Chi Vapiano va sano e va lontano

Far from me to advertise something or someone.

However I think few words and considerations should be spent on 'Vapiano'.

This time I won't examine the quality of the food prepared at their premises.
It will be enough to say that I am a regular customer there since they have opened.

I won't see the things from the viewpoint of the success this business has been having. It suffices to notice that a second restaurant was opened in the city center.

What it does interest me is the main concept underlying its organization and vision that has led them to a successful food business(pardon my ‘business French’, I won’t do it anymore).

You wouldn't consider that behind an apparently simple self-service restaurant you could find a lot of cultural and cross-cultural indications. But you do.

The process of internalization of what 'Vapiano' represents for me has been slow.

I didn't draw any conclusions after 2 or 3 visits.
You just start to be pleased by the fact that you can taste a decent pizza margherita and get a 40 EEK change from your koidula banknote.
Elsewhere you have to surrender the entire poetess' portrait with just an eager smile in exchange.
They are happy to have made your trip back home 'lighter', that's why they smile at you!

After the tenth time you already feel at home.
''I go to eat to Vapiano'' it's like saying I'm gonna have an extra-care for myself as much as going to Mamma's place for an excellent mouth-watering treat.

After a year you have already tasted all the types of pasta and pizza available, sat on each type of table and got familiar with all the chefs.
If you are not Italian, you have also learnt that 'makaroni' is not the right way to address pasta without any distinction among its various types.

Then it comes the time to draw conclusions: why I have been attending this place for so long and why I will keep on doing?

What's beyond the food, the affordable prices and the unpretentious atmosphere of the place?

Customers are various: managers on the run, youngsters, shopping babes, group of friends, airline crews on lay-over, well-off's and not.
What is the common line drawing them together?
Of course I will not mention my country-fellows having almost made it their own home, it's a quite predictable topic. ''Mangiamo da Vapiano?'', let's eat in Vapiano, it's a favorite hit.

There’s no service in Vapiano.

This sentence does not account for ‘the service is bad’.
Usually the latter is the most spread judgment you could hear in Tallinn about a restaurant, good food but the service is bad.
When it’s both, you’ve been probably robbed.

It’s notorious that Estonia is not a service-oriented country.

Wherever you go (shop, restaurant or bar) the sweetest welcome you can receive it’s indifference, the warmest is a grunt.
Usually I prefer the first if compelled to choose.

To be honest things have improved a lot in 5 years.
However if you read on a glass window a head-hunting ad for sales people saying: ‘’we want smiles not sad people’’, probably there’s still a lot to be done.

If Vapiano is successful among many is because there are no waiters or waitresses.

No service, no embarrassment for bad service.

You order and pick up your food yourself at the chef’s counter.
It won’t matter if the chef is not that talkative or smiling.
Cooking is a mission, you cannot waste time in pleasantries. His dry manners are a guarantee your food is well prepared.

After all the guy is doing his job well, and that’s enough. He is also warning you against the perils of ordering a calzone rather than a caprese.

Of course he is right in doing so.

Being asked such a question, sounded like an insult to me:''hey, I am Italian! I know what they are!'' But evidently there have been many delusions in discovering that a calzone is a closed pizza (all the dressing is inside at 100*C) and caprese is listed under ‘salads’ but it is not a salad rather a delicacy for slow food connoisseurs (mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, oil and pepper and that’s it, you cannot beat frugality).

It should also be highlighted an important feature of ‘Vapiano’ that many either ignore or don’t know.

‘Vapiano’ is a German born chain of restaurants.

I know it sounds like saying that I was born in Sicily and my mother is blonde with blue eyes.

However, amazement apart, both statements account as true.

Vapiano is not the umpteenth invention of an Italian immigrate to Estonia who recycled himself as a caterer in order not to leave the country and continue enjoying the company of local bimbos.

Vapiano is a German creation which has been spreading through Europe and else (it accounts also one restaurant in Brisbane, Australia).

If someone had told me 4 years ago about this chain, I would have probably rolled down on the floor and laughed: how can possibly the Germans try even to think to compete with our mastery of the Italian cuisine?!? And, the worst of it, spread it through the World without our consent???

