10.

Saturday 28^th May: "Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow."
Romeo and Juliet, 2.ii

It occurred to me fairly early on that the style of bidet (and bathroom suite) changes over time and just as we all have our favourite flavour of ice-cream, we might all have our favourite bidet and toilet combination. To continue on this theme, in a one-off series of one, there is a hotel-to-bidet matching competition: Match the places I’ve slept in over the past three weeks (1-7) with their corresponding bidets (A-G). Easy. Answers are at the end, so be careful how you scroll as I’m sure you don’t want to discover the answers before having played the game!

1. Hotel Continental, Treviso (the one with the floral paper)
2. Hotel Corona Ferrea, Rovigo (a 70s place with the twon twinned with Bedford)
3. A friend’s flat in Milan
   
4. Best Western di Capuleti, Verona (the place with its own terrace)
5. Hotel Verona (a one-nighter in Verona in a ‘business-traveller’-type hotel)
6. Hotel San Marco (a ‘stylish’ place on the shores of Lake Garda)
7. Hotel Grotta (out in the depths of the countryside on the very edge of Castiglione)

Also think about which one is your favourite – consider things like shape of bowl, thickness and design of rim and how they’re attached to the floor/wall.

Before we get to the answers, Dictionary.com suggests this rather interesting piece of etymology for bidet:

1620s, from Fr. bidet (16c.), of unknown etymology. Originally in Fr. "a small horse, a pony," thus "a vessel on a low narrow stand, which can be bestridden for bathing purposes.

A bit of a stretch to go from a small horse to a fixture for washing your bottom, but such is the mysterious way in which language works.

But nice to see ‘bestride’ being used as a verb from time to time, don’t you think? OK, so it’s farewell from me for another year and with luck, I’ll be back in May next year to relay some more of my

movements from abroad.

Answers:

1. B; and not a flower in sight.

2. E. Nice 70s tiling, no?

3. D; The ‘non-hotel’ towel may have been the clue here.

4. G; Almost palatial with the touches of gold – very much what you’d expect Juliet to be found using.

5. C; Clean and functional.

6. A; Very swish and my lake-side favourite. Handy for cleaning beneath too!

7. F; Sitting on either toilet or bidet gives you a great view of the carpark and garden and presumably, the other way round, too.

9.

Friday 27^th May: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio;"

Hamlet 5.i

And so to Castiglione della Steviere. Before I came here all I knew about it was that it was far away from the nearest train station, had a population of about 20,000, there is a ‘rebuilt’ castle and that the International Red Cross had its birth here (kind of). Thanks Wikipedia. However, after just one day’s examining and listening to candidate’s presentations, I now know much more. Here are ten of the gems I picked up today - which of them is your favourite?

1. Castiglione della Steviere is just referred to as Castiglione
2. The Red Cross had its origins here after Henry Dunant, on his way to see Napoleon III to get business concessions in north Africa, witnessed atrocities at the Battle of Solferino, 24^th June 1859.
3. 
   Pizza Würstel is more popular among local kids than Pizza Margharita.
4. The cinema is in an annexe next to the cathedral (apologies for inappropriate capital 'c' - I know it's there, but it's saved now)
5. Luigi Gonzaga is the city’s saint and his head is in the basilica. He was a local nobleman who died after contracting the plague when helping local peasants.
6. There is an under-18 disco called ‘Evolve’ once a month, held next to the old castle gate.
7. The town gained city status in 2001 (a touch generous, perhaps?)
8. The local ossuary is in Solferino with over 10,000 skulls.
9. There are several factories out of the town producing pasta, ‘potato chips’, socks and tights, drawing in workers from the south of Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria.
10. The local cinema is called ‘King’ and The Fast and the Furious 5 is currently playing there.

I’m considering adding some points to the Wikipedia entry when I’ve time...

