17 November 2008

tofu soup and tea



A couple of weekends ago we headed out to visit the largest and best preserved palace in Seoul but first stopped at a small mom and pop restaurant for lunch. My tofu soup came out rapidly boiling and spicy, and Stefano-shi's ramen hit the spot. Unfortunately when we left the restaurant what had started as a cloudy day had transformed into a rainy one and we were without umbrellas.

Two umbrellas from a subway vendor later and we were back on our way to the palace. But then it started to rain harder and the puddles got deeper and we decided this was no day to tour the many acres of palace grounds. It was, instead, a day to drink tea among Insadong's art galleries.



My plum tea tasted like fruit juice simmered in sweet syrup and had three pine nuts bobbing on the surface. Stefano-shi had a five flavor tea that was bitter, salty, sweet, sour and strange. We shared a plate of rice pastries and watched the rain continue to patter outside. And before heading home we stopped at our favorite arcade for a couple of rounds of couples' video games.

So it wasn't the day we'd expected but I can't complain. I discovered three perfect rainy day accompaniments: tofu soup, sweet plum tea, and couples' video games. Rainy days will never be the same.

06 November 2008

our next president



Something big has happened, something absolutely monumental. And to try to say what it means, to try to summarize it in a few sentences, could never do it justice. Here I am, thousands of miles and a handful of time zones away and I could still feel the electric hum of votes being cast and counted, and tipping slowly, steadily, and then all in a rush towards this amazing jolt to history and our times. I will never forget how it felt to be this excited about what an individual could do for our country. And I will always remember the thrill that real hope can inspire, the dizzying sensation that this thing could really happen. And now here we are, in a different place, with a different perspective, thinking of the possibilities that lie before us. And after Tuesday, isn't anything possible?

04 November 2008

november 4, 2008



For those of you wondering whether the U.S. presidential election is big news around the world, I give you today's headlines in Korea. I may not be able to read the front page, but I can certainly identify photos of Barack Obama and John McCain when I see them.

Italy is also apparently keeping a keen eye on the election details and when we talked with some Italian friends this weekend they wanted to know what happened with the "zia" of Barack.

Just to put things in perspective, how about naming the president of South Korea... without using google. Extra credit goes to anyone who can name his opponent in the most recent election.

As I post this entry, Americans are waking up and heading to the polls... and making the news that we'll all read about tomorrow.

03 November 2008

il vino e il polvo



When we started our dusty trek to the winery, and took those first steps out of La Morra and into the vineyards, we seemed to be headed in the right direction. But then something happened and we went su (up) when we should of gone giu (down). And then giu (down) when we should have gone su (up).

The vineyards seemed to run well into forever, with line after line of grapevines shooting into the distance like pinstripes. Somewhere along the way we lost track of the trail markers and didn't know if we were supposed to go up and over the hill standing in our way or not. Turns out we were.

So, after a long dusty haul - that included going over the hill - we arrived at the Renato Ratti winery, pant cuffs stuffed with yellow silt and shoes that looked like we'd recently undertaken a lunar landing. When we rang the bell and apologized for being so late the voice that squawked out of the call box made sure to clarify..."TWO HOURS late"...and then paused for effect.



I think we gained back some of their respect when we explained that we'd walked to the winery - yes, on foot - and gotten lost in the process. The small piles of dust that sprinkled across their floors in our wake seemed to confirm our story. We even got a glass of water before we embarked on our belated tour of the wine museum.

The tour was short, dank, and musty as Stefano and I followed one of the winery employees through an old monastery. We could make out barrels in the basement (where not all of the lights were working) and came to appreciate the unique shapes of wine bottles from the region. There was a collection of historic wine labels and photos of the man who started it all. In all honesty it was a lot of fun roaming around the small museum - and this was before the wine sampling made everything even better.



The Renato Ratti tasting room overlooks a horizon lined with grapevines and a region known for incredible wines. We sat there, wineglasses in hand, appreciating the fact that our jeans were coated with the very same dust that supported the growth of the grapes we were drinking. And these weren't just any grapes. These were nebbiolo and barbera. Grapes that become Barolo and Barbaresco, the wines people across the world recognize by their first names.



When the wines crossed our tongues in that place and after that walk, they tasted better than they have tasted anywhere else in the world. They tasted like the sun that had slowed us, and the dust that coated us. They tasted of the stories we'd heard, and a little of the impatience that had squawked at us for being late. They tasted like a day in La Morra.