We have never tried to compete with them in beer brewery, didn’t we?
FIAT cars cannot account as a credible commercial rival for the German panzer-cars flashing past in Tallinn city center, can they?

''Please leave us the food at least!'', some Italian caterer would scream begging on his knees.

Germans are merciless though.

Vapiano is a striking example of how Italy would work perfectly if the organization of the state (say government) would be handled by Germans and the preparation of food left to Italians.

German organization and Italian food.

They have understood the perfect match to conquer the world and create a model of efficiency and taste at the same time.

In order the model to work, compromise on respective pride must be mutual.

Germans have acknowledged the Italian superiority in matter of food.
That is why no wurstel und kraut are served in Vapiano.

But at the same time Italians will have to come to terms with the fact that Germans can organize things better. Which they haven’t, as of today and according to my knowledge of the corporate, no Italian business partner is involved in Vapiano.

Fair enough.
Germans have accepted that their food sucks and kept the organization for themselves without asking anyone to give them a grant.
It’s enough for me.
A win-win deal, my school director would baptize it.

Germans are also quite intelligent.
They don’t sell ice to Eskimos.

This is the reason why they never dared to even think to open a Vapiano in Italy.

How can you compete with the gigantic army of ‘pizzerie’ scattered around every corner of the Italian cities, towns, villages and little boroughs?
They know that no Gothic Line would save them this time either.

The lesson is easy.

You cannot open a big food chain on the Belpaese soil without ‘paying duty’ to the local businesses and food traditions and eventually go bankrupt. Ask McDonalds who branded a new chain more suitable for our difficult taste: McItaly.

Centuries of food traditions have managed to curb the Americanization of our food habits without need of making a movie out of it whose title should have been ‘Italianize me’.

The Italian food resistance is too fierce and strong even for the persistent Germans.

I don’t know if the Russian couple sitting in the table in front of me and eating leaves from one of the basil plants on display on each table of Vapiano ever reached such conclusions.

They just probably grabbed the plant away to finish it at home.

Lumetrenn

I knew it. It started to melt down but I knew it.

Since I decided to resume my football practice the weather was just getting better. Of course we shall agree on what’s ‘better’ according to the Estonian standard: 3*C and 3-months-old snow melting down. What everywhere could be just a nasty Winter day, here is a glimpse of Spring. Thermometer is over 0*C for the first time since weeks. Things around have a color again (if they ever had). It is ‘warm’.
The concept of ‘warm’ (soe) it’s very relative from country to country. However once you live in Estonia, you start to realize that whatever is above 0*C is warm. Estonians don’t complain. They are thankful for everything above 0*C God mercifully sends them.
A hard concept to explain to a Southerner spoiled by years spent at a 15*C standard in March or to a Sicilian travelling at 20-25*C.

It’s a climatic shock though cultural too.

You start laughing when ilmatüdruk says: ‘ tomorrow will be 5*C warm’.
After the third time you listen to that, you start realizing she is very very serious and talking to a very serious audience of listeners already dreaming of wearing their new Spring (!) outfit.

My illusion, though not so much fed with confidence, was smashed as soon as a heavy snowfall started to hit the city in the very early morning.
All the melt-down work, at a quite an advanced state, was ruined. Everything was going to be plain white again in less than 24h.

Included the kunstmuru stadioon at Kalev premises where I have been training for about 3 years now with a mighty IV league team of the Estonian Championships system.
All the hopes for a decent ball control, forget-about-it! Keep getting fun with a 3-4 meters lenght sliding tackle dragging everything on the way: ball, legs and snow in a kind of snow plough effect very suitable in this kind of weather.

No hope to leave my up-to-the-knee waterproof Hummel pants in the closet. Still more hard work for them before going to Spring-Summer lethargy.

Keep putting layers of clothes to avoid frosty wind to penetrate you bones and (few) muscles.

However I learnt my lesson since Day 1 at training grounds.
Too many layers will just give you the same mobility of a pachyderm wearing a sweating suite as part of its diet plan: you might be very warm, but forget about reaching the ball first.

Therefore I opted for a simple 3-layers outfit. Counter-indication: don’t stand, keep moving!