On the learning curve as always, I’m sure I’d heard the word ossuary before but wasn’t really sure what it was. In case there are any of you out there who are also unsure, it’s essentially a mass tomb. In times of war and so on, to get all the bodies popped into coffins is all a bit time consuming and fills a lot of space. So, to save time and space, just get all the bones and pop them in a big tomb, with the name deriving from the Latin for bones, os, and the suffix for a ‘recepticle’ or ‘place’, arium. Unfortunately I was unable to get to see the bones in person, but have managed to find a picture of the ossuary for inclusion here. Lucky us, eh?

What I did get to see, however, was the museum of the International Red Cross (pictured). For it was in Castiglione’s churches that the dying and injured were taken after the Battle of Solferino (in the 2^nd war of independence – an attempt to unify Italy, which interestingly, celebrated 150 years of unification on 17^th March this year). I’m not sure what I expected to find, but had I thought a little about the work of the Red Cross, I’d have probably realised it wasn’t going to be all ‘colours and clowns’. The audio guide helped lead me round the museum which was certainly interesting and, at times quite moving, probably on account of the photographs of situations the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) find themselves in which were on display. The work done by Mr Dunant was quite magnificent and was one of those illustrations of what one person can do with zeal, belief and perseverance.

If you’re looking for something a bit more upbeat, however, you might be better waiting until the circus is in town. One interesting nugget I did pick up was that the symbol of the crescent was adopted in 1926 in Muslim countries and the red diamond in 2006, because of continuing religious connotations with the symbols ‘causing problems’ in the Mediterranean, despite the fact it is an a-religious organisation. There were also some posters; I rather liked this one of the Chinese red cross happily waving you into their apocalyptic industrial wasteland, where everyone can breathe in the carbon monoxide in an enjoyable atmosphere of comradely friendship.

A final three things from the world of examining:

Speaking about cities in the USA, one candidate asked, “Do you think Los Angeles is a perditious city?” I’m afraid to say that because of time available, my answer didn’t really do the question justice.

When talking about cooking, one candidate told me about making ‘Pandora cake’, which the internet has told me is like a panetone cake but without the fruit. The ingredients include: “flour, eggs, easter and sugar”. I think ‘easter’ might be another of Yotam Ottolenghi’s (Guardian recipe man) hard to come by ingredients.

And finally, I caused quite visible shock and amazement in one middle school when after being asked the question, ‘How often do you eat pizza?’, I replied, “three or four times a year”. I think the kids are still wondering what else there is to eat on a Saturday with friends and family.

The final blog tomorrow, just before I return to the UK at the end of another tour, and to celebrate, there’s a competition!

8.

Tuesday 24th May:

Guard: What boat goes there?

Benvolio: Why, 'tis of the Prince.

Romeo & Juliet 4.i

And so from one historical town to another (they’re ten-a-penny out here) it’s on to Lake Garda and Peschiera del Garda, nestling down in the south-east of the lake. From Roman origins as a trading port at the head of the Mincio River to 18^th century Venetian rule, it’s been a bit of an alright place to hang out, situated as it is in the fertile wine-making lands of Lombardy-Venetia with the dolomites to the north. I must confess that the first I knew of Lake Garda wasn’t through its history, wine or stunning natural beauty, but through the travel supplement in the Saturday Guardian, where there always seems to be an advert for middle-class, middle-aged sorts to take a tour there for several thousand pounds. You’ll probably find it just inside the back cover, across from the cheap 4 star hotels in Malta and just above the 14-day trip (flights inclusive) to Machu Picchu.

But why pay when you can be paid to go? There are several answers to that, notably that you don’t have to work, but we’ll gloss over that for now. Arriving on the Saturday afternoon from Verona (a mere 15 minutes away on the train) I checked into my hotel, conveniently on the waterfront and went to meet a friend and colleague, who was coming down from Milan for lunch for the day (about a 1hour 50 minute journey). Such is the joy at having examiners you know and like within a three-hour travel radius, it’s a quick decision to meet up, especially when there’s water involved. And so a fine Saturday afternoon was spent drinking sprizt, eating fish things and chatting. With not a great deal to do until the Monday, Sunday was spent meandering round the small, castled town (the castle is of the popular Mediterranean ‘5-point’ design, that you’ll find in Napoli, Malta and countless other towns) in the morning and then taking to the water in the afternoon.