And they tasted beyond perfect after a visiting Canadian cardiologist gave us a ride back to town. He not only saved us from an uphill walk back, but he should also be credited with keeping us from likely getting lost again. His generosity not only meant that we were able to catch the last bus back to Bra, but it also gave us the extra time we needed for a quick pre-bus meal. We had a glass of wine, some cheese, cured meats, a little bagna cauda...



and maybe just a little bit of dust.

burano with a b



The island of Burano is a vaporetto ride from Venice and is not to be confused with Murano, the island whose name is synonymous with glassblowing. Burano - with a B - is the farther out island of the two and is known for its lace making and the vivid hues of its homes. It's also the island to visit when Venice seems a little more crowded than usual, or when you'd like to see just how big Italian mosquitoes can get.



Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly tourists in Burano - and souvenir shops as well - but there are fewer of both out here. Instead, Burano's crowds are of the brick and mortar variety. They don't surge and they don't run you ragged; they simply stand still and simmer in the sun. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder these buildings are slathered in the red of cherries, the green of avocado skins, and the pink of Pepto-Bismal. They are the colors that buildings never are.

We wandered the pedestrian ways along the canals and tucked into stone backyards where laundry hung. We ran from the mosquitoes, marveled at a tipping tower, and started running again. We drank caffé made by a barista who ran the New York marathon in almost half the time I did and we took scads of photos in front of walls of every color.



Buildings may not usually be these colors, but after an afternoon in Burano you'll finally ask "why not?"

29 October 2008

nature in numbers



Don't worry about getting lost on a Korean hiking trail. It's not gonna happen. In fact, don't worry about bears or running out of food or being kidnapped. These are all things that happen if you're alone in nature. And one must remember that being alone in nature doesn't happen in Korea. Especially at Seoraksan National Park in the fall.



At Seoraksan hiking is done in throngs. Great heaving throngs with advanced levels of fitness... shocking levels of fitness. Old women click their tongues somewhere behind you on the trail and before you can get out of the way they will pass you at a trot. Thankfully for the rest of us, these ladies are usually dressed in fuschia and are never seen in groups smaller than 15 so they won't be mastering the element of surprise anytime soon.

I promise that you have never seen anything like this. And unless you've tried it, you can't imagine the pressure there is to keep moving on a hiking trail when half of Korea is breathing down your neck. Literally. Because as you're navigating the stone staircase twisting down the mountainside, they're on the step immediately behind you. And at their pace they're coming pretty darn close to breathing down your neck until they weave deftly off the trail and bypass the meandering amateurs. (Here I add that even the most crowded of Alpine ranges are undiscovered wastelands by comparison.)



The crowds are certainly part of the experience and we had a great time on our visit to Seoraksan. We hiked up, we hiked down. We laughed at warning signs featuring cute bears and their cute bear children. We had a delicious Korean lunch that our friend made. I even said "tasty!" in Korean when I started to eat it. (Not that I knew what I was saying. It turns out that our Korean language teacher has been training me Pavlov-style. She has me say the same phrase - Tasty! - at the start of every lunchtime language class, which just so happens to be when I'm eating my lunch. So now, without even thinking about it, anytime I put food to my mouth, I say "tasty" in Korean. She must be proud.)



We also had a traditional post-hiking meal which means that we went to a restaurant at the base of the mountain, took off our hiking boots, sat on the floor, and ate bibimbap and soup. And yes, the restaurant was full - note the long line of hiking boots at the foot of the raised dining area.

So... Hiking - great. Food - great. Traffic - not so great. It took three hours to get to Seoraksan but five hours to get back. And I can vouch for the fact that the bus driver was using all manner of shortcuts and creative driving to try to avoid the traffic. You don't usually expect that when bumper-to-bumper traffic comes to a standstill you'll be presented with a panoramic view of the hay harvest, but in Korea it's entirely possible.



Stefano-shi pointed out that once we got close to Seoul we crossed the same river four times - more attempts to avoid traffic. It's funny that we spent a total of eight hours on a bus for the pleasure of hiking Seoraksan with a million of our closest friends while our driver crossed the same river four times to avoid these same people.

And one last bit of advice we learned the hard way: hide your trail mix from soju-drinking hikers. Apparently the consumption of soju in the wild outdoors not only emboldens its drinkers, but gives them an overwhelming urge for the trail mix of strangers.

