An Italian Picnic

Bill’s boss, Paolo, is a very warm, outgoing and gregarious man. He and Bill hit it off right from the start, which is another reason why we ended up here and not Bologna. He is the kind of person who sent me a bottle of wine when he had a last minute cocktail party which I could not attend because we couldn’t get a babysitter on short notice. I met him a couple of days after we arrived in Padova in July and the very first time we met he excitedly told me about the annual “picnic” for their department, out on a “farm” and how much fun we all would have at the “picnic.” There was no other information forthcoming other than the date, time and very fuzzy directions. According to Paolo, it was too hard to find so we should just call him from the autostrada exit and he would give us directions or we could follow someone. We called Paolo from the exit and got some bad directions which had us lost in the middle of who knows where and when we hadn’t arrived in about 15 minutes, Paola called us back and basically directed us onto the “farm” step by step. Weren’t we surprised when the picnic turned out to be at a vineyard and winery which was owned and run by the 80 year old retired chairman of the Biological Sciences department? We were also a little surprised that Paolo didn’t just give us one of the brochures to the winery which had a detailed map on it? In retrospect, I think he wanted to give us a little surprise about the “picnic” as he repeatedly referred to it. Thank goodness we were dressed for an Italian “picnic” and none of us was wearing flip flops or tee shirts. They had recently converted an old horse barn into a beautiful restaurant and wine tasting area. After appetizers & wine, we sat down and had a 4 course meal accompanied by the wines they make. We had pasta, vegetables, salad and meat. It is still unclear whether the meat was chicken, pork or rabbit – we kept the discussion about that somewhat quiet because I thought there might be some grade school dramatics about being served bunnies.

We were all a little tired because it was the afternoon after the big Marostica chess game and we had all gotten to bed way about 2 am. I guess we were probably too tired to do anything else other than sit around and drink & eat all afternoon anyway. It was an open, rustic area so the kids had plenty of places to explore and there were a couple of bird cages out in the yard with many pretty little parakeets. It was a warm beautiful afternoon, the food was wonderful and I think everyone at the party wanted a little nap after lunch. We got to meet all of Bill’s colleagues. Terri & I were sitting with a 30ish biochemist from Spain, Mehaney, her husband and her almost 2 year old who just wanted to follow Isabelle around (Isabelle in her typical behavior at parties with younger kids would have nothing to do with him - I tried to explain the idiom “getting a taste of your own medicine” someday, but was thoroughly unsuccessful). At one point we were all having so much fun, drinking and laughing, that Mehaney in her inattention mistakenly raised her wine glass instead of her water to give her toddler a drink who was at that point sitting on her lap. She was momentarily mortified at herself, but we all had a good laugh and no harm was done. Bill works with another beautiful biochemist who is always dressed like she just stepped out of a Milan showroom (even in the lab, according to Bill). She probably wanted to send us all home and redress us or better yet, take us shopping. But you will be comforted to know that most of the male scientist dress just like Bill, khakis and button down shirts – even in Italy, although they all have much better shoes on.

We had the opportunity to buy wine at the end of the meal for some shamefully low prices, but the line was long and it was a slow and tedious process. We knew we were in trouble when one person wanted to buy multiple cases and use a credit card and the cheerful answer was, “yes, but I have to run up to the house and get my book, I can’t remember how we process credit cards here.” We all had a great time and I think that everyone should grow grapes and make wine in northern Italy when they retire!