Then grabbed my cello and hit the road for Phillipe's house. Misjudged my drive time by about half (should have taken Rick Steve's driving advice of taking whatever time you think it's gonna take and doubling -- that dude really knows what he's talking about), but arrived only a few minutes late. I spent the morning working on a Brahms quartet (I believe it's Opus 26, but I'm not sure -- these guys really know this stuff and may or may not understand how thoroughly ignorant I am of chamber music and/or classical music in general). Anyway, it's a quartet for piano, violin, viola, and cello, and I spent the morning working through it with Phillipe on piano, Werner on violin, Francois on viola, and of course moi on cello. It's a great piece, and it was fun to play with the fellas -- they mostly conversed in French, so I only got bits and pieces of the discussion, but of course Werner was very accomodating by speaking English (his native language is German) when necessary for me to understand.
We stopped sometime around 12:30 or 1:00, and Nick made a very nice lunch of tomato salad, omelette, cheese, and bread (and Phillipe added some peas and carrots, fearing that we wouldn't have enough to eat). Then a siesta, which I spent poolside chatting with Nick and his wife Hillary.
The afternoon was spent reading through various trios for violin, piano, and cello with Nick and Werner, then an attempt at a Bach sonata for cello and piano (which I botched pretty badly, but whatcha gonna do when basically sightreading music one has never even heard before, much less played). When we finished, Nick and Werner ran through a little Bach for violin and piano.
Then it was teatime out on the patio with Phillipe, Nick, Werner, and Phillipe's wife Julia and Nick's wife Hillary, after which I took my leave, pretty worn out from a long day of playing. Found my way home without incident, and stopped to get a kodak of the sunflower field near Phillipe's place:
When I got back to my homestead Pietro was there to water the garden, and I offered him a hearty bonsoir before he scolded me for leaving the outdoor lights on. I answered back in the best French I could muster that I thought I might be returning to the cottage after dark and that I wanted the lights on. He followed up with the statement that I should have turned on only one of the lights instead of both. Irritated, I said OK and went inside. A few minutes later he called into the house for my attention, this time to bitch at me for leaving the door open to little sort-of exterior room that houses the laundry machine and an extra freezer. Well, I had had enough of Pietro already, and in my best French (which of course is totally pathetic) told him that I never touched that door, and that he or his wife had left it like that. Perhaps if Pietro had inquired after my comfort and/or well-being before launching into his litany I might have been more pleasant, but really I'm the vacationer here and the paying renter, and I really didn't touch that f-ing door, so who the hell is he to boss me around? I had half a mind to throw the keys to the little room into the canal such that it would never be vulnerable to any intruder, but instead headed to the grocery store to fetch some sort of vegetable to have for dinner. Pietro went on his way (in a BMW...what's up with that?) and I headed to the Hyper-U, recommended by the cottage owner in his little info book as the best grocery in town. Well, all I can say is that I will take the little Spar nearby or any corner store over this monstrosity. I felt like I was in Walmart, only maybe bigger and just more weird. And kinda....smelly. I went through as quickly as possible to grab a few things I thought I would need -- more cheese, more bread, some wine, and some green beans -- and got the hell out of there. I meant to take a picture, but it was just too soul-sucking to manage.
Back at the homestead I immediately set in on step one of dinner -- some wonderful goat cheese and bread:
Then some green beans with coppia and shallot.
I've noticed that my approach to cooking is completely different when I travel than when I'm at home. At home I figure out what I want to make, put together a grocery list, then go to the store (or with me, more like three stores -- first the farmer's market, maybe the butcher, then the PCC), then cook whatever it was that I planned to make. While traveling, I go to the store, or happen upon a market, buy what looks interesting/fresh/edible/unusual, then take it home and figure out what to do with it using whatever materials I have. Both of these approaches seem to work, although the latter always makes a decent meal feel like a real success.
And after dinner some reading, crossword, and blogging. Haven't done a self-portriat in awhile, so here's one of me in the verandah.
0 comments:
Post a Comment