Biking Vieques' Virgin Beaches and Kayaking the Bio Bay

I've learned never to argue with a man holding a machete. So when one of our guides, Mark Franco, Jr., whipped out his blade and said "Hey, you want to see something neat?" I simply hung my helmet on the handlebars of my rented Specialized Rockhopper and followed Mark into the jungle.

Five minutes of hacking later, we arrived at the crumbling remains of Playa Grande, the last of the great Victorian sugar cane plantations. Tiny Vieques—Puerto Rico's "little daughter" just seven miles off its eastern shore—was once nicknamed Sugar Island, but the local industry collapsed in the 1930s. This plant struggled along until 1941, when the U.S. Navy took over most of Vieques to use for target practice.

"They relocated the whole village of workers," said Mark as we passed Playa Grande's broken rooms filled with leaf loam, picking our way down its arched brick corridors cracked open to the sky and fringed with garlands of vines. "It didn't take long for the jungle to reclaim it."

I had spent the morning circling the island's western end with Mark and his boss, Karl Husson, owner of La Dulce Vida Mountain Bike. Our tires fishtailed though sandy beachside trails and forded shallow streams as we whizzed past cove after abandoned cove of virgin beaches lined with coconut palms, mangrove, and sea grape—no resorts, no development, and only the occasional anchored boat for company.

We peeked into long cement ammo bunkers, camouflaged by grass roofs and empty save for the tiny bats clinging to the ceilings, and crossed the saddle of the island along a narrow path through thickets of mango and papaya.

After bushwhacking to the remains of Playa Grande, we turned onto the dirt road to Vieques' northwestern tip. Beyond the 1,058-acre nature preserve of Laguna Kiani, a dark lagoon girded by a tangle of mangrove, lay Green Beach. This long swathe of sand must not see many visitors; as I waded into the warm surf, crabs scuttled nonchalantly across my toes, and a curious ray swam up to investigate my ankles.

While Karl broke out the organic snacks, I wandered up the beach to Punta Arenas and stood in the shallows at land's end. The water swirling around my legs ran alternately warm and cool as the turquoise Caribbean mingled with the deep blue Atlantic.

The fact that we could experience this storybook slice of the Caribbean at all was something of a miracle. The Navy continued using 70% of Vieques' 26,000 acres as a punching bag until 2003, when protests and pressure finally forced them to turn it all over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The island's eastern half is still littered with decades' worth of unexploded ordnance—and is closed to the general public as a National Wildlife Refuge. But while the western end has been entirely cleared of unexploded bombs, it remains gloriously abandoned.

Much has been written of the island's inhabited central strip, and I spent a pleasant afternoon in the low-key village of Esperanza. I hit the self-proclaimed "smallest aquarium in the world" (a few algae-streaked tanks, a tub scuttling with Vieques' clawless lobsters, and room of Taino Indian artifacts), and I scarfed down tostones, jerk chicken strips, and chili con carne on the breezy wood-plank verandah of Banana's on the beachside road.

But it was those jungle-clad two-thirds of the island, off-limits for more than half a century and shrouded in mystery, that drew me to Vieques. To seek out its secret trails, I needed local guides like Karl, Mark, and Tim Raymond, a bear of a man who owned Aqua Frenzy Kayaks.

I hooked up with Tim for a nighttime kayak tour of Mosquito Bay—a name that gives entirely the wrong impression. The cove is crawling not with mosquitoes but dinoflagellates. You can't see these microorganisms—not even with 720,000 of the single-celled beasties swimming around each gallon of water—but since they flash with light when agitated, anything that passes through the Caribbean's best bioluminescent bay leaves a bright blue glow in its wake.

From his kayak, Tim delivered an informative nature lecture in laid-back dude patois as our paddles churned up ghostly effervescent glows and schools of fish shot through the water like turquoise tracer fire.

When we reached the best spot, I rolled off my kayak and swam in an aura of light, my flailing arms and legs leaving trippy echoes in blue. It was sublimely surreal. I filled my cheeks, tilted back my head, and sent a fountain of glowing blue shooting into the sky.

When you go...
Arriving: Vieques is a 25-40 min flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico ($160–$180) using Vieques Air Link (888-901-9247; www.viequesairlink.com), Cape Air (800-352-0714; www.flycapeair.com), or American Airlines (800-433-7300; www.aa.com).

Activities: La Dulce Vida (www.bikevieques.com; day rentals $35, half-day/8-12 mile tours $75).
Aqua Frenzy Kayaks (787-741-0913; two-hour tour $30).

Food & Lodging: Banana's Guest House is a simple Caribbean shack–like joint across from the beach: basic plank-floored rooms with no phone or TV, but with a friendly staff and one of the best casual dining spots along Esperanza's beachside road (787-741-8700; www.bananasguesthouse.com; with fan $65, with A/C $80).

Hix Island House has 13 lofts in four funky buildings that look a bit like Bauhaus-meets-Asia done in poured concrete geometry, with lots of interplay between inside/outside spaces; stylish and hip, with the prices to prove it (787-741-2302; www.hixislandhouse.com; $160-$210 in summer; $220-$295 in winter).

Reid Bramblett is the founder of ReidsGuides.com

Copyright © 2006 by Reid Bramblett

The Sisters Picchi & the Nobel Prize

Why are there a dozen people crammed into Sorelle Picchi, one of many little salumerie (delis) along Parma's Via Farini? More to the point, why are none of them ordering three etti of prosciutto, a kilo of pecorino, and a box of homemade pasta from old Claudio, who stands behind the counter carefully bundling up giant wedges of aged parmigiano in waxed paper, using the back of his long scissors to -thwiiip!- curl the trailing ends of the red ribbon wrapped around each?

They're waiting. All of them are waiting to squeeze through the little gap between the wall and the wooden counter on which rests the cash register and enter the back room, a chaos of white tablecloths, packed with wooden chairs and bustling women serving simple dishes. Turns out, this is Parma's favorite hidden trattoria, open only for lunch and only to those who know which deli to line up in (plus random travel writers curious as to why a salumeria would be packed at lunchtime).