But how to take to the water? Eschewing the speed boat option, I opted for a pedalo, something I haven’t used is a very, very long time. Of course, when doing this Trinity examining, there are many things that you would normally do with others that you end up doing by yourself (calm yourselves if you’re getting excited here), for example, going for dinner. Another such thing is taking a pedalo out. Not really designed for one - they tend to list a bit; but then that could just be because of the amount of pasta I’ve been eating.

So, giddy as a kid in a sandpit, I set off for a couple of hours in my very own pedalo, paddling past the detritus of ducks and flora and into the clearer waters 100 metres of so out, where I could happily take a dip. It was whilst drying off post-dip that I heard and felt a knock at the bow. Not the kind of ‘knock’ that suggests you’ve run over a swimmer but more a ‘who’s that at the door?’ kind of knock. Looking up from my reclined position, I saw two 14 year old urchins (the street kind rather than the sea kind) clinging onto the hull – Riccardo was one and I forget the other’s name. Well, after a brief bit of language confusion it seemed that they wanted ‘two seconds’ to rest before heading back from whence they came. Feeling safe in the awareness that they did ‘knock’ and didn’t forcibly board, I acquiesced and let them up. Barely a minute where they rested before, as they suggested, they slipped back into the water and disappeared off. Just as well really, as I was hardly dressed for entertaining strangers; in fact, I was hardly dressed at all – safe-guarding right out the window [one for the FE readers].

While bobbing about in the sun, it occurred to me that if you’re on holiday with your parents in some euro-camper van, of which there were lots up above the town, and spending days on end jumping in and out of the lake, slowly growing feral, the idea of hiring a pedalo for two hours at 18 euros for two hours must seem like something close to a king’s ransom. Well, I think that’s how it seemed to me when last on a pedalo aged 6 in Ibiza. Still an awful lot of fun, whether 6, 14 or 34.

Plenty food and wine being had and more of the local stuff. All very good. Examining generally sound, too. The next stop on the tour is the final one – the countryside town of Castiglione della Steviere.

7.

Sunday 22^nd May: “Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers”
Romeo and Juliet – 4 ii

A final word or two about Verona and the week spent there. It certainly is a very pretty place and has some excellent restaurants. When on tour and in a strange place, come dinner time it’s very easy to walk round a town once or twice (in for small towns three or more times), trying to judge which restaurant to go into, on the grounds of have they started service yet (19:30 is an early start), how easy will the menu be to decipher, suitability for eating alone and affordability. Sometimes it’s just all too much and you end up with some ham, cheese and wine from the supermarket and just sit out in the park or in the hotel. And sometimes this is even preferable if you’ve spent the whole week eating in restaurants. However, back to Verona, where I’ve been blessed with good restaurants. I should now warm you that the next bit is a ‘foody’-type description which may make you think I’ve got my head well and truly up my posterior. However, bear with me. It’s just for this blog entry.

My favourite, which I stumbled across while negotiating some of the narrower streets in Verona’s old town, is S. Eufemia (www.s.eufemia.it) , a place which has simply annexed the narrow road for its diners and would be hard to find, even if you knew it existed (I thought I’d lost it the second time I tried to get there). Noticing tradional fayre on the specials board outside the restaurant, I opted for just a pasta course and had the bigoli al asino, or to translate it, bigoli pasta (rather like a denser, al dente spaghetti) with donkey stew. The picture doesn’t really do the taste justice. It was a meaty affair, seemingly cooked in its own juices, some heavy red wine and a good dose of rosemary. If you could imagine a kind of half beef and half horse, you’d be just about in the region of the flavour, with a texture being more like slow-cooked braising streak. The whole flavouring and taste conjoured up a feeling of being in the hills. I had a heavier red with it (well, an actual bottle of red and not the cheapo house stuff I've been taking a lot of) – a Valpolicella Classico Masi from the local area and this did the job very nicely. Quite a tasty drop.