25 October 2008

all together now



Sometimes we worry that the uniquely vivid slacks so beloved by Italian males are going unnoticed since we've left Italy. So during our recent wander across northern Italy we made up for lost time... In Treviso. In Venezia and Burano. In Milano and Alba and Bassano del Grappa. The uomini of Italy didn't let us down and even made sure to hang out in pairs so that they would be easier to spot in a crowd. And for their efforts, we say: "Grazie mille. Our trip wouldn't have been the same without you."

Oh, and one more thing: "Punch pants!"

01 October 2008

Songni san



Before Saturday's trek we'd heard anecdotally that Koreans like to hike "straight up" and that there's no such thing as switchbacks on the trails here. I understand what they mean now, in the way that only someone who has climbed straight up a mountain without the use of switchbacks can understand.

Our afternoon was one of those sprawling physical quests where after you've poured so much effort into the attempt, regardless of the mounting feeling of impossibility, you just keep going. Putting foot after foot on the stone steps leading up, up, up. Smiling with hope at the people coming back down the trail, looking to them for some sort of inspiration or at least a raised fist and a shout of Korea's national mantra, "Fighting!"

We just kept going up and up, until we reached that top. And once we got there we shared a Gatorade toast, a great view, and the realization that going straight down probably wasn't going to be so easy either.

happy birthday, from scratch



I requested... a three-layer chocolate cake with peanut butter cream frosting and a dark chocolate ganache glaze. I got... the best cake I've ever had in my life.

Thank you Stefano-shi!

23 September 2008

34 in halong



If a husband loves his wife he will spare her the knowledge that a gigantic meaty spider is lurking in the rafters of the thatched hut where they are eating dinner. He will keep this information to himself because he has an inkling that if his wife were to find out that these types of spiders live on the island where they are spending the night, she would never -ever- fall asleep in their small and exceedingly open hut on the beach.





I am happy to report that I am a loved wife and did not find out about the mammoth spider until well after breakfast the next day. That's not to say that I slept much anyway. Despite the sleepiness cultivated by an afternoon of kayaking and a birthday bottle of Vietnamese wine, our bodies noticed when it came time to turn off the generator. Our hut had two small oscillating fans, one pointed at each of our mosquito netted "beds," and the moment that generator stopped, the hot circles of air issuing from the fans stopped as well. So did the white-noise hum that had done such a good job of masking the scratching and rooting of nocturnal things.



Waking up that next morning was as much about rising to face a new day as it was about trying to find a new breeze. We stumbled out of our hut and found that our strip of sandy beach had grown overnight. With the help of the tide, the clear waters of Halong Bay had taken a deep breath and pulled back to reveal many yards of beach that were previously underwater. Strips of yellow sand appeared along the handful of islands visible from our beach and later that morning we explored one of them after kayaking through the calm bay.



The waters of Halong Bay are green and warm and in the best places they are so clear that you can see your feet shuffle along the sandy bottom. These waters have a habit of washing crowds of shells onto the beach, and gently rocking the jellyfish that float alongside your large dragon boat as it pilots to places both secret and wild. They are salty and tepid and reflect the sun like a 1000 watt bulb. They are the stuff of postcards and guidebooks and warrant every ounce of attention that they receive.



It was a thrill to be the only guests on an island. We hadn't expected to be the only people on our kayaking tour and were surprised to find that our only neighbors would be the staff: three young Vietnamese guys who, when they weren't snoozing in hammocks, were enjoying their nightly generator splurge of dance music and satellite TV.





On what turned out to be our personal tour of the bay we went kayaking twice. One outing ended in a glorious quest to avoid heatstroke, and the other delivered us not only through a small rock tunnel but also to a floating fishing village populated by entire families, their agile dogs, and the floating cages of fish they were raising.





Back at the beach we watched giant black wasps dig tunnels in the sand beneath our breakfast table and were amazed by the sun's quick work at drying our sopping-wet clothes. We went swimming and shell hunting, and took cold-water showers looking out on the bay. We sprayed DEET and SPF 50 and didn't brush our teeth.





The concept of luxury is fluid and I swear to you that last week it meant sleeping on a thin mattress among the ants and begging the wind to bring a breeze.

21 September 2008

hanoi for beginners



Don't believe what they say - it is entirely possible to cross the street in Hanoi. However, doing so means resigning yourself to unspoken traffic traditions and putting your health and very existence into the hands of a hundred people piloting motorbikes laden with children, vegetables, and 35 foot lengths of pipe. And that's just what's driving past downtown.



