Jun 1, 2014

Pino's vacation

I decided to work most of the day Friday at the office since we weren't going anywhere and I wanted to save my days off, but I took off early and came back to Saoris to make guacamole for a dinner party.

Saori's Irish friend Davina and her Swiss friend Simone were both back in town for the weekend, and Simone's girlfriend, Pauline, wanted to surprise Simone with a reunion dinner. Pauline is a French violinist who lives in an enviable apartment a few doors down from my office, so it was a very familiar hike up with the bag of guacamole, beer, chips, and wine.

Pauline's apartment is small, one large bedroom with a couch and some moroccan poufs to sit on, and we ate dinner there. The guac was popular, but there was also a nice spread of Italian sausage, Lugano sausage (Simone's area), and a variety of olives.

Munching on the sausage slices, Simone told us this story which he used as a pick up in the clubs and bars before he met Pauline:

"When I was little, I lived in the countryside of Lugano, and my family had a little pig I named Pino. I loved Pino, I would play with him and feed him. Sometimes, Pino would disappear and go on vacation, but he always came back. But I noticed that every time he came back, he always looked a little bit different. Meanwhile, I loved to eat the fresh salami my family used to eat. It was years later before my family one day broke the news to me that I was eating Pino!"

At this point, the girl he was chatting up should be overcome.

Anyway, Pauline brought out the main dish of the evening which was a chicken tajine, a Moroccan dish of basically grilled chicken cooked in a big pot with onions and spices and herbs, and served over a bed of couscous. It was really really good. I've been thinking about trying to pick up some quick indian dishes, but the Moroccan fare is very very tempting. I need to learn both I think. And Mexican.

And of course she had to top off the meal with tiramisu, a bit of a sly jab at [Italian-Swiss] Simone. It was a little goopy, but what goop! The lady fingers were perfect though. The thing to do apparently, is to quickly dip the lady fingers in the espresso, flip it, and dip it again. Any longer and the ladyfinger can get soggy or disintegrate. Apparently it met Simone's approval (and the group's since we finished the pot. It was too good to leave behind).

After dinner, we caught a bus to stadtmitte and went to Mata Hari. Mata Hari is a bar which opens out to small street with some other bars. Friday and saturday nights, the streets and the bars are choked full of people, since the usual order of business is to fight your way into a bar, order a round of drinks, and wind your way out to the street and find your group where everyone is standing around drinking, bathed in the yellow light of the sodium arc street lights. It's a really bizzare bar culture, like the street is a jam packed club without music or dancing. And then people from the bar come around picking up glass steins and shot glasses, and poorer people come around with carts to collect empty glass bottles to return for money.

Beer, especially Wulle beer, is the drink of choice at these bars. Cheap, even for german beer, local, and not so bad. Actually, they have a Weisen (wheat) beer which is actually pretty good and may become my new go-to. I still haven't found a great beer though the search continues.

Anyway, at Mata Hari, I finally met the other Swiss friend of Saori's who is currently serving his compulsory six months in the army but escaped for the weekend. Vincent is kind of a wild guy who once stripped naked apparently and swam across the Fuersee, a small, scummy pond around a local church. We'd both heard a lot about each other so it was fun to meet him finally and we were both really curious about each other. We met up with some other people too, including very drunk Alfredo, roommate of my coworker Alejando, and we all went over to a club named Divina.

Downstairs, past the burly bouncers, it was a smoky dance club straight vintage disco. We danced a bit, drank some more shots, and then escaped before 3.

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