Occasionally joining Claudio behind the counter was one of the second generation Picchi sisters, fat in that comfortable manner of many Italian women in late middle age--double chinned over a chest of truly prodigious proportions--but sprouting oddly thin arms muscular from a lifetime of slicing salumi. "It'll be a while yet." She announced to the waiting crowd upon returning from one of her trips to the back room. "No one wants to detach themselves from the table. We tried to convince the president of the Bank of Rome to go back to work, but he won't budge!" (I figured that this was some kind of joke phrase--the "bank president" a stock illustrious figure to conjure up for an Italian metaphor I'd never heard before--but when I left, I realized the Banca di Roma was, in fact, right across the street--presidentless, apparently, for the moment.)

I spent a patient half-hour watching this Picchi sister alternately work the automatic slicer and a giant butcher knife to create mixed platters of cured meats destined for diners in the back. So when it was finally my turn to squeeze past the cash register and thread back to a tiny table against the wall, I couldn't help but order a plate of affetatti misti myself.

The simple white plate came heaped with delicate tissues of prosciutto, thick leather sheets of culatello, marbled roundels of copa, a thick, fragrant disc of salame di felino (which, I was relieved to learn, comes from a nearby valley called Felino, not from cats), and a hearty slice of strullaghiello, a pink salami made from copa and so soft it falls apart as I try to slice a bite.

The affetatti arrived with a companion plate containing only two jagged nuggets of parmigiano, each the size of a small child's fist, and creamier and more flavorful than any parmesan I've ever tasted.

Normally, I don't care much for Parma's famous aged cheese. Oh, it's fine to grate over pasta or whatever, but not for eating straight. The problem is, cheese platters are designed to be worked clockwise, starting with the softest and mildest sample on the cutting board and then tasting your way around increasingly more pungent, aged, and veiny varieties. There's always a crooked gem or two of parmigiano waiting at the end of the cheesy clock face, which I always dread arriving at but always eat because I somehow get the feeling it wouldn't be very macho to leave it there--as if I couldn't handle the intensity and was forced to give up--and I hate to be emasculated in the eyes of my waiter.

(This personal failing is also what drives me to accept a grappa duro after a meal when what I really want is a prissy, sweet limoncello, and what has led me over the years to eat deep fried whole frogs soaked in vinegar, braised ass meat, camel stew, snails, and sheep testicles, amongst other delicacies.)

But this parmigiano at Sorelle Picchi was different. Strongly flavored without being tongue-cuttingly sharp, and best of all it had virtually none of that awful grittiness I've come to associate with such foods as aged parmigiano and sandwiches eaten at the beach. I said as much to my waitress, and she agreed. "Most people serve it aged too much." She said. "Here, we serve it young, only about 27 months old, so it's still good for eating."

I was pretty confident that going with the "piatto tradizionale" today wasn't going to turn out as it did last night, when I needed generous lubrications of Lambrusco to help gag down the pesto di cavallo, which turned out to be hamburger patties of horsemeat--served raw and cold. Today it's the far more promising sounding tortelli alle erbette, homemade pasta pillows stuffed with ricotta, parmigiano, and a local wild green simply called "little herb" (long like a beet leaf, but sweet like spinach). The rectangular tortelli came in a grid of nine, dressed in grated parmigiano and a pool of melted butter. Ah, this is more like it! This time, I didn't need the Lambrusco to help wash it down. Not that I didn't have a rapidly emptying bottle of Lambrusco in front of me. Just that I didn't need it as a swallowing aid.

As I waited for the pasta to come out of the open kitchen across the room, where more Picchi women were hard at work alongside mamma--one of the original Sisters Picchi (auntie retired a few years ago) who've been running this trattoria/salumeria for 40 years--I glanced around the dining room. As I did, something started tickling at the back of my mind, so I gave it a few moments to wander about in search of the thought to which it belonged. When it finally did find a home in my memory cells, I almost choked on my prosciutto.

Sitting at the head of the table for ten next to me was an older gentleman in a squashed, pale beige fisherman's canvas hat and affecting a white wool scarf wrapped once around his neck and tucked under the collar of his dark shirt. He was eating mortadella like it's going out of style, and putting away his tortelli alle erbette fast and furious, all the while grinning genially and paying close attention to the conversation swirling around his table. His name was Dario Fo, Italy's greatest living playwright and, as of 1997, a Nobel laurate.

He's in town for a few days, co-presenting a three-night series on "Theater in Italy" at the Teatro Farnese. I know this because I saw posters advertising this fact outside the Teatro's doors, and I seriously considered attending before realizing that I know so very little about Italian theater it would be lost on me, and besides I promised myself that tonight I'd get a good chunk of writing done. I had no idea I'd be lunching with the guy in the same trattoria hidden in the back room of the Sorelle Picchi deli.

In fact, the only reason someone so poorly versed in Italian theater can confirm that it was, indeed, the maestro is that I overheard one of the Picchi (the meat slicer) whispering to a regular client as she squeezed though the gap by the cash register, "Hey, did you see who is here today? Dario Fo!" She smiled and shook her head. "That boy sure does love his mortadella."

I wonder if I should have gone over and told him about the parmigiano?

The Dangers of Dinner in Sorrento

Sorrento is one of the very few places in Italy where it is easier to eat badly than well.

Mark it down to a constantly changing clientele—why bother putting yourself out to cook a great meal when the tourist you're making it for is going to be gone tomorrow, never to return? The food at Hotel Loreley was just a step above Boyar'dee. The grub at Taverna dell '800 was only decent. And there's one place, tucked into a cave halfway down the switchback road to the Marina Piccola docks, where I once got food poisoning—though my traveling companion, J, got it even worse; started throwing up on the ferry over to Capri.

