When you travel, enjoy the cultural wonders. I used to be put off by those sophisticates in Europe. They’re so into their fine wine and stinky cheese, and even the cultural soil that created it all. But now I love being the cultural bumpkin.
Sure, I’m simple. I was raised thinking cheese is orange and the shape of the bread. Slap it on and…voilà! Cheese sandwich. Over there, cheese is not orange nor the shape of the bread. In France alone, you could eat a different cheese every day of the year. And it wouldn’t surprise me if people did. These people are passionate about their cheese.
I love it when my favorite restaurateur in Paris, Marie-Alice, takes me shopping in the morning and shows me what’s going to shape the menu tonight. She takes me into her favorite cheese shop. It’s a festival of mold. Picking up the moldiest, gooiest wad, Marie-Alice takes a deep whiff, and groans ecstatically, “Oh, Rick, smell zees cheese. It smells like zee feet of angels.”
I’m her wide-eyed student. It’s fun to be on the receiving end of all that cultural, gastronomic, and regional pride. I see it as a learning opportunity. Thankfully people are sophisticated about different things, and when we have the opportunity to meet the expert, it can be good for all.
While my father doesn’t know the first thing about cheese, he is sophisticated about pianos. He was a piano tuner in Seattle, and he imported fine pianos from Europe. When I was young, he took me to the Bösendorfer factory in Vienna, where the world’s finest pianos were made. I remember thinking they weren’t made — they were birthed. Touring the factory, which fills a former monastery, we learned how the wood was aged and the imported felt was made from just the right sheep’s wool. In each of the former monks’ cells, they proudly produced only two pianos per worker per year. The result of this lovingly labor-intensive production process: each piano had its own personality.
I remember going to Vienna on those first trips with my dad. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I’d join him on a flight to Vienna. They’d line up five or six of these grand pianos — the finest and most expensive in the world. I’d hop from bench to bench playing them as my dad would analyze the personality of each, matching it with his client’s taste back in Seattle. He’d make the selection, autograph the sounding board, they’d put it in a box, and ship it to some lucky American pianist. Bringing that Old World quality to the New World was the joy of my dad’s work.
While this old-time quality is gone — a casualty of our mass-produced modern world — perhaps having seen this is one of the reasons I’m enthusiastic about sharing the fine points of European culture. Bösendorfers may no longer be produced with such loving care. But, thankfully, the cheese still smells like zee feet of angels.
