozzarella, Tomato, basil, and oil… How hard can it be?  The problem is that the tomatoes we get here in L.A. taste like water, not tomatoes.  The mozzarella is never fresh, and even at best, it has absolutely no flavor. So in the end, you get something that looks like Caprese, but tastes like nothing.

Then came the main course.  The plate looked awesome!  There were my potatoes and my roasted chicken… Yummmmm!!!  That is, until my knife hit the chicken.  It didn’t feel right.  When I tasted it, I suddenly frowned and wondered how they got the chicken flavor out of the chicken.  Then I tried the potatoes, and I could feel the effects of the microwave used to heat them in my mouth.  I was devastated.  It was like craving an In n’ Out burger and settling for a Big Mac.  The problem was that this is as good as it gets.  The only way to satisfy the craving was 8.000 miles away.  Why can’t we make decent Italian food here?

Actually, it is our own fault.  We live in a move ‘em in and move ‘em out country. It starts with the farmers and ends with your meal.  The farmers mass produce everything, having to make a bigger tomato that gets to the market faster so they can grow more tomatoes.  Technology gets us bigger and cheaper tomatoes faster than ever. The price of this is flavor.  The chicken ranchers are replaced by chicken ‘mills’ that pump them full of hormones, giving us bigger chickens than ever.  They are big and cheap, so who will notice that they don’t actually taste like chickens?  

As we walk into restaurants they take our orders as soon as possible and deliver us our food as quickly as possible.  We mistake this for good and fast service, but it isn’t that at all.  In fact, they want us in and out quickly so they can get reuse your table as many times as possible that evening.  But food just doesn’t cook that fast, now does it?  So they have to precook as much as possible.  They can’t waste the time and energy to make things from scratch, so they buy the majority of what you eat in frozen form from a huge distributor.  Food is prepped quickly and reheated so that they can use fewer people in the kitchen with higher efficiency, all the while getting your order to you in lightning speed. 

The process is beautiful, and the only thing you lose along the way is flavor.   But even that is ok, since we are preconditioned to think that is the way it is supposed to be.

Then we wonder why the Italian food is so much better in Italy.  Go figure!

This is my last day in Soriano for this trip. Things didn’t happen as quickly as I had hoped, so I extended my stay 3 days.  In about an hour I will close up the house one more time and say goodbye until my next trip (which is looking like Christmas).

In these two weeks, much has been accomplished, however.  The homes are fully outfitted, with the exception of a few small things that can be done while I am away.  The satellite service is up and running, but the dishes won’t be installed until next week.  The DSL is ‘on the way’, and at least one of the computers is installed (the other blew up, so I need to send a replacement).

I’ve hung pictures, bought knick knacks, installed air conditioning, bought new furniture, coffee machines, dishes, silverware, etc. etc. etc.   I have to say that the places look awesome!

The funny thing is that before we outfitted the apartments, everyone was in love with ‘Il Ponticello’, and there has been little interest in ‘Vecchio Forno’.  Looking at them now, while they are both breathtaking, Ponticello doesn’t hold a candle to Vecchio Forno.

Anyway, I’ll write more about the two weeks here when I get settled back in California.

I’ve been here for 5 days now and have had no time to write as I have been so busy working on our apartments.  However, yesterday I took my cousin to see Rome.  After all, she has never been to Italy and it is less than an hour away from our house.  It’s late october… we are pressing hard on low season here, but Rome was flooded with tourists.  As we walked down the streets, all we heard was English and German.  Every time we got near an ‘attraction', it felt like we were at Disneyland on a Saturday in June.  The line to get into St. Peter's Basilica at the vatican consisted of tens of thousands of people.  Everywhere we went was crowded beyond belief.  You just couldn't enjoy a thing, and this is LATE OCTOBER!  Ugh!

 

The tourist trap stands were out in force, and since it was raining a little on and off, there were armies of people trying to force umbrellas on us.  Do people actually buy plastic St. Peter’s

snow globes?  I mean, where do they put this stuff when the get home, anyway? 

 It was all just over the top.  Maybe I was just tired, but it really showed what i always say about the touristy areas of Italy:  They were once beautiful places, but have been destroyed by the ravages of mass tourism.  The real Italy... the experience that really leaves you wanting to come back over and over... can only be found in the villages outside the cities.

 

 

 

As we left Rome last night, a sense of relief swept my body.  The closer I got to home, the better I felt.  I got home, went to bed, and woke up at sunrise.  I made my coffee and went outside.  After snappping pictures of the tourist traps of Rome all day yesterday, I couln’t help but snap a picture of the Alto Lazio and Umbria countryside at dawn from my house… such a contrast.  No plastic towers of Pisa here.  Just nature, peace and quiet.  Ahhhhhh.

Wow, it has been a whopping 2 1/2 months since I have been to Italy.  And here I am going again this week for a quick 9 days.  This will mark my 4th trip there in 2006.  Gotta love those frequent flyer miles

The main purpose of the trip this time is to set up all of the technology in our rentals.  The two apartments we bought this summer for DiscoverSoriano rentals are finally ready, minus all of the tech stuff.  I will be installing a brand new computer in each apartment, with DSL, Wireless Internet, etc.  I’ll also be setting up the televisions, the satellite tv service, and DVD/DiVX.  Finally, we will be getting the new air conditioners installed.

On the non-tech list, I am bringing a suitcase full of books in english that we will leave in the apartments for guests to read, plus new comforters, linens, new furniture and more.  I’ll be buying the espresso machines, American coffee makers, and getting the kitchens fully setup as well.

All in all, it will be a busy 9 days!  My cousin, Cheryl, will be coming along.  This is her first trip to Italy, so in between all of the work, we will certainly do some sightseeing.  I’ll try to write about the highlights during my stay.

Ciao,

Michael