This time, I'm wary, so I've reverted to an old habit picked up in seventh grade in Rome: scooping up the hard little pellets that have shaken out from between the tough petals of umbrella pine cones, staining my fingertips black with the layer of sooty dust on their shells. After I've collected a good handful's-worth, rattling around in my pocket, I find a quiet corner and a good sharp rock. It's a delicate art, cracking the thick shells of pine nuts without squashing the tender pinoli within. It's laborious (no wonder the suckers cost so much shelled), but the meat tastes so much sweeter when you have to work for it.

Since a man cannot live solely on pine nuts and fruit filched from low-hanging branches, I do have to find restaurants for dinner. The only place in town where I've ever had memorable meals is the massive La Favorita O' Parrucchiano—and even that one is quite touristy. Green waist-coated waiters keep up a brisk two-way traffic on the terraced staircases between the kitchen and the dining patio up top, carrying laden platters up and empty trays down, calling out table numbers and orders to a woman sitting at a lonely table to one side, scribbling furiously at an array of still-open restaurant checks spread out on the table to keep them up to date.

The food, at least, is of very good quality, and the jungle-like dining patio is lovely, hung heavy with vines, pomegranate and lemon trees, and other signs of Mediterranean lushness. Shame I can't do anything about the inevitable guitar-mandolin duo—though it's a sight better than the piped-in schlock at most Sorrento restaurants—who are strumming their way through the Play List of Approved Sorrento Songs for Tourists: O Sole Mio, Funiculi Funicula, My Way, Tu Vo' Fa L'Americano (a weird mambo number from the 60s poking fun at a Neapolitan who pitifully apes everything American), and, of course, That's Amore!

I swear to God, if the moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie one more time, I am going to go Audrey Hepburn on one of these guys and smash the guitar right over his head. Plus, I keep catching myself whistling Funiculi Funicula, which must be annoying not only to me but to anyone within earshot. Little wonder that one gets stuck in my grey matter; it was one of the world's first successful commercial jingles, commissioned to inaugurate the funicular (cable car) up Mt. Vesuvius.

Given how fully Sorrento has been given over to the mass tourism machine, I'd argue that it's really a place for folks who really don't want to be in Campania in the first place. They just want to check the region's Big Ticket sights (Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi) off their list, and Sorrento is the most convenient base from whcih to do it. Sorrento also happens to save folks from many of the little inconveniences of being in a foreign country.

This place is no tourist-friendly it's boring. English is without a doubt the first language in town. A ridiculous number of English-style pubs try to entice people in with blackboards promising to screen upcoming rugby and (British) soccer matches. Even the tourist office is installed in the entrance to the old Grand Tour-era Circolo dei Forestieri—the Foreigner's Club. OK, so I admit I always repair here in the late afternoons, in some pale imitation of Grand Tour style, in order to catch up on my notes and sip a Campari-soda while watching the sunset fire the surrounding cliffs, the night slip over the triangle of Vesuvius across the way, and the lights twinkle on around the Bay of Naples.

Sorrento is bursting at the seams with giggling German schoolgirls, Americans and Aussies teetering along under their impressively large backpacks, and British package tourists letting down their hair for a Mediterranean holiday—the women donning spangly skirts in showy colors, the men opening their shirts to the sternum to display pale or sun-reddened pecs. I don't mean to poke fun at any of these people. I just wonder why they came all the way to Italy, to one of its most beautiful corners, and then all ended up clumping together in this relatively uninteresting town, spending time in each other's company at the pubs, rather than seeking out some place more genuine, more Italian.

Instead, everyone congregates here to sip overpriced cappuccino or catch gelato drips with their tongues while having the same five basic conversations, with slight variations:

"Did you see that brothel at Pompeii? [giggle]"…"Oh, you simply HAVE to do the Blue Grottto. The boatmen even sing for you! (I know; the trick is getting them not to.) No, it's on Capri; you can just catch the boat over and be back in a few hours."…"Did you hear, Fred got pickpocketed at the Naples train station!" (Sadly, a likely story. Even more sadly, that's the one bit of Naples most of them ever see—and it serves Fred right for not keeping his valuables in a moneybelt). Then there's in inevitable debate on whether to ride to bus down the Amalfi Coast and back, or just relax in Sorrento tomorrow.

Oh, and: "Where are you headed to next?" (Most common answers: "Home" and "Paris.")

Not me. I'm in Sorrento for two days, largely to give myself a chance to recover from jet lag in a place where I won't be tempted to sightsee, go sniffing around for odd and interesting things, or otherwise try to get any work done.

Yeah, sure. That plan only lasted until my second morning.

Coming to Terms with the German Wine Thing (and the Viewless Rooms Thing)

I decided to skip the most famous town on the Romantic Road, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Last time I was there, dragging the boy scouts through Europe, I ended up in a shouting match with a giant tour bus. Well, the bus mostly just shouted, "BEEP!" It was one of those double-high jobbers where the passengers sit way up, leaning against tinted windows, their feet dangling well above the heads of people trying to walk around the thing on the ground. I wasn't trying to walk around it. I had planted myself firmly in front of it, and was yelling at it.

While it kept repeating "BEEP!" I gave a long and, I thought, very cogent series of arguments regarding the definition of "pedestrians only," what this particular brand of mass tourism has wrought upon the beautiful places in the world, and how driving such a monstrosity right into the postcard-quaint cobbled town square lined with its half-timbered buildings spoils the very postcard view the people on board came to see.

The bus just kept shouting, "BEEP!"

Its driver was adding something of his own, and though I couldn't hear him through the soundproofed glass, his vast vocabulary of hand gestures got the point across. Some of the tourists on board apparently decided I must be part of the "local color" and took pictures of me. A few of my boy scouts thoughtfully dragged me away before I could get arrested, and to this day, every once in a while, one of them will say "Hey, remember that time Reid got in a fight with a German bus?"

So I skipped Rothenburg.

Instead, I pushed on west and north toward the Neckar Valley and my final castle, the Hirschhorn. The swift Neckar River winds through the southern reaches of the Odenwald Forest. It is lined with half-timbered villages and castles like a mini-Rhine, but suffers a mere fraction of the tourists, and along much of the river the trees still march right down to the water's edge. However, the forests blanketing the hills did look a bit odd. Generations of systematic logging have left it to grow back in overlapping, mismatched, rectilinear patches, not always aligned, so the greensward is covered in a network of subtle seams and slight color variations like a much-patched road.