Going back on Friday evening, I opted for two courses to celebrate the arrival of the weekend and the end of a heavy week’s examining. This time it was a different vintage of Valpolicella with the sparkling water, a lasagne and some beef carpaccio.

Now Lasagne might not seem like a bold choice, especially considering you can get a microwave version on offer down the Sainsbury’s most days for under £2.50, but believe it or not, I’ve never eaten it in Italy before. In contrast to the Sainsbury’s version, this stuff was obviously far, far better. In fact, you might even wonder if they were the same dish. The lasagne we know [and love?] is often a meaty ragu with layers of heavy béchamel sauce and a few sheets of pasta separating it all. The dish I had, however, wasn’t as much a ragu a rich tomato-based sauce with a flavouring of beef; not too much actual beef to be had, not that this was bad. The beef that was there did taste like it’d been poached in milk before being put into the mix and was really soft/tender for it. The cheese sauce was very light, too, blending with the ragu to give a pleasant, and natural, orange looking colour. The other main difference was that there weren’t three or even four sheets of pasta, but 6 or 7 sheets of very thin, home-made pasta. Essentially it was pasta, barely separated with a light meaty cheesy sauce. A very light pasta at that and the perfect first course. It really was all about the thin, delicious pasta, and the ragu was there as an accompaniment, which seems to be quite the other way round to the UK take on the classic dish.

The main was beef carpaccio, rocket, radicchio (of the region, naturally) and truffle shavings, served with a flower in middle (rather like the flower pictured above with the donkey stew), a chunk of lemon and a drizzling of balsamic. What’s not to like there (apart from the flower, perhaps...)? Basic ingredients put together well resulting in a truly delicious main course. Polish that off with the decent bottle of red and a coffee afterwards and it’s all done and dusted with a handsome tip for 45 euros. The food on this tour has been a treat and I’ve enjoyed eating out a great deal, although I do wonder if I haven’t done rather too much of it.

Other pictures of Verona are seen above. There’s me in the amphitheatre (it was being set up for a gig on the Friday night and the opera season, starting in June) and Piazza del Erbe by night. Just to the lower left of the tower is an arch with a whale rib suspended from it. Legend has it that the rib will fall on the first ‘truly just’ person to walk beneath it. Not much of a reward for being ‘truly just’ as from that height I imagine it’d likely kill you if it fell on you, but this is in a country that rewards [alleged] serious crime with presidencies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0M2e-td-_c). Anyway, not wishing to spoil everyone’s fun and picture opportunities, and to preserve my own life, I edged round it each time and never walked directly underneath it.

That’s Verona done, who knows when to be seen again. Next stop is Peschiera del Garda, a small and ancient town on the southern banks of the beautiful Lake Garda.

6.

Thursday 19^th May: "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”

Romeo & Juliet 2.iii

When examining in classrooms around the country, you get an opportunity to see the various types of poster displayed on classroom walls. Some are home-made, crudely-drawn affairs, but all the more homely for it, and others are bought. With the bought ones, there’s a tendency to help teach English words/phrases with ‘cute’ animals. The picture to the right is one such example teaching opposites, although I’ve taken the words out. Your task is to guess what opposites are being taught. Don’t look till you’ve guessed, but the full poster with answers is at the bottom of this blog.

As well as spoken English, there are some written gems as well. Here a phrase taken from one portfolio about rules and regulations when travelling by aeroplane:

“When the passengers get in a plane, they must have civilised behaviour so they can’t run, smoke and scream... If the people break these rules they will not fly or they will be scolded... I love travelling by safety plane”. Thoughts shared by us all, I’m sure. Good to see that amongst things counted as uncivilised behaviour are running, smoking and screaming. There’s hope for the world yet. And now the obligatory examining picture with annonymised report, green pen, portfolios and cakes.