One of my teammates shows off is Viking ancestors proudly. Besides the same type of pants I have and a pair of gloves, it is like Summer in July for him: short sleeves and no hat whatsoever. I admire him, sincerely. However, shall I follow his example it would be rather better to book a room at the local hospital (haigla) for some weeks to fight against the aftermaths of a bronchial pneumonia. My ancestors must have definitely travelled across warmer seas.

Football is fun anyway. Even when it looks like a mix between the aforementioned, ice-hockey and a hard men trial. Once you have found your own personal way to it, I can guarantee you it’s fun.

That’s what I tried to explain to my visiting brothers joining us for a training last December.
One of them tried to escape smartly the warm-up: shoveling snow from the pitch.

However my arguments were not enough strong as I got a muscle injury during the training game. If your body fails to support your opinions as you cannot change the first you should change the second ones.

Nothing to do. I will still pack my sport bag twice a week and join my lumetrenn until it will become just trenn and lume will be definitely melt down.

Soon it will be ‘warm’ again.

Tule toetada!

Iseseisvus päev

I have always liked Independence Day in Estonia.


The military parade, the President´s speech and the First Lady evening are certainly something common to all major national celebrations around the World.

Iseseisvupäev is more about the idea of a small nation gathering together around its own symbols instead.

We are small, but we are proud to exist.
That’s the message that I have always got seeing people invading the city center in blue-black-white ribbons and flags.

I come from a big country.
Not in terms of land.
Our ‘boot’ (‘lo stivale’) is narrow and mountainous.

The fact is that we are a lot.

I only got accustomed to the idea of a big empty space when I started to travel on Tartu mantee to reach my partner’s family country house somewhere half a way.

No villages for kilometers.
No lights at night.
Only some houses and some chimneys smoking.
Then land and woods and land again.
How could it be?

Estonia is a bit bigger than Denmark: on almost the same surface there are only 29 people per square meter compared to Denmark’s 128. Does it give enough the idea about how much open space such a small country can offer?

Therefore the event of gathering together must be special.

On a pretty nationalistic point of view, Estonians are proud of their symbols and what they represent.

I feel kind of jealous about this especially when I look back at my own country.

Of course drawing a comparison between a 60 million country and a 1.3 one can be awkward.
We have so much variety as far as regards regional traditions, dialects, habits etc. . We have been gifted with a dense heritage the World envies us in terms of culture and peculiarity.

But sometimes what is a virtue can also be a limit.

We are so much various though so much divided at the same time.

It’s very hard to draw together Italians around what is considered really ‘Italian’ and make them agree on it.
A bald-headed guy tried to do it autocratically for 20 years and ended his days hung-up in a gas station.

We have a flag as every country.
However we are proud to show it only during football international events to celebrate National squad’s achievements.

Some political parties have been offending the Italian tri-colors quite light heartedly during the recent years.
I believe there would not be a party here which could seriously claim a single vote after insulting the Estonian flag.

At a first glance, to the just-landed visitor, the Independence Day could appear as a big, rhetoric and militaristic masquerade. However, behind a façade common to many similar events, there are really good vibes.

Estonians do not have so many holidays to celebrate during the year. Their hard-working culture allows few national holidays that you could count them on both hands’ fingers.

After New Years’ Eve, this is the very first public holiday when shops and businesses shut down earlier.
Compared to Italy’s notorious Spring Breaks (a.k.a. as ‘ponti’), Estonians have a long way through Spring until Jaanipäev, the Midsummer Day. And you cannot call it really ´Spring´.

Each building shows the tri-colors since early morning. You feel the atmosphere is different and you want to be part of it.

My very first Indipendence Day was spent like many other Estonians, in Vabaduse väljak, watching the parade and listening absorbed to the national anthem.
It was a moment I can honestly say I felt a shiver running down my spine.
The silence.
The cold and snowy square, just the music and people singing, neither whispers nor noises.
The flags waving in the freezing wind.
In that very moment I realized how sacred and important can be this national day in a small country as Estonia.
And I wished we could have something similar in Italy which would gather us together proud of being Italians. Just for one day with no divides, tearing us apart arguments, mutual accusations, historical and political angers.

