A Wine Party in Fair Verona

Editor’s Note: This is from my 1996 backpacking adventure. Names have been changed since I haven’t talked to these people in over 20 years.

Vera and I got off the train in Verona, the city of Romeo & Juliet and our introduction to Italy. This was quite the change from the snows of Bavaria, even the air smelled warm and inviting. I would learn that Italians would not call this warm, and in early march of 1996, there were lots of Italian women decked out in fur coats. Meanwhile the two of us ditched the winter jackets for t-shirts, as we carried our gear out of the train station.

As we consulted our little map to find the hostel, we heard a voice ask “scusi, parla inglese?” in a delightful English accent. We turned around and there was a young, blonde Englishman of about our age. We answered yes, and next thing you know the three of us hit it off. Our new traveling companion was Andy, he had been in Italy a little longer than us but just arrived in Verona and was looking for one of the hostels. We told him about a hostel we found in our guide book that sounded historic and fun, a converted Renaissance palazzo just over the river.

We took a leisurely stroll. Well, as leisurely as you can, carrying huge backpacks. Heading down the Corso Porta Nuova, through the Medieval city gate and into Piazza Bra, where Italian Spring hit us like a fragrant brick. The three of us took a few minutes to soak it all in, that first hour in Italy was magical.

Vera, Andy and I were enjoying a beautiful Veronese morning in the square, when the sound of an espresso machine brought us back to the present. This cozy Piazza surrounds an ancient Roman amphitheater and is lined with your typical Italian cafes and bars. We decided that we had been in Italy far too long and not gotten an coffee, so we headed to the nearest cafe and walked up to the bar.

We were all trained from our backpacking guidebooks to not sit in an Italian cafe, unless you are willing to pay more for the privilege. Sure enough we looked at the price list and a cappuccino cost double to sit and people watch. We paid at the cashier first and handed the receipt to the bartender, who was a happy young guy eager to practice his English. That first sip was memorable, by far the best coffee I had on the trip so far, and we already had plenty of good coffee.

More New Friends at the Ostello

Our guidebook raved about the Ostello Verona, which at the time was part of Hosteling International, so we got a discount. It was located in a renovated Renaissance Villa and Let’s Go Europe stated “the best hostel in Italy has both 15th century frescoes and spotless bathrooms.” They also offered “amazing” dinners as well. Pretty hard to say “no” to that combination, so the three of us hoofed our way through historic Verona, getting a preview of some of the sights, on our way to the hostel.

We crossed a bridge over the Adige River and made our way up the winding streets to the hostel. We turned a corner up the hill and were greeted by a full on Italian Palazzo, with a crenelated stone wall and gate. There was a dilapidated sculpture garden with an old grotto. The garden had green grass and some flowers even in early March. The main areas really did have frescoes on the ceilings and a seating area around a Renaissance fireplace, perfect for planning the next leg of the journey.

This hostel had separate male/female dorms and as usual, we made new traveling friends. Andy and I met up with some American exchange students from Kentucky, that were on break from University of Strasbourg. Vera, in the girls dorm met another of the Kentucky exchange students, and Nichole, a smart and savvy lone backpacker from Australia. Like Andy, we met up with her off and on in Italy.

Veronese Sights Before Dinner

We all met up by the fireplace and decided to explore the town together, until it was time for the “amazing” dinner we all signed up for. The group headed back over the river to the Piazza della Erba, Verona’s main market square since Roman times. We encountered some delicious aromas, while walking past earlier and now it was time to indulge in an Italian market.

This has to bee one of the oldest continuous marketplaces in Italy and one of my favorites. The vendor and market stalls are set up in the center of the square with shops and restaurants on the ground floors of former Renaissance palazzi. The medieval Torre dei Lamberti, with its giant clock, looms over the marketplace and made for a great navigation point. We quickly looked through the leather goods before smelling pizza and realized we should get some lunch.

Andy, Vera and I decided to get some pizza, while the Kentucky kids looked for souvenirs. Andy had been in Bologna previously, and showed us how to order pizza al taglio. This reminded me of the sheet-pan pizzas of the Italian bakeries back home. Except here there were at least 8-10 different toppings and you paid by weight. I can’t recall how much we bought but it wasn’t much, we all wanted to check out fruit and goodies in the market. What I do remember is I got a slice covered in marinated artichokes and it was delicious. We met up with the rest of the gang at the Madonna Verona fountain, adorned with its ancient Roman statue, and headed to the produce market.