Take a drive even 20 minutes out of Hanoi and you will find the roads sparse with vehicles but edged with a thick bustle of random transport. Two hundred pounds of lifeless hog laid across the back of a motorbike, eerily pink in the sun and moving steadily along the road. A woman, her face shielded by the standard conical straw hat, holding equally tightly to the handlebars of her bicycle and to the five dead chickens she has in each hand; the birds picture perfect and moving only when the wind disturbs their feathers. Uniformed factory workers finishing their shifts and piling onto bicycles -- two friends onto a single bicycle, layering their four feet on the pedals and powering their way home together. A table and chairs balanced on a motorbike in the small chunk of seat left behind the driver.



It is absolutely no joke to be in the dead center of the road and see a motorbike that looks like a moving vegetable garden coming straight for you. Your brain locks and your body screams to run, but the only solution is to focus on the other side of the road and continue to put one foot in front of the other. Slowly. You must know and trust that the vegetables and their driver will either rush past your front, or veer to your back. There is no stopping for them and there is no stopping for you. There is only the constant flow. The occasional traffic lights only serve to create temporary parking lots in which hundreds of motorbikes pause - humming - and wait for the light to change and the streets to swarm again.





Hanoi is hot, so hot that people in the know resign their bodies to the midday swelter and sleep wherever it is that they find themselves. We walked through a small muggy market over which a random tapestry of striped fabrics had been hung. In the bright afternoon sun these fabrics cast watercolor hues on the marketplace below but the vendors didn't care; most were sleeping under their vegetables or alongside their eels. It was too hot to shop, and therefore too hot to sell.



Watermelon juice is one solution to these problems. Or better yet, a tall glass of watermelon juice and a fan blowing hot air through your hair and drying the sweat off your back. There are also delicious fresh lunches piled high with tangles of lotus root and banana flower, peanuts and bean sprouts. The taste is a mix of vibrant fish sauce and vinegar, and flavors that most westerners don't know how to begin to explain. And even in the heat there is delicious Vietnamese coffee, strong and syrupy with a basement of condensed milk. After swirling it all together the coffee is sweet and strong, and a reason to relax at a sidewalk café even if you're not yet tired.



Pho (pronounced "fuh") is the steaming bowl of beef and leafy greens known as the national breakfast of Vietnam. It is savory and wonderful and comes accompanied by tiny round limes that are squeezed fresh into your bowl. There are containers of hot and spicy sauces too, and if these seasonings aren't already on the plastic curbside table when you arrive, the regulars will pass them along. You might not notice because you'll still be trying to figure out exactly where to stash your legs as they most definitely do not fit under the tiny table; and your doll-sized plastic stool won't help because sitting on it started the problem by placing your knees up somewhere near your shoulders. But this is what eating somewhere else is all about - it's real food on the side of a real road sitting on plastic doll furniture with real people. And at the bargain price of a dollar a bowl I think I could get used to this.



Filling your days in the city is easy. There are art galleries in old decaying homes in which the interior gardens are often as beautiful as the art. There are haircuts and close shaves at a sidewalk barber under the leafy trees. There are lakes and pagodas and as many historic sites as you'd like to explore. (There are also people pulling turtles out of the picturesque lakes and shoving them quickly into their pockets but I doubt you'll find that on a postcard.)



It's possible to visit the infamous Hanoi Hilton with its well-known and unfortunate American connection. And while visiting the remainders of the prison, which now form a small museum, you'll discover that before the Vietnamese kept American soldiers there, they themselves were imprisoned there by the French who had originally built this place to hold Vietnamese political prisoners who resisted their rule. And yet even with the recent and violent history between America and Vietnam, there were still nothing but smiles from normal people on the street. Making eye contact with someone in Vietnam usually ends with a smile, unless of course you're wandering through the market at its peak and then you might get an encouraging shove to the side instead. In general practice it's best not to get in the way of people who've been up since 3:00am cleaning fish and killing chickens.



Once a year in Vietnam there is the Mid-Autumn festival celebrating not only the harvest moon but in more modern times, one's children and family. To the random foreigners who out of sheer dumb luck are wandering the streets during this magical party, it looks like a kid-pleasing combination of Christmas and Halloween. There are costumes and presents, candies and balloons; mice for sale by lantern light and fire lanterns intermittently rising into the sky.