Still, only modest swatches of the Odenwald had been permanently shaved away to make room for villages and small farms along the riverside. As I approached the Neckar and began twisting along its length toward the castle, I even saw grape vines strung up on one hillside. "Oh, no!" I said to myself. "Not again!" Sure enough, my guidebook described this as a "…small, but high-quality, wine-producing area."

And on my last night in Germany, too.

The thirteenth-century Schloss Hirschhorn overlooks a bend in the Neckar where a little waterfall dam provides a pleasant white noise background of rushing water to the chirping of sparrow hawks wheeling below the high walls of the castle and the tolling of bells in the little steepled and red-roofed hamlet by the riverside. I spent the afternoon on the castle's popular terrace, set like the prow of a ship at a panoramic point with sweeping views down the valley, and whiled away the time contentedly arranging my notes and working on my hotel reviews while nursing a few chilled beers.

As the afternoon light turned pale orange, I realized dinnertime had arrived and that the folks sitting around me were clinking forks to plates. I raised the dregs of my last beer, silently toasted the view, and drained the glass. I called for a menu and ordered the set-price feast. It opened with melon and ham, followed by beef strips, then a platter crowded with a tiny steak, a pork chop, and a medallion of, well, a different cut of pork. All of it drenched in sauce. Oh, and potatoes. Mustn't forget the potatoes. Ah, well. It's not like I came here for pizza. Suggested to accompany the menu was (yep) a local dry white wine. Well, when in Germany…

I ordered the full bottle.

Just before 9pm, the hotel manager came out and sat at the table nearest the back of the terrace but still against the cliff wall so she could see the panorama. I nodded to her in greeting and went back to reading my book. The waitress brought out a tall mug beer for her boss, and the manager just sit there, along with the middle-aged American couple and the middle-aged German couple, and me, enjoying the sunset, which was reflecting rather spectacularly off the clouds on the other side of the river.

After a while, she was joined by her husband, the chef, who stripped off his apron and poured himself a glass of red wine. She clinked it with her beer stein, staring him in the eyes with a smile in silent toast. They sat for a while, talking in low voices, drinking their beer and their wine, until the sunset faded from the clouds and the sky darkened to navy, then indigo.

I decided to retire early—I had a flight out of Frankfurt in the morning, and still needed to finish packing. I worked a crick out of my neck, marked my spot in the book, and headed back to my room. Before I set about packing, I took a minute to gaze out the window, because, for the first time this trip, my room had a view.

I saw a grassy lawn spilling steeply below the stone of the high castle walls. Sparrow hawks wheeled on the thermals beneath my window and keened to one another as they hunted in the dusk. The grassy slope was bordered by crumbling castle walls that stretched right down to mingle with the red-roofed village below. Beyond, past the vineyards, the Neckar curved silver into the forests of the night-dark hills.

Braumeisters and Bullseyes

They call the Pegnitz a "river," but on my drive downstream I didn't see it get any wider than about 35 feet, if that. Most of the time is remained a little brown brook meandering through the wildflowers and half-timbered hamlets. It moved so slowly that stretches of the surface were flecked with lilypads topped by tiny white blossoms. Parting the pads were dozens of paddlers, for this was a Saturday morning and folks were out in force to enjoy nature (Germans adore the outdoors), by canoe and kayak, or walking their dogs down streamside footpaths, or strapping on harnesses and belay ropes to tackle the numerous little rock pinnacles that had calved off the walls of the narrow valley.

I could tell I had entered Bavaria because suddenly, the Guten Tags became Gruß Gotts (in traditionally Catholic Bavaria, the Protestant "Good Day" never really replaced the old "God is Great" greeting), and the first station the radio's auto-search feature hit upon as I crossed the border was called "Bavaria 1"—and it was playing oompah band music. That and ordering a beer didn't elicit contemptuous looks. What's more, no longer was anyone trying to force wine "from one of Germany's best grape-growing regions" down my throat.

I worked my way across back roads through the gentle farmland of upper Bavaria, avoiding the official Romantic Road route with its giant buses and ready-made tourist traps and churches charging $5 to see their Renaissance altar carved by Riemenschneider. My goal was the secondary capital of the Romantisches Straße region, the aptly-named Dinkelsbühl, a dinky walled medieval town that is a little too perfectly preserved and polished, the result of dedicating itself to servicing the needs of mass tourism. Still, it suffers a mere fraction of the international hordes that overrun nearby Rothenburg ob der Tauber (a veritable Bavarian Disneyland of gift shops schneeballen pastry makers).

In fact, the only horde in evidence this day in Dinkelsbühl was a troupe of American teenagers hailing from up and down Middle Atlantic. They spent the afternoon alternately wandering the streets (the girls in giggling clumps, the boys in strutting trios) and hanging out in the local pool hall/Internet café, where I had to wait until one of their harried-looking minders arrived to shoo them back to their hotels—to don the red vests, grab their instruments, and pack into the church to give their concert—before I was finally able to get a terminal to myself.

I was staying in Dinkelsbühl, in a huge $40 room under the beamed attic ceilings of a microbrewery called Weib's Brauhaus, because the castle I had picked in the area was fully booked. (Not bad: it was the only one of the ten on my list that had no rooms available.) I dropped my bags, told the young waitress who checked me in that I'd see them for dinner, and hit the road again to drive to Colmberg and check out its castle. Damn shame I couldn't stay there, as it was handily one of the best of the lot, but at least, after a little bullying and a little pleading, I finally convinced them to give me a pretty extensive tour (more to get rid of me before the dinner rush than anything else, I think).

Heading out of town, I decided to try a different road—never go the same way twice—and nearly ran over two medieval peasant girls, an archer with a full quiver and a six-foot bow, and a monk in a brown frock leading a goat on a rope, all of them crossing the road towards a sunken field with some tents. I pulled over and followed the motley crew into a medieval market and full-blown archery competition.