Early Season Italian Strawberries

It was here among the fruits and vegetables that we were gobsmacked by the most amazing aroma of fresh strawberries. We actually smelled them before we found them, the reddest, most perfect looking strawberries any of us had ever seen. Not the tiny wild ones, and not the giant monstrosities you see in American supermarkets, they were perfect in every way. I don’t know if strawberries grow in Northern Italy in March, but I will never forget how good those strawberries were.

From the Piazza, we headed south past the fancy designer stores and into a slightly crowded brick courtyard of the Casa di Giulietta. A tourist trap if there ever was one, I mean you are literally trapped in this little space looking up at the supposed balcony of Shakespeare’s Juliet, before rubbing her boob on the bronze statue for good luck. It was so tacky but we would have regretted not visiting and remember, this is before social media, overtourism and those stupid “love locks” made it even more ridiculous.

Golden Age of Bootleg Music

We continued on and wandered to Piazza Bra to check out the Roman amphitheater, the old city wall and gate. We couldn’t get into the Arena, but the little park outside with fountains and flowers was a nice place to hang out. On the way back to the hostel we hit up a music store that sold CDs and cassettes of unauthorized bootleg albums by all my favorites: Grateful Dead, Phish, Doors and especially Pink Floyd. This was back when many Italian music stores ignored copyright laws and sold all sorts of bootleg music. These were known as ROIO’s (Recordings of Indeterminate Origin) in the bootleg music community. Some of them were sold in nicely packaged box sets, nearly as good as official releases. The problem was you never knew what sound quality they had until you played them. I found a few choice concerts and those discs are still in my collection, more as souvenirs than for listening.

A Dinner Fit for Medieval Servants

Now it was dinner time, not for the rest of Italy, but by 6:30 we were hungry. What happened next was one of the worst, but also most memorable dinners in my life, and not in a good way. I never had such a bad dinner, in such a cool space, in such unique circumstances.

The hostel had an unadorned, dark, stone walled dining hall with long wooden tables, which made it hard for all of us to talk to each other. Once the place filled up it was futile anyway as the noise echoed off the stone walls. I felt like a peasant sitting tightly packed with the other travelers, waiting to be served. We all got excited when we saw a big tray of bread rolls come out and the staff began to “hand” them out.

The bread was thrown at us from baskets and landed with thuds on the long tables. This bread was so hard and dark that I’m pretty sure they just cut up one of the dining tables and served it to us. Once I was able to crack a piece open, it was almost completely hollow. I’m no baker, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to waste sourdough that was a little too ripe, and then proceeded to bake it into hardtack.

I was looking forward to my first real Italian pasta dinner, but my enthusiasm dropped after the first bite from the bowl of penne in front of me. The pasta actually didn’t look too bad at first glance, it was in a mushroom and tomato ragu, lightly sauced and obviously al dente. I prefer my pasta al dente, but this was almost raw. It was so chewy it was like chalk, they must have cooked it for only half the time. The sauce also looked pretty good but tasted both burnt and sour, like they added wine or balsamic vinegar to hide the burnt taste.

Things were looking up I thought, as they began serving the wine. The dark red wine was served in tiny glasses and was so dry it sucked the moisture out of your mouth. Seriously, it was so tannic you could cure leather with the stuff. It remains the worst wine I’ve ever drank in Italy. Vera and I looked at each other and ran for the water dispenser – which only served heavily carbonated water. I have since learned to enjoy things like Pellegrino, but I hated it back then, and after drinking a small glass of red paint, the bubble water didn’t quench of our thirsts.

We tried, but couldn’t finish the pasta and as the two of us put our dishes on the bussing rack we met up with our new friends by the fireplace. It was way too loud to talk to them at the table, but it sounds like they were just as shocked at this “amazing” dinner as we were. Did we catch them on a bad night? Was it because it was the off season? Didn’t matter, we learned our lesson and didn’t sign up for dinner the next night.

Dinner was early by Italian standards and I needed to get that gross wine out of my memory. We decided to follow some other backpackers down the street for a truly Italian experience: drinking Guinness in an Irish pub. We only stayed for a couple pints before heading to the bunks for an early start.

