Rest in Trieste

Every now and then it's great to be in a place where you can truly just put your feet up, relax, recover and basically just hang out for a few days.  Especially after some tough, rainy, cold days in the Alps of Austria and later Italy/Slovenia, I was the grateful guest of Karoline and Cristian in Trieste.  Karoline, or Ms. Steckley as I first knew her was my French teacher for two years in high school.  In the years since, she has moved to Cape Cod, Brazil and eventually Italy to marry her Italian Stallion, Cristian.  It was fun to catch up on the old antics of high school, me from the teenage perspective and her from the rookie teacher perspective.  It was fun to peer into the world of my high school faculty and back room stories all these years later.  I suppose the passage of time is necessary in that age differences shrink inimportance and there are many things students just shouldn't know about their teachers. lest it destroy the power structure necessary to educate pimply, hormonal teenagers.

Also being a Wisconsinite, it's always great to talk about home and the goofy things we love in Wisconsin like ridiculously unhealthy Kopps custard and the great, golden fish fry.  I think we're in full agreement that Wisconsin is the best place in the Union!  Speaking of food, I was intentionally hold out on NOT eating pizza throughout Europe opting instead to wait until I got to Italy to have a taste of the real thing. After an awesome calamari appetizer, I was justly rewarded with one of the best pizzas ever.  For some reason, turkey sounded good on my pizza and though I was disappointed to discover cold cut slices on top, the mushrooms, onions, spinach, tomatoes, yummy sauce and spices more than satisfied the pizza urge.  It was doubly good because we earned the meal after a half day of hiking the stunning Val Rosandra just outside Trieste with a group of friends and relatives.

It was a good opportunity to do such glamorous chores like laundry, mending rips and tears, trimming my beard, tweaking a few things on my bike and restocking my walnut/pistachio/almond/pumpkinseed stash.  I also got the chance to play, and lose to Cristian in an intense three set match of barefoot tennis (I only have biking shoes and flipflops,both equally ill-suited for tennis).  After an evening of home-made burgers, I was set to roll out the next morning towards Croatia.  Thanks again K&C!