Little kids dressed in their medieval finery were nervously petting a pair of docile ponies and the monk's goat, which attempted to eat the kids' medieval finery. Two women were selling chunks of homemade soap scented with local wildflowers. An old man sat methodically weaving baskets out of straw. A wood carver hawked his hand-carved bowls while older boys tried their hands (and feet) at working a foot-pedaled lathe to turn out decorative posts. A seamstress was selling Renaissance dresses, doublets, and vests. And a man in the booth next to the massive pigs roasting in spits sold me a giant bottle of beer for €1.50.

There were also professional bow makers and fletchers, demonstrating their craft to the curious, hitting on the peasant girls, and then turning serious to sell their best works to some of the archers, who were killing time as they waited for their time slots in the competition. Seventy-five archers had come to test their skills against targets set in a mowed-out section of the field—and this wasn't just some medieval fair fancy. These guys were pros. Only a handful of them were dressed in period costume and using simple long bows. Most were clad in jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps, wielded impossibly complicated-looking compound bows, and peered through a monoscope mounted on a tripod next to them after each shot. I dunno; I was kind of rooting for the guys with enough sense of fun to show up in tight jerkins, leather pants, and blowsy shirts.

Back in Dinkelsbühl and the Brauhaus, I kept my eye out for the evil Brewmeister (I was on a quest for one, see) whilst I chewed my salty but tender steak-on-toast, but no one looking like Max Von Sydow made an appearance. I finally asked my waitress, and she said the owners were out, but that they'd be around tomorrow for breakfast. Ah, I thought, tomorrow morning then. That's when I shall finally meet the Brewmeister and have the chance to foil his evil plan.

Problem is, the Brewmeister turned out to be the most relentlessly cheery German I think I've ever met. Not only that, she was a woman, Melanie Gehring, and though she did indeed have a diploma in Braumeistering, she didn't seem all that evil. In fact, with the apple cheeks of late middle age and a mass of dyed-blonde curls piled atop her head in a kind of hammerhead bouffant, Frau Gehring was downright motherly.

When I politely asked if she could replenish the empty milk pitcher at the breakfast buffet, she exclaimed "Naturlich!" in her sing-songy voice, and bustled away, When she returned, she insisted on pouring the milk over my bowl of meusli herself. I think it was all she could do to stop herself from tucking my napkin at my waist.

With an attitude like that, she's never going to conquer the world.

The Hunt for the Evil Brewmeister

After many oddly wine-centered meals in Germany, I am sure I'll be for a beer in my future tonight. That's because I am staying at Burg Veldenstein, the castle on the hill above Neuhaus am Pegnitz, a village of smart little red-rooved houses each painted a different pastel shade—robin's egg, peach, canary, mint, pink. The lynchpin of the local economy is obvious at a glance down into the valley from the castle ramparts (not from my room; from my room I get to watch the driveway).

Neuhaus serves to staff the giant Kaiser Braü brewery, which takes up about one-quarter of the town below. Oh, sure, I saw a few tractors parked up against some of the houses during my stroll around town, but I'll bet they're used to grow barley and/or hops. In fact, as I discovered, the brewery even owns Veldenstein castle itself, and the place is so focused on beer that they don't even have business cards—just coasters printed with their address and phone.

Sure enough, at dinner the hotel's gregarious manager even scolded the two elderly German gentlemen seated at my table (in Germany, large tables for six or eight become common seating on crowded nights) for ordering wine with their meal. He gestured at my giant, foam-headed mug and entreated them to try "just a little glass." They demurred, and the owner eventually relented and left to get their wines. I lifted my massive glass and, with a giant smile and a tone suggesting they were truly missing out, assured them, "Schmecht sehr gut!" ("It tastes great!")

But something was bothering me. An almighty brewery down in the valley... it owns the castle up on the hill... Hmmm. Now, why does that ring a bell? I wandered out onto the castle ramparts, ducking under joists and beams laced with dusty cobwebs, and found a little stone bench built into one of the arrow-slit windows for footsore sentries. I sat for a while, watching a luckless fisherman standing in the high grass and working a bend of the slow-flowing Pegnitz at the base of the cliff atop which perched the castle. He gave it up after a while and stomped off toward the massive brewery, past which flowed the stream and the railroad tracks. What is it about that brewery…?

I went down to poke around town. The only thing of interest was a little baroque, onion-domed church dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. Inside, the ends of the last six pews on either side bristled with a dozen 10-foot-tall staffs, each topped by a foot-high statue of a saint. This gaggle of martyrs had clearly been chosen for their patronage of local traditional crafts and callings, represented by the painted shields below each saint's flowing robes—St. Michael for the masons, St. Crispin for the cobblers, etc. Even the church's two apostolic namesakes seemed picked less for their fame than for their patronage, of blacksmiths (Peter) and merchants/businessmen (Paul—though I had always heard the was patron of upholstery or something similarly inappropriate; perhaps his vigorous "selling" of Jesus all over the Mediterranean won him a kind of traveling salesman cred, the way St. Francis's deathbed ability to see a mass taking place miles away later got him tapped as the patron saint of television).

As I snapped a few pictures of Neuhaus's venerated statuettes, I wondered idly why the bells were tolling at 6:50pm, but when folks started filing in I realized it was calling them to mass, so I left quietly. A tiny, wizened old woman in a red cardigan, wielding an aluminum cane and long white hair that was trying desperately to defy gravity despite the berets she had clamped on it, came rushing out after me. I turned to face her as a tidal wave of high-pitched German washed over me. I caught the words "...patron of [something]" a few times, and she kept gesturing towards somewhere up and away on the hillside, then pointing back to the church.

Her face looked calm, so I figured I wasn't being chewed out for using my camera in the church. I fell to smiling vaguely, nodding, and saying "Ah, so," whenever seemed appropriate whilst trying to figure out how to politely extricate myself from the one-sided conversation before she realized I didn't understand her in the slightest. Suddenly, I realized the flood of German had stopped. I snapped out my reverie and saw that she was leaning on her cane and looking at me intently with piercing blue eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said in my best German accent, trying to keep up the charade and avoid embarrassment. "I didn't catch that." She pointed to my camera and finally said something I understood. "You were taking photographs in the church?"

Oh, crap. I am in trouble after all.

"Oh, it was just so beautiful!" I stammered. "And the saints…"

"Ah!" She cried, and asked which saint I was taking pictures of. My mind fell upon the last one I photographed, St. Bartholomew holding his skinning knife, and said "Barthamüs" as my brain started working overtime to phrase, in German, an explanation that my great grandfather had been a butcher (which is true) and hoping that would be enough to excuse my actions.

But before I had to drag my ancestors into it, the old woman gave a little cry and, with a delighted gleam in her eye, said, "Our patron!" She raised her fist in the air triumphantly. "Bartholomew, with his knife in his hand." She waved her fist around happily. "My family, we are butchers!"

I grinned. "My great-grandfather, too." She gave a glad little cry, said goodbye, and toddled back toward the church door, chuckling. I started walking away, toward the brewery, thinking that she turned out to be quite nice, if a little nutty…

Insanity! That's it! An insane asylum connected to a brewery connected to a castle up on the hill. It's Strangebrew! That's the set-up in the movie, history's silliest riff ever of the basic plot of Hamlet.

The next morning, excited, I drove down to Kaiser Braü itself and peered through the glass doors at the ranks of stainless steel tanks and computerized monitoring equipment supervising the brewing process. It was a Saturday, and no one was around. Damn. I had hoped to finagle a tour and perhaps even meet the Brewmeister, so I could ask him about his plot for world domination. There wasn't even a murderous hockey team made up of mental patients hanging around.

Foiled in my plans to foil the Brewmeister, I quit the brewery and turned my wheels south to follow the Pegnitz River towards the Romantic Road and another night of ensured beeriness. And this time, I would actually be staying in a brewery itself. No way THIS Brewmeister was getting away from me.

A Tall Frosty Mug of Real German…Wine?

The Rhine is one of Germany's wine-producing regions. So was the Mosel, two nights ago. So will be Franconia, two days hence. Sometimes it seems every Teutonic nook and cranny has been declared "one of Germany's best wine-producing regions." That is all fine and well as far as it goes, but it means waiters are always trying to foist off a Riesling or Gewürtztraminer on me.

Now, one nice thing about Rieslings in Germany is that, unlike the bulk of that gets imported in the States, many are actually troken (dry), not "sweet as syrup," which is unfortunately what "Riesling" usually means in the USA (the same way a decades of spurious 'oaking' tactics by second-rate California wineries have come to make "Chardonnay" translate as "tastes like hamster bedding").

That said, I did not come all the way to Germany to drink wine—and certainly not at eight bucks a glass. I came for beer, for crying out loud! I came for a country where every town has its own local brewery and its own proud tradition for mixing fermented hops and barley. I came for frosty mugs made of thick glass where ordering a "small" gets you half a liter, and "large" means ein Maß—a liter.

Every time I try to order ein bier in a restaurant, though, it gets me a condescending look—almost a sneer. Beer, it is implied, is for slobbering in a tavern with the working classes, not for accompanying such a fine dinner composed entirely of pork products. Everyone else in the restaurant is drinking wine, and having a beer is obviously trés declassé. I usually end up caving into peer pressure (and the waiter's impending disapproval), and whenever I open my mouth fully intending to order ein bier vom faß (whatever's on tap), I find myself instead asking for a wine recommendation. So I spend most dinners ruefully sipping at a half-filled, $8 glass of mediocre white wine, poking at my slab of pork in a pool of mustard sauce, and thinking wistfully of the lucky slobs in the taverns gulping down their $3 Maßes of beer.

That's why I've taken to grabbing my beer furtively, in places where it won't be frowned upon. I'll have lunch in a tavern—which I know means my choices will be wurstel and saurkraut, or this other kind of wurstel, also with sauerkraut (or perhaps with a virulently yellow, terribly sticky, grapefruit-sized ball of gelatinous starch). But at least I can hold my frosty mug up high and proud and say Prost! to the fellows at my table (when you toast in Germany, you have to hold eye contact all the way through to the sipping of the beer). And one day, as I sat at an Internet cafe in Coburg, I noticed that there was an incongruous bar wedged into the back room, so I ordered up a glass of the wonderfully named Frankenbrau, though it was only 12:30pm, and happily drained it whilst deleting spam from my Webmail inbox.

I can't, however, bring myself to break that old Puritan taboo of drinking alone in my room. That, as I know from after-school specials on alcoholism, is just one step away from sneaking in the kitchen at night and slurping vanilla extract to get a fix, like Tom Hanks did in that guest spot on Family Ties. (Of course, the first thing I did upon seeing that episode was go to my mom's spice cabinet and take a giant swig of the vanilla extract, because it had never occurred to me you could do anything with it other than put 1/4 teaspoon into recipes for baked goods. I don't know if you've ever tried to drink the stuff straight, but it tastes exactly the opposite of how good it smells. That one experience, more than any sit-com moralizing, has convinced me never to become an alcoholic. Yes, despite my parent's best efforts, 70s and 80s TV really did play an unhealthily large role in my upbringing.)

That is how I ended up with this can of miXergy, which I bought on a whim at a gas station, because I figure it doesn't count as "drinking" alone in my room, as it is merely a form of soda. In fact, the label heralds it as "bier + cola + X!" I popped it open as I sat down to write this part, took a sip and, once the involuntary gagging was over, glanced at the side of the can to see what, exactly, they meant by "X." The can was of little help, other than announcing the alcoholic content, so I can report only that it is composed of 3.1% alcohol and 96.9% oh-my-god-that's-nasty.

It’s enough to drive a man to Riesling.

As for me, it drove me down south, to Germany's bastion of beer: Bavaria.