It´s true that adults sometimes should learn from children.

This is a young country, born in 1918 and reborn in 1991.
It has enthusiasm, optimism and that kind of life vision deprived of secularization.


Head Iseseisvuspäeva Eestisse!

I did it my (tram)way

It’s Monday morning. You’re sleepy. And the least of the things you would do after sleeping in the prairies of your warm big bed is to have someone sitting on your side on a public transportation of Soviet produce.

It took me a while before developing such a technique. At least realizing that I did develop one and most of all thanks to the social attitude of the locals.

All it started because sitting by a window during Winter time on a Tallinn tram (henceforth just ‘tram’) is a bit of an hazard.

Air draughts are not compensated by the lonely heater a couple of rows ahead.
Having to ride few stops to my destination, it is not worth bothering someone else to get out.
The route is always the same, the view outside the window pane is memorized and sometimes the window is sold to a commercial banner that makes the view fragmented in pixels giving you a slight dizziness.

Therefore my choice went to the ‘aisle’ seat and to take a look at the human landscape that gets on and off the steep stairs of the sliding doors every morning.

You have the young student with his iPod well-fixed in the ears hollows. He won’t wear them off to listen the announcement that tram is going back to depot.
The young girl with freshly painted nails. You would bet that her nail style differs from week to week and it’s hard to keep track of.
The old Russian woman padded in her fur, furry laki-laki and thick square boots bought in keskturg making you feel like next stop might be the Red Square on a everyday tram ride in Soviet Moscow.
The old guy with red-face. Either too cold for him or too few resistance to a morning shot of viina.
The young kids going to school in their up-to-date street style wear. You think they don’t get into the class on their feet, they might skate in.
Some young yuppie with a ‘yes-I-use-public-transportation-but-not-everyday’ worried face. They look sad out of the window to colleagues flashing past in their SUV’s and BMW’s.

Morning tram spares you from the terror of every rider: the bum.

I don’t have anything against bums, they either chose this life or were compelled by drastic changes in their previous ones. What scares me is the non-arbre magic smell they carry with them. However they are enough intelligent to understand that using a tram at 9am would push all the other riders against the driver’s cockpit begging for shelter. Enough intelligent or too drunk to wake up.

Besides being drawn together by the terror for the abovementioned character, each rider has another common feature: avoiding human contact as much as possible and if possible.

I am not better than them.
I said: who wants to share a tiny padded seat with a perfect stranger not knowing his/her degree of personal hygiene? You might be sleepy, but you set your alarm clock at 7pm to take a shower and being acceptable in social situations; he/she might look already up-to it but maybe the bathroom was just crossed for a ‘quickie’.

However the developments were surprising.

I counted for 5 days in a row.
I was not certainly sitting on the back of the tram, but on the front where most of the people pack themselves. The tram (my line is either 4 or 3, from Tondi to the city center) gets packed quite quickly after a couple of stops reaching its climax (full capacity) in the very city center (Vabaduse väljak - Viru).

I was prepared to move my legs every morning as soon as someone demanded for the window place to be occupied, a little drawback to suffer.

Surprisingly this didn´t happen for 2 mornings in a row. The seat besides me stayed empty until destination was reached.
I started to think my route was too short for a serious statistical result.
Therefore I decided to make my trip a couple stops longer.
Nothing. The seat was still empty. And you cannot say people didn´t need it.
It seemed to me like I was physically blocking the only access to an empty seat. Had I found a way to make my trip comfortable and spare from an unnecessary companion? It seemed so. Therefore I started to implement my technique each and every time I was due to take a tram.
The results were confirmed: no one dared to ask me to make them a way to the empty seat, no matter they need it or not. It seemed like Estonians would suffer on their feet, carrying bags and pushed against each other rather than swallow their pride asking me to move a bit and let them in.
I do not certainly look like some kind of jailbird who just got off from the local vangla. Maybe a bit out of the ordinary with my brown hair and eyes, taken sometimes as a Russian-ethnic rather than a scary looking chap. Still very similar to any other dark-haired –eyed guy.
On the other hand I didn´t dare to break the golden rule of silence on the public transportation and offer an empty seat. I would have been labeled as a weirdo if not a perverted person in desperate need of company. I have learnt my lesson.

