Living La Vida Loca

Our next stop on our European trip late this year was Trieste in very northern Italy near the Slovenia border.  You might wonder why we stopped here…we were originally routed through Trieste to get to the start of our biking trip (yes, the one we didn’t get to take after Andrew’s header off his bike). When we rebooked a walking tour of Brittany and Normandy instead of the biking in Slovenia, we decided that Trieste would be a fine interim to the France part of our trip. This was a good choice!

Trieste turned out to be just the right size city for calm exploration, café respites, and to drink in local flavor. It is physically isolated from the rest of the Italian peninsula, and it has a unique culture that blends its Italian, Austrian-German, Croatian and Greek roots. A truly manageable size for walking and wandering to visit many interesting sites, there really wasn’t a need for a car.

We stayed in a really unusual bed and breakfast in the center of the city in an old building that housed a variety of businesses. The owner is a young woman, and she decorated the three rooms with her grandmother’s eclectic artwork of paintings and sculptures. Our room actually had a grand piano in it – the room named “Opera Madama Butterfly”. Breakfast was served on a private deck outside. Fresh-baked croissants from a nearby bakery were the standout at breakfast along with great local coffee.

Trieste is not yet overrun with tourists – a few cruise ships a week dock here but unlike some of the more well-known Italian ports the crowds were not overwhelming. The days when the ships were not there were incredibly relaxed. We mostly enjoyed just wandering the streets, walking along the harbor, and people-watching.

Trieste does have a deep and tragic history of the rise and fall of a vibrant Jewish community. Jews migrated from other parts of Europe prior to WWII, but the community was shattered by the Nazi invasion.  Previously, Jews were part of city government, ran thriving businesses. When the Nazis arrived, the Jews had all rights stripped, a jail was build to house them, and then transports to Auschwitz and other concentration camps began. Walking through bare remnants of a ghetto that had been created was sobering.  Today there remains a small Jewish community with a beautiful central synagogue. Unfortunately, we could not enter as it was just before the High Holy Days and tours were not offered as the staff was preparing for services.

We were able to locate an incredible privately-funded Jewish Museum.  There were armed guards out front as a Jewish school is housed next door. Truly, you wouldn’t know these establishments are there unless you purposely looked for them. The museum is chock full of well-documented artifacts from the time when the Trieste community was very active and well-respected through the time of the Nazi invasion. There is even a trove of personal items that were somehow retrieved after the war that belonged to community members.

Since we were not able to tour Slovenia and Croatia on this trip as we’d originally planned, we decided that we could at least “visit” the Slovenian border that is adjacent to Italy just outside Trieste. We hopped a local bus and about 20 minutes later we were dropped at the Slovenia border! We really do want to return for a proper visit but this was next best.

Right at the border we discovered a winery and thought we might be able to taste some local wine. So off we went down a dirt road through the orchards in search of a “tasting room”. Along the way, I found an iPhone sitting on the ground…I picked it up thinking that surely someone visiting the winery had dropped it. As we continued walking up a very long hill the “Find My” alarm on the phone started ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Now, all the more reason to get to the what looked like the winery office and turn the phone in. Not.

As we approached the one structure on the property, there was a group of workers milling about, and a woman came out of the building looking like she was in charge of proceedings. We explained the finding of the phone and that we were hoping to try the wine. She was very thankful for the return of the phone (turns out it belonged to her son), but there was no “tasting room”…this is a working vineyard! Apologetic for the misunderstanding, she was kind to give us a bottle of wine and some cold seltzer to send us on our way. Always an adventure with us.

One other really memorable thing we did in Trieste was to take a private cooking class in the home of an Italian resident. She was a lovely woman who loves to cook and is part of a network of people willing to bring tourists into their home, give them a lesson in cooking traditional dishes, and then serving what was collaboratively put together. We learned to make two types of pasta (ravioli is NOT easy!) and tiramisu…and eating our creations afterward was divine. The teacher was also a visual artist with her own artwork proudly displayed in her apartment.

During our brief stay in Trieste we discovered that Illy brand coffee is based there and we got to tour an interesting exhibit of the evolution of the expresso machine. Who knew? We also found a delightful location of the Italian food purveyor, Eataly. Right on the waterfront, we treated ourselves to some coffee and snacks and a fun wander through the extensive market Eataly is famous for. Even better, the selection of gluten-free pastas and other favorites was amazing.

Next…On to Brittany and Normandy!