Would You Like Some Pork with That?

Most menus in Germany are suspiciously similar: a half-dozen variations on the schnitzel theme swamped in a creamy mustard sauce, some veal (usually subjected to the same inundation of sauce), a steak or two, venison stew with wild mushrooms, and whatever the local wurstel is.

Each dish is accompanied by any of a number of preparations of potato or a dense dumpling made from a starch-based food so cooked-down it's impossible to tell what it started out as, plus some form of sauerkraut. It's hearty, it's filling, and it's fairly obvious, after a few days on this diet, why there are so many Italian restaurants in Germany. French, Chinese, and Greek ones, too. Yesterday I passed one called "Ristorantisches Zagreb," proudly offering Balkan cuisine. It was packed.

Don't get me wrong: a platter of wurstel, a side of roasted potatoes, a salty bretzlern, and a liter-sized stein of bier to wash it all down is great fun and terribly tasty. But a steady sausage diet can get real old real fast, and there are some varieties of wurstel...well, let's just say the sheath of pig intestines into which the filling is stuffed is by far the least offensive ingredient involved.

Plus, it's all meat-and-starch, all the time. As a general rule, I care very, very little for sauerkraut. But here I find myself attacking the piles of slimy, pickled cabbage with a relish, egged on by a primal need for something resembling a fruit, a vegetable, or, really, just anything containing vitamins.

Schnitzel, too, gets pretty boring pretty quickly, especially when it's invariably protected under an armor of fried bread crumbs and hidden beneath a creamy sea of mustard sauce. I know it's just me, but every once in a while, even when it's well-prepared, in the midst of forking my way through yet another platter of schnitzel, the whole thing suddenly looks and tastes exactly like a Hungry Man TV dinner. That's when I know it's time to order another liter of beer.

Still, I grimly plow on through the many and varied regional preparations of cholesterol and polyunsaturated fats, my perverse sense of travel correctness keeping me from even glancing askance at the menus posted outside the dozens of pizzerie, "trattorien," and restaurants named after famous Italian cities and islands. I have to stick to the local specialties, even if it kills me (here my arteries would like to voice their opposition to this rule).

My vague rule of thumb is that you have to spend at least two weeks in a country before you're allowed to cheat and get a pizza. There are exceptions, of course. London, like NYC, is home to a globe's worth of interesting exotic options. In Prague, French cuisine ranks a close second to Czech in local popularity. The nineteen-course Indonesian feasts in the Netherlands are incredibly tasty and perfectly legit, given the country's colonial history in Southeast Asia.

Even Germany has an exception to the rule: they have now reached the critical mass of immigrant Turks necessary to make Turkish food a legitimate local option. Therefore, for the occasional lunch you are allowed a dönnerkebab, a split piece of flatbread stuffed with carved slices of spicy roast lamb with lettuce, tomatoes, and three kinds of sauce, one of which burns off your taste buds. Otherwise, though, it's wurstel and schnitzel all the way, baby.

Still, there are plenty of opportunities for the weak-willed to cheat, to take the coward's way out of arterial sclerosis. On most German menus, even in the most heuiriger (cozy) lilttle gestätte (tavern), if you look closely enough you'll find an escape clause, a dish such as "currywurst mit pommes frites," or "hen-flesh strips" prepared Orientischer art (Oriental style) with a pepper/cashew sauce, pan-fried veggies, and rice. But frankly, I have yet to meet any chef but an Indian who can apply curry to a dish in an appetizing manner. As for Orientichers art, if God had intended the Germans to stir-fry, he would have had them invent the wok. Instead, He apparently blessed them with a surfeit of pigs.

I've only been in Germany a few days—well shy of the two-week mark—and I already used up my lunchtime get-out-of-schnitzel-free dönnerkebab, so I'm finding other little ways to rebel. For instance, I am writing this bit in the Rhine village of Bachrach at a table in the Weinhaus Altes Haus—a half-timbered structure of red beams and white plaster that was apparently saved right in the midst of falling in on itself, so all the walls are at odd angles and from the outside it looks like a spritely illustration from a book of Grimm's fairy tales. I am awaiting the delivery of my carefully crafted light meal, to consist of a large mixed salad, a cheese sampler platter, and Apfelstrudel with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. I plan thusly to run an endgame around the "main courses" part of the menu—which promised schnitzel in a cheese-potato sauce with French fries, boiled beef in a berry sauce with potatoes, and something unfortunately translated as "Beef broth with stripes of noodle bags."

I am making amends for having ordered a modest bill of fare by padding my meal with not merely a glass of wine (which is the most that the largely abstemious Germans will drink with their meals—and which insanely always costs at minimum €2.50, usually €5 to €9), but rather a full bottle of the 2000 Toni Jost Reisling, grown on the slopes just outside of town.

What? Wine? In Germany? What happened to the massive mugs of beer? Tune in next post…

Enzo and His Hot Love Liqueur

Seven years ago, I immensely enjoyed a dinner at U Bossu, and accordingly gave Enzo's seven-table restaurant on a forgotten Taormina side-street a star rating in the Frommer's guide I was researching at the time.

Enzo was gregarious, friendly, jocular, and overall a genuine impresario for his little trattoria—and the food was fantastic, especially for a moderately cheap joint. At the end of that meal, he had poured me (and everyone else in the place) a shot of a fiery pepperoncino liqueur of his own invention. I love spicy things, and I love sugar, and Enzo's homemade hooch was a perfect marriage of the two tastes. Also, it packed an alcoholic wallop.

Fast forward to last night. As I entered, I saw the little "Recommended by Frommer's" sticker proudly displayed in his window, and gave a little smile, wishing I could tell him who I was and why he had so deserved that stamp of approval. Instead, I just dug into my dinner with relish, delighted that the food was as excellent as always--tagliatelle alla mafiosa (egg noodles made fresh that morning topped with a ragù of pistachios, tomatoes, cream, pancetta bacon, and mushrooms) and cartoccio di spigola allo scoglio (buttery sea bass baked in tin foil along with a handful of mussels)--and that Enzo was still a great character, endlessly entertaining to his few guests.

