Let's be clear right up front: If you are reading hoping to hear about the best chocolates on the international scene, you will be disappointed. If you are reading this to hear how wonderful the EuroChocolate festival was, you will be disappointed. If you are reading this to find out what a chocolate festival is like, once again, like me, you will be disappointed. This a very sad story about my first chocolate festival experience which was a total bust. However, if you have never been to EuroChocolate before, you will find some important information about planning your visit in this post. And if you have ever had a really exciting plan turn into a really bad day instead, you will appreciate and be comforted by this story.
There are no words to describe my excitement when I discovered, quite by accident, during my extended trip to Italy that, just a few hours' train ride away from where I was staying, THE chocolate festival of Europe was being held. I knew I had to be there. I had never taken a train before, or been to the train station in Firenze (Florence), and I certainly did not know how to purchase and validate a train ticket there. It was going to be an adventure for sure.
I had checked the program schedule for the festival which was one-week long and discovered that the really exciting stuff, like chocolate sculptures and demos, was scheduled on the weekends, so I planned to leave first thing Sunday morning to get there when the festivities started. The night before however, the thunderstorms rolled in and it was a miserable night and morning in Firenze. I couldn't bring myself to face the day that early but made it to the station when the rain died down in the late morning. The walk to the station was longer and more confusing than I expected but luckily I ran into an American couple from Colorado who were dragging their luggage on the uneven stone streets and sidewalks and hitched my wagon to theirs.
At the station, there was a long line in front of the ticket booths which did not appear to be moving, while the AUTOMATIC ticket booths had only a couple of people in line. I watched from my spot in line for a while because, while I did know which train I needed to take, I was not completely confident I would be able to negotiate the language barrier using the machines. An Australian woman behind me agreed to let me back in if it didn't work out so I slid into auto-line. Two twenty-something girls were at the terminal and there was an Asian man behind them, then me. They were struggling with the machine which made me worry a little, and then the Asian man tried to help, and he was having problems as well. After a good 15 minutes, I intervened with some parting advice I received from the Australian lady about the final screen in the transaction. This helped the Asian man get his ticket but the girls were still unsuccessful. We concluded that the machine did not accept debit cards, which is all I had with me. Back to the long line I went where, by now, the Australian woman was nowhere to be found.
I watched the electronic arrivals/departures billboard anxiously as the train I was hoping to take arrived with delays, boarded and departed without me. Finally, it was my turn and the booth that called me over had a hand-written sign next to the window that said "Sorry, I don't speak English." So I laughed and put to work the elementary Italian that I had learned my first week in town with some English and Spanish mixed in for good measure and somehow ended up with a ticket, a boarding gate and 10 minutes to board. I found the gate but had read online that you have to have the ticket validated at a machine before boarding and I could not find any such machine. I asked around and followed pointed fingers but to no avail. Finally, some American girls pointed to an unmarked yellow box on a column at the edge of the train platforms, so I punched in my ticket and breathlessly jumped on the train a minute before it took off, not caring if I was in the right section or seat or whatever. I was on and that was all that mattered.
Not having ever been on a train, I had some romantic fantasies about the ride. First, I would see lots of great scenery as I had read that the best way to see the Tuscan countryside is by train. Second, I would chat up people around me, maybe make some friends, or even meet a nice guy like Ethan Hawke in the movie "Before Sunrise." And if all else failed, I would be lulled into a delicious sleep by the motion of the train and arrive rested and energized for my big day.
The scenery unfortunately was nothing to write home about. It was mostly ghetto-style apartments and other-side-of-the-tracks kind of stuff. The rural scenery was nothing special except for a couple of farms that had a nice variety of trees and crops that complemented each other visually, and a very brief peek at the ocean.
I spoke to no one on the train; the girl across from me kept closing her eyes and looking away each time I made eye contact or smiled, clearly uninterested in chatting. The girl across the aisle was quietly doing her homework with her large dog resting at her feet and she was communicating only silently with it. Down a few rows was the Chatty Kathy of the cabin, an obnoxious 50+ American dressed in the latest fashion for twenty-somethings, with a loud, boisterous voice who insisted on speaking with her broken Italian to anyone who would listen. She latched on to a mother and daughter across the aisle from her, permanently deserting her travel companion, and for two and a half hours, talked non-stop about her travels, her pets, and random events from her life, while "beep"-ing through a thousand photos on her camera. I was wishing I had an iPod like the homework girl so that I could block out the noise and try to sleep.
Sleeping was not an option either unfortunately. Even without Chatty Kathy, the stops were frequent, the train's speed was not consistent, and the light from the window switched abruptly from pitch black to bright as we went in and out of tunnels. There was no lulling going on. Luckily, the train ride did come to a happy end after all and I ran out of the cabin to make sure I could cut ahead of C.K. who had made it clear she was also going to the chocolate festival.
Outside the station, the rain was coming down and buses reading "Chocoline" were pulling in and out of the driveway. I watched some other people get waved away from the Chocoline bus so I figured out tickets were needed to board. I ran up to a small ticket booth with a throng of people crowding all around it, inching my way in the rain to get a bus ticket. I bought a ticket to and from the center of town, and hopped onto the next crowded bus. A short ride later, we were dropped off at a bus terminal and told to take the "scala" (stairs). I looked around and a sign pointed us to the escalator across the street. There, through a cavelike opening, people poured out onto the sidewalk and a crawling line of people waited to squeeze in. Attached to the herd, I rode several escalators up, up, up through a dingy tunnel into a large stone cave, where I lost the crumb trail and roamed around a bit to get back on track. I walked up a slope in this cave past a wine tasting room, a little snack bar, a table that looked like an introductory table but turned out just to be tourist info for Perugia, and finally found my way to stairs and another escalator. All the while we were making our way up, throngs of people were pushing their way down the tunnel. Finally, after 25 minutes underground, I saw the light of day.
Getting off the escalator however was no easy task because there was apparently nowhere to go. Crowds of people blocked the space around the escalator, and the festival tents which were set up right there in front of us in a narrow alleyway were surrounded with people buying chocolates. These tents were only big enough to cover the chocolate displays so the people were standing in the rain with umbrellas, pushing and shoving their way around. Meanwhile, the street was flooded in many parts and, everywhere else, was littered with trash that had become mush in the rain. Navigating the crowds and the water and the trash and the umbrellas threatening to poke your eye out while never being able to get close enough to a booth to see anything--it was a nightmare. I could not see a way out or through; I was shoved around in a circle around a group of tents and ended up right back at the escalator.
So I got back on. And inched my way down the stairs, through the cave, onto escalator after escalator after escalator as hopeful newbies rode their way up in the opposite direction. I wanted to shout, to tell them to turn around, it wasn't worth it, but hey, I had taken that ride THROUGH hell TO hell and gotten nothing but the hell ride back...so I just scowled quietly.
I scowled all the way through the tunnel. I scowled as a I crossed the street in the rain to the bus terminal. I scowled as I climbed on the bus and used my return ticket to ride with rowdy teenagers screaming all the way to the train station. I scowled as a I waited in line to buy my train ticket back and I scowled when I realized I had over 2-1/2 hours to kill in the tiny station. I ate some pizza standing up in a crowded, filthy cafe, I shopped around in a tiny little boutique, and mostly stