13. Trieste: Where it’s like walking between full-size wedding cakes. April 23 2023

Buonasera or as they say in Slovenia (the language that needs to get a few more vowels)–Dober Večer…

Before getting into today’s adventures, I want to give a little more clarification about that singing and dancing in the piazza yesterday for Trieste’s Carnivale. It was truly ironic to see these turn-of-the-century pompous and–to my mind–pretentious buildings as the backdrop to all of the joyous kids and adults frolicing and singing everything from the “YMCA” to the “Macarena” to “Old Macdonald.” Certainly not what the architects of the Austro-Hungarian empire imagined. If you can imagine the most decorated tiered-wedding-cakes and think about walking between and among dozens of them—-that’s what it’s like to walk through the “official” parts of Trieste. A bit like the buildings of the Gilded Age in the states—but more so.

We headed out to stroll the town— no real destinations—walked across the canal and into some neighborhoods. The city was out in full force as it was a really beautiful day and it was a Sunday. One thing to note—here in Trieste, as in every other Italain city (and actually probably throughout the world, as we’ve noticed this on many trips to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East) there are lots of bookstores!! Someone must be supporting these book stores. Eventually we stopped at a place for lunch along the canal and sat on a floating deck, luxuriating in the great weather and view. Many waitresses seemed to look a lot like Melania and I’m guessing they, too, are Slovenian and commute to Trieste for work.

I decided I really love the Italian language and recognize how different it sounds here from the Italian I heard growing up in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, which was populated pretty evenly by Jewish families and Italian Catholic families. But the Italian spoken in Brooklyn had probably gotten corrupted over the years after families lived in Brooklyn for decades and the English of immigrants merged with their Italian. And none of these people ever returned to Italy—rather they created a new kind of working class Italy in Brooklyn. But the Italian spoken here (especially in the northern part of the country) is super expressive and works well with people’s facial and hand emphasis of what they are saying. Just like the Swiss refer to “High German” as distinct from “German,” maybe NY needs to have another term for the Italian that is spoken there.

We stopped in at a small museum that had a show called ‘It’s Arcademy.’ A juried show of fashion designers’ creativity in making art fashion or making fashion art—whatever. It was sort of fun seeing things like hats that are so huge, they need to have an attachment that sits on the shoulder and neck of the wearer to support the hat.

Then we carved our way around town, stopping occasionally and ultimately heading back to the hotel to relax a bit before dinner. By the way, my laryngitis is about 75% gone, but I still have a bad cold. Dr. Fern decided it was time to take an antibiotic (which I brought with me). And now with just one day of the antibiotic the coughing is all but disappeared (well maybe it’s 25% of what it was) and I hope by the time I finish the regimen (3 days from now) I’ll be as good as new.

We had decided a while ago that we would have dinner tonight in Slovenia since it’s only about a 15 minute drive from the hotel to the border towns of Slovenia. We had read about a restaurant in a Michelin list and figured we’d give it a try. Actually there were several that sounded fantastic, but the drive would have been longer. We had been to Slovenia more than once when it was part of Yugoslavia, although I don’t remember what villages we saw, only the big cities.

Anyway, we headed to Gostilnica Ruj, located in a little farm house at Dol Pri Vogljah (remember I said they needed more vowels). We purposefully left enough time to get there early and walk through the town. Alas, there was no town, so we were just very early for our reservation, so we drove to find a real town and eventually drove through Sezana (population 6,000) and then headed to the restaurant. Gostilnica Ruj is essentially a former farmhouse that is now home to the restaurant. Very quaint; food was quite good (and not as “heavy” as I had imagined. There are about three small dining areas and a small bar. Seemed like the other diners were mostly Italians, but some were speaking Slovenian. The road to the restaurant was pretty windy and uphill. On the return trip, the GPS got a little lost and couldn’t locate us so we just tried to find roads that went downhill. Eventually the GPS came to life and routed us to the hotel. Frankly, being on those dark isolated roads would have been far scarier in the states than here—because you’d know that the likelihood of people having guns would be a sure thing. Here that is very very unlikely.

OK.. back at the hotel.
Headed to Verona tomorrow, with a possible lunch stop in Treviso; we shall see.

Best-
Fern