The pair of English ladies talking in low voices by the wall looked a bit taken aback at and overwhelmed by Enzo's gregariousness, but the Irish couple sitting behind me, who had eaten here every night of their holiday so far, thought he was a hoot. They shared with me their belief that our host looked like an Italian version of George W. Bush. Enzo made a sour face when he overheard that, but I had to agree there was a resemblance, and had trouble from then on shaking the image of Bush, with a tan and a little paper hat, speaking English in an Italian accent so heavy it was almost comical. When two young Dutchmen strode in, Enzo grinned widely and held out both arms "Welcome back!" then made a show of looking anxiously behind them. "But where are your girlfriends tonight?" When the pair explained that the women were off "For a ladies' night, without us boys." Enzo winked and said, "That's OK. We can have fun on our own. Sit here, I bring you good wine." And he hustled back to the kitchen.

At the end of the meal, Enzo asked if I would like an almond-flavored digestivo. Now, when I had arrived at the restaurant, Enzo had asked how I found his phone number (as I had booked ahead). I told him that he had provided me with a memorable dinner in the summer of 1998, and I'd always planned on coming back. So when he asked me about a digestivo, I said I recalled he had served me a fantastic liqueur of pepperoncino before, and could I please have that?

Enzo stared at me for a moment, bemused, then sighed. "Ah! My great failure." He smiled wanly, said, "Just a moment," and went to the little desk to rummage around under stacks of paper. He returned with a coated, unfolded paper brochure for his Liquore di Venere, and explained how he had tried to make a go of it.

In 1993, when he was still working as a chef in someone else's restaurant, Enzo thought a digestivo as fiery hot as Etna looming in the distance might prove popular. He admitted to knowing nothing of liqueur-making, or even really of basic chemistry, and so went through a lot of failed batches of moonshine before finally hitting on a method for distilling an essence of pepperoncino, mixing that into a sugary syrup, then marrying it all to a liquor base.

At first he served the stuff to patrons at his employer's restaurant as a "digestivo artigianale." By 1995, he had opened up U Bossu--dialect for "The Boss," which he finally was (though he jokingly calls himself little more than a "plate-ferrier," carrying dishes from the kitchen to the tables and back)--and decided to try and make a success of his invention. He picked out bottles, had labels designed and printed, and sent a sample of his liqueur (along with reams of paperwork) to the official governmental body in Rome that regulates such things.

Then, since moonshine is illegal everywhere, he had to have an official distillery to produce it. Since starting one from scratch would take far more money, time, resources, and--most significantly--paperwork than he could handle, it was far easier simply to buy a distillery that already existed on paper but wasn't actually in business. (The sheer bureaucratic inertia of the Italian regulatory systems makes such seemingly oddball solutions far easier than just going about things in a straightforward way.)

So, Enzo ran his new restaurant, and he made his Liquore di Venere, named for the kind of burning desire the Goddess of Love could instill in mortal man. He served the digestivo to all his customers, who were generally delighted and would often buy a bottle to take home. Selling the odd bottle to a patron, however, wasn't going to pay the bills--especially since most of the time Enzo would refuse to accept payment, and usually ended up just giving the bottle as a gift, insisting that the customer had already paid him "With excellent conversation." I know, because that's how I ended up taking home a bottle seven years ago. But the testimony of a few satisfied restaurant customers (not even those who would go on to encourage their guidebook readers to sample the stuff) were not going to be enough to turn Enzo and his liqueur into the success he was sure was in the cards. "Cinzano. Martini & Rossi. They all started as just one man with a recipe. Now look at them! Why not me?"

Enzo started sending letters and making phone calls. He contacted every liquor label and company he could think of. No one was interested in distributing a single item from a lone producer in limited quantities. He told them, no problem: he could make more. They all said, essentially, no thanks. They didn't really want to work with an outside producer.

Eventually, about a decade after perfecting his formula, Enzo finally gave up. He started serving a mass-produced almond liqueur from Marsala to his restaurant patrons as the digestivo he always offers "on the house" along with the bill.

"I still have three or four crates of the Venere at home." He said, and for the first time all night he looked sad--not the sad-sack act he puts on when moaning that he's nothing more than a glorified "plate-ferrier," but genuinely defeated. "I give bottles away as gifts, sometimes. I open one or two for special occasions at home. But in the restaurant, it's just the almond liqueur now."

He walked over to fetch a bottle of that and poured me a small glassful. I weakly said something about how unfortunate it was about the Liquore di Venere, because it really was a fine digestivo. "Eh, si." He said, with downcast eyes. "I was going to have great success with that." He looked up at me and smiled bitterly. "It was good! It should have been a success. The liquore would become famous, and I would have been rich."

It was late. The restaurant was empty of other patrons by then, and I was feeling downright awful having inadvertently re-opened what was clearly a painful wound. I tossed back the bitter almond liqueur, and stood up to leave Enzo and his cook to clean up and head home for the night. "Beh,' buona sera and thanks for another excellent meal." I said, sticking out my hand to shake Enzo's. He shook the vague cast of sorrow off his face, and beamed at me. "Tell you what." He said, taking my hand firmly and not letting go after the standard pump-and-a-half. "I'm back here around eleven in the morning, to do the shopping and get ready for lunch. Stop by around 11am tomorrow, and I'll bring a bottle of the Venere for you." Then he let go of my hand.

So, the next morning, I went by U Bossu. Enzo was bustling about in his little paper hat; though the open window to the kitchen I could see the taciturn chef chopping things up. Enzo smiled when he saw me and shuffled into the dining rooms, pausing to take a bottle from the desk covered with stacks of paper. In the clear liquid floated a hot pepper bleached white by time and long exposure to alcohol. Enzo dusted the bottle off with his apron before handing it to me.

"Liquore di Venere," he said with a flourish. "I hope you enjoy it!" I could tell he meant it.

And, just like before, Enzo refused to let me pay.