The crowds were thick and motorbikes were constantly threading their way through the masses. But the feeling of this commotion, the mood in that sweltering block of humanity, was nothing but pleasant and light. I have never been in a crowd of people that was both so gigantic and so easy going, with children running the streets in devil horns and asleep on their parents' motorbikes by the end of the night.





Hanoi has that remarkable quality of looking as if a good solid thump on the back could make it all fall apart, while at the same time absolutely singing with the hum of life. The electrical lines that cross the streets like handfuls of long black snakes, and the aged trees that command so many patches of sidewalk manage - miraculously - not to intertwine.



The simple bowls of pho made in makeshift kitchens no bigger than closets and eaten every morning at the curb carry a country's well-deserved culinary reputation to places very far from here. And motorbikes that follow no rules successfully transport entire families through daily life while weaving through a thousand other families doing the same.

This is the place to watch chaos frizz into normalcy while a million moving pieces fall perfectly into place.

25 August 2008

we didn't get lost



The Korean peninsula likes to keeps us guessing. It uses a language we don't know and an alphabet we've only just learned to read. It talks to us and all we can do is smile and nod. But the smiling is more important than the nodding. Far more important. Because smiling means that you can get on the subway and ask a stranger how to get to the city of Suwon, and he will get off the train with you, walk you to your connecting train, and wait until you get on your way to Suwon.

And before you board the train the helpful man will say, "Have fun!" But then he will also quickly ask, "Can I say that? Is it correct to say "have fun'?" He'd already asked us earlier whether it is better to say "large" field or "big" field? Large field or big field? It's an admirable trait of many Korean English speakers... the desire to perfect their already solid English abilities. He's asking us how best to describe a wide swath of grass in English while we're just glad to know how to say "yes" and "no" in Korean on a good day.



These rudimentary language skills came in handy in our first real effort to transit and map our way to an unfamiliar Korean location. Our destination was the Hwaseong Fortress, a UNESCO heritage site in Suwon, outside of Seoul. After successfully arriving at the Suwon train station we got out our map and headed into the city past signs we had to sound out slowly and street names we thought we could read.

We poked our heads into a small store and asked the woman sitting at the cash register if we were going in the right direction. Actually, to be a touch more accurate, we said the name of the temple in our thick American accents and pointed up the street with a hopeful look on our faces. She nodded and pointed her own hand in that direction. And then Stefano-shi in a bold go at using our elementary Korean skills said, "Hwaseong Fortress, I walk?" And the lady nodded again. Hooray!



We did remarkably well and found our way to the perfect place to start exploring a fortress. Hot, humid, and uphill - we just kept walking up the hill and into the humidity until we reached the snack shop and the fridges filled with iced coffee and ice cream. And with our iced coffee and ice cream we explored the fortress all studded with turrets and temples, nooks and crannies. There was a big bell and someone's picnic laid out under painted rafters. And all the while storm clouds hung overhead but never let go of a drop.

We went aways in one direction and thought we might want to go a bit further until we ran into a very steep and very long set of stairs going straight down. We both looked at the stairs and then at each other, and then turned around again. We went back the way we had come and then some, and it was the perfect tour. Our route gave us great views of the city of Suwon, with its high-rise apartment buildings crowding any space not part of the hills. And in the end we realized that if we had followed our guide book's directions exactly, as in word-for-word, we would have made the fortress climb coming from the opposite direction and found ourselves on an ugly uphill trek. Instead, we saw it from the downhill side.



When we were back on the ground floor of the city we rambled through the marketplace all full of kittens in bird cages, dried fish in sacks, and sunglasses... jammed in and crammed in with someone screaming their benefits into a microphone. And on our way back to the train station we stopped for lunch at a kim-bap place and accidentally interrupted the staff's lunch. We ordered soba noodles, kim-bap, and udon soup and were rewarded with a flock of side dishes to boot: chilled kim chi, acorn jelly, sea weed, bean sprouts with sesame, green beans in chili. And in addition, since the staff was eating and happened to be generous, we benefited from a generous offering of chop chae (noodles) from their own meal.



Then we were back on our way to the train station where Stefano-shi bought railway train tickets for the way home (instead of taking the subway) and decreased our return trip to a brief 30 minutes. Sitting on the train, chugging our way back home to a home that's not quite home, was reminiscent of how we spent our two years in Italy. Not quite the same, but similar. Except that we woke up to a Musack version of the Beatles's Let It Be blasting from the ceiling speakers at peak volume as the train pulled into the station, presumably to wake up all the snoozers. Never had that in Italy.