Some days examining are pleasant and marking portfolios really breaks up the day marvellously. Today I had quite a heavy day of full interviewing and I didn’t realise how much it’s taken it out of me until I’d reached for the emergency mini-bar bottle of beer and put on some Noel Coward to take me to my ‘happy place’. Not every day requires such automatic reactions, thankfully.The hotel I’ve been staying in here in Verona has been a little bit of a treat. Apart from the beauty of free internet (many hotels out here charge around 15 euros a day), the room on the large size, although not a suite, the room has its own small terrace (pictured), which makes for a perfect sport for drying washing, doing a spot of marking/paper work or having a beer. Just got to watch out for those malicious mosquitoes – they love a bit of the juicy British blood.

In the early evenings, apart from spending time recovering from exams with beer and negronis, I’ve been strolling round teh city of Verona itself. The centre is really quite small and can be traversed corner to corner in about ½ an hour (or a full hour if going at Italian walking pace).

Amongst the places visited are Castle Vechio (built but the last of the ruling Della Scala family, to protect themselves from the locals), which you see behind me, and the Roman Theatre, built in the 1^st century.

The good news about the theatre is that despite being pulled apart, built on and forgotten about, it’s now been excavated and is being used again as a performance space. The bad news is that as it’s being used a performance space, all the architectural features are under plywood boards and can’t be seen. I’m sure there’s a third way there somewhere.

Finally, if you guessed 'happy' and 'sad' for the monkeys, you get one point. If you got the rather harder 'up' and 'down' for the lions, I'll give you three points. I'd have gone for 'heavy' and 'light' myself. As for what the cow's doing in the bottom left, well, that's just the artist gone a bit off-the-rails, I think.

5.

Tuesday 17^th May: "You call this wine? Thou hast better try again.”

Two Gentlemen of Verona 3.i

In a sign that I’m becoming too acclimatised here, I’m taking rather too well to the apéritifs. Normally I settle quite happily for a gin and tonic pre-dinner or maybe just crack open the wine I’ll be drinking with dinner, but a couple of years ago I was introduced to the negroni, and my, it’s been growing on me ever since. For those new to the drink, it’s like a gin and tonic but without the tonic and lemon/lime, but with vermouth and campari instead. No mixers. Well, unless you count the vermouth (coming in at 17%), campari (a teasingly potent 25%) or even the slice of orange that’s used as garnish.

Its etymology lies something akin to the sandwich, in as much as it was named after someone who wanted it but didn’t create it – in the early 20^th century the Count Negroni (looks like a sly drinker, don't you think?) was said to have asked a bar tender for a cocktail, but something stronger than an Americano, and so the bar tender popped gin in the drink instead of soda water and gave birth to the negroni. Turns out the Negroni family started a distillery in Treviso, where I started on this tour. Makes me feel all the better for having them. Being so potent, one of these mixes gets you pleasantly oiled up before dinner and if you get through two, well, it’s pretty much a case of ‘good night Vienna’. Or even 'good night Verona' in this case.

And what of Verona itself. Well, as mentioned in the last blog, it is a very pretty place with lots of jolly nice architecture. There are castles and churches, towers and piazzas and just an abundance of frescos daubed on buildings hither and thither. As well as this, there’s also the literary connection. As we know, every word Shakespeare penned was about a real life event (!) and so it’s fortunate that after all this time the ‘real life’ balcony Juliet called Romeo from is still here, and probably one of the most photographed pictures in all of Christendom and maybe further. I helped add to the total. You’ll also see a bronze statue of Juliet – it’s said it’s lucky if you rub her right breast (many people get their picture doing such a thing), but then some might suggest that you'd be lucky to do this kind of thing in most situations...

But where you find tragedy of the heart

you’ll also find tragedy of other kinds and so we manage to draw a link to the Napoleonic rule of the 18th century. Napoleon was here as a ‘neutral’, although not really because lots of nobles were killed and their properties looted. It all got a bit much for the locals and so in 1797 (the year when the immortal memory, Horatio Nelson, distinguished himself while commanding HMS Captain as Commodore at the Battle of Cape St Vincent against the combined French and Spanish forces) they revolted against the evil French tyrants and rose to expel them from the city. This they managed for eight days, before 15,000 Frenchies came back and took revenge on the city by killing a few more nobles and looting what they hadn’t already looted in previous lootings.