I made exception to old ladies as a basic rule of common sense and politeness.

However I noticed that I had very few to offer them. Despite the fact no one else is openly claiming that seat for themselves, the old grannies are used to fight for their seat and they do not need an invitation from you: ´Wanna seat? Of course I wanna seat you dumbass! My bones are as old as the October Revolution!´ they seem to think when they look at your Samaritan face.

The old ladies are the real exception to the ´empty window seat´ way to survive public transportation and make it safe to destination.

Whenever one of them climbs those steep stairs I am ready to surrender.

Homo (in)Felix

I was out to lunch today and I decided that something had to be done.
I know this battle is lost since the beginning. But I like to fight battles which are lost since the beginning. What’s the point to fight those ones you know already you are going to win?
It’s the reverse loser psychology. Knowing you are going to lose, makes you look brave in other people eyes. Or crazy.
When the lady at the usual basement café in Radisson Blu hotel offered ketchup to dress my pasta I told myself: ‘enough is enough!’ Luckily she didn’t have the deadly tool in her hand, otherwise I would have showed my face covered with disgust.
I just walked away ignoring her invitation knowing that today I was rather going to start a blog. Logical. You must go round of it sometimes.
Therefore here are 10 start-up golden rules regarding Italian food and eating habits.
Your question will be: but do we have to follow those letter by letter?
Of course yes! Would I melt cheese on verivorstid on Christmas Eve rather than covering them with jam (moos, marmellata) and hapukoor (sauercream, panna acida)?
Of course not, therefore some rules must be followed by non-Italians when approaching our food.
I know this make Italians sound like ‘food fascists’* but we have no choice. If we would let everything go, in 50 years time tourists coming to Italy won’t have any more any delicacy to taste and rules to stick with to preserve those delicacies.
Here we go:

1. Ketchup was invented for hamburgers, sausages and meat in general: pasta is not under its rule.

2. Pasta must be cooked within the cooking time showed on the package. Usually the cooking time is reported with international signs like: 11 min. = eleven minutes.
If cooked within this time, pasta will be ‘al dente’, which means edible. Over this time, it’s a meal for your dog.

3. Pasta can be dressed with ready-made sauces available nowadays in all major supermarkets of the European Union (Estonia joined EU in 2004) where the main trademark (Barilla) offers a variety of solutions alternative to the ‘ketchup-up-and-go’ crime. The author advices: Ricotta sauce and Bolognese.

4. Pasta is a main dish, no companions needed.
Compared to music, you wouldn’t give a choir to a soloist: he’s the one-man show.
As a corollary of this rule, pasta itself is not a side dish for anything else (meat, fish etc.)

5. There’s no macaroni. There’s only pasta.
And its over 100 regional/local types. Macaroni is the deformation of ‘maccheroni’ a type of pasta.

6. If you are in a bar, it is not allowed to order a cappuccino after 11 o’clock. What you are allowed to ask is an espresso. In Italy you do not need to specify that, just saying ‘caffe’’ it’s enough. Italians do not drink anything else than espresso.

7. Cappuccino after a meal is a crime against humanity. Restaurants all over the world bowing their heads to such request are mere collaborators of the perpetrators.

8. Pineapple is a fruit. Pineapple pizza is a disgrace.

9. Be suspicious if a great Estonian chef offers Italian food in his restaurant with Italian name. Probably you are going to pay a lot of money for eating a pizza that breaks like a pirukas when you cut it (if you want to know the name of the place, contact me in private).

10. Do not order Italian food in a basement café of the city center.

Today I have personally violated the 10th rule, therefore I decided to write the other 9.

The current advertisement seen on TV from Felix (producing ketchup) is fragrantly violating rule 1. I will personally boycott the trademark until the commercial is removed and apologies presented to our local embassy.


*the lovely definition belongs to a foreign lady and is reported by Italian journalist, writer and commentator Beppe Severgnini on his book ‘La bella figura’ available in English and Finnish besides Italian, the Russian version is not adviced by the author himself due to a bad adaptation to the Cyrillic fonted language.