An Unbalanced Breakfast

It wasn’t all bad at the hostel, in fact it was pretty good where it really counted. The sleeping arrangements were not bad at all, and the bathrooms really were spotless. It was really just the food that was horrendous and apparently we didn’t learn our lesson. The next morning we were all up early enough to get the free “breakfast”. I’m not a breakfast person, so I am just fine with an Italian breakfast of just coffee, and maybe a small pastry. Pretty hard to mess that up, right?

The scene of last night’s food crime had been set up for breakfast, with self serve coffee and warm steamed milk, in heated buffet-style chafing dishes. You ladled your own coffee and steamed milk into enormous mugs. It seemed a little gross, but in Italy even bad coffee is usually pretty good, and that was the case here. Guess what also made an appearance that morning? The same hard-as-rock bread rolls from last night! I was still hungry from the night before so like a fool I broke off a piece of ship’s biscuit and tried to eat it by softening it with my coffee like a 19th century sailor. It helped, but not enough.

We got the hell out of there for better coffee and a nice mix of pastries from a bar across the river. With that out of the way, we made our way to the formidable-looking Castlevecchio along the Adige.

Castelvecchio, City Walls, and the View from Above

The interior spaces of this castle were not that impressive, one wing had an exhibit on Gothic art that didn’t excite any of us. In contrast, Castlevecchio’s 14th century ramparts and fortified bridge, with its fancy brick merlons, were lots of fun to explore. I couldn’t help myself but imagine being one of the Scaligeri crossbowman firing a bolt through one of the loopholes. As our imaginations went wild, and we took 90’s versions of selfies, our group noticed a big complex way up on a hill outside of town. It looked like a great place to get pictures of the whole of Verona.

This is the Santuario Nostra Signora di Lourdes and occupies the site of an old fort. We decided to hike up to it and along the way we discovered the Renaissance city walls and spent some time down in the tunnels before we got creeped out. The hike took way longer and was way hotter than expected, but we finally made it. The view truly was spectacular, too bad my point-and-shoot camera was not up to the task. It was somewhere on the way back, staggering toward the hostel that the gang decided to handle dinner ourselves.

An Unsophisticated Wine Party

We walked into a local grocery store and surveyed the wine section. In hindsight, we would have found a better selection back at the market or one of the local wine shops. None of us knew much about wine and back then I didn’t even know the word enoteca. My knowledge of wine was basically the jug of Carlo Rossi’s Paisano at Sunday dinner, served in a pint glass by Papa Demetri. The rest of the gang seemed just as ignorant, but we managed to pick out two bottles: a cheap Chianti and a bottle of Lambrusco that I chose because it had a pretty label.

We added prosciutto, olives, some cheese, crackers and Andy’s carton of milk (he didn’t drink), and then headed to the Hostel’s garden. We had the whole place to ourselves, so we stretched out on the lawn, exchanging travel stories and talking about home. It was the quintessential backpacker experience, travelers from three different countries, exploring a fourth.

The wine, the cheese, it was the best we could do, none of us knew anything, nor had the money to buy anything good. But it was good, better than good, as we drank our little cups of different wines, and Andy with his milk. We all were in the moment, experiencing one of those experiences you hope to experience, while backpacking.

I will never forget that day, foggy as it is. It is a sweet nostalgic moment that would fit in a novel by the Lost Generation, if we had trust funds. For a brief time in Italy we had a semblance of that “movable feast” of the Hemingway crowd, bumping into or intentionally meeting up with, members of this group for the next few stops along the path.

As the sun went down, it got cold so we went in the villa to warm up by the fire. The fireplace was simple but elegantly carved of a dark stone, and the small fire gave off a lot of heat as we sat and finished off the wine. It felt really nice since there was still that winter chill, reminding us it may be Italy, but it’s still only March. This is also were our little group would split up as we planned the next move.

The two of us decided to take an early train to Venice to beat the rush, so we said our goodbyes here. The American students were making their way back to Strasbourg. Andy and Nichole were both heading toward Florence, but via different routes. We all exchanged contact info and eventually met up again in Florence, where we met some new traveling friends and explored the hill towns of Tuscany.

Wow, writing this now, it almost doesn’t seem real, like a wonderful dream I had.