The uprising, however, is still commemorated/celebrated today by the people of Verona during the ‘Veronese Easters’ with a re-enactment of costumed soldiers firing rifles and canon at various points of uprising around the city, as you see in the pictures taken outside the old council building (conveniently celebrated on Sunday evening). For further historical information, the yellow-blue uniforms are of the Veronese noble guard; the blue of the officials of Serenissima; the brown-white of the Austrian imperialists.

You can imagine the atmosphere outside the Napoleonic-era city hall with two-dozen rifles being fired followed up by 3 canon fired twice (charges only and no shot). The sound echoing off the cobbles, reverberating off the marble and sandstone walls with burning wads flying trough the smoke from the canon barrels was quite a treat. However, if the time it took them to re-load the canon was also a re-enactment of the original uprising and fighting, it's no wonder they were repeatedly over-run by those pernicious Frenchies. Just as I was leaving (when the speeches were starting), a small group of youths quickly scampered by, quietly humming 'la Marseillaise'. I couldn't help but laugh.

Right, quite enough historical information for one blog. Some pictures of castles, cakes and terraces in the next one.

4.

Sunday 15^th May: “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.”

Romeo and Juliet 1.v

It’s at the one week stage of the tour that I go a little off-piste and don’t follow my itinerary to the letter. It’s a Friday and the full weekend beckons so, with a couple of friends in Milan, I get the first train I can out of Rovigo and head to the northern Metropolis. The only problem is that the first train is the [very] slow train and after four hours of journeying, I’m there. Had I not got the first train out I’d have been there

significantly earlier, but that’ll learn me to study the timetables a little more closely.

Being met off the train by these couple of friends at Milan’s magnificent yet Mussolino-esque railway station and whisked off for a beer and ‘spritz’ certainly made up for any arduous travelling, as did the subsequent drinks, food and chat. So enjoyable they were that they continued well into the evening, rendering the main part of Saturday a write-off. However, write-

off or not, in the fine company I was in I couldn’t fail to be in good humour. Fast forward some lunch and an ice-cream (yoghurt and strawberry) later and I’m on a speeding train east to Verona (we do get about on these tours), known as ‘little Rome’.

So it’s Little Venice to begin with (see Blog Entry 1) and over to Little Rome. Makes me wonder why we don’t have any ‘little Londons’ or ‘little Newcastles’ in the UK. Perhaps, as we have in London with little Venice, there are parts of the world with a ‘little [insert UK city]’. Would be quite the surprise to be in the deepest, darkest and farthest reaches of the world only to come across a ‘little Slough’, don’t you think? Would it have smaller roundabouts and a little less concrete maybe? Do write and tell me if you know of such things.

Anyway, Verona is a very pleasant place with wall-to-wall classic renaissance buildings in some parts and plentiful medieval ones in others: British 1960s town planners had obviously never visited the place for inspiration. Pot loads of pedestrianisation in the centre as well. As well as taking in the fine architecture and cobbled streets, I’d got myself a ticket for a Liszt gala at the local concert hall (pictured - aren’t I cultured!). I thought I was in for some piano plinkerty-plonkerty but it turns out it was an orchestral evening, including some of Liszt’s ‘poems’:

No.2: Tasso. Lamenta e Trionfo

No. 3: Les Preludes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fussEgy_j5M&feature=related

Faust Symphony: Pieces 1 and 2

Hungarian Rhapsody

Although not exactly the same, because of their similarity (being based on Hungarian folk songs), while listening to the Hungarian Rhapsody, I kept thinking of the Charlie Chaplin scene from the Great Dictator where he’s shaving someone to the speed and rhythm of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vaZtPNOTbM. Classic bit of comic cinema! Certainly won't be trying it that way myself in the morning, all a bit bleary-eyed; I'd end up without a nose...

OK. Enough culture for now. In the next instalment some real Juliet balconies and ‘old Bony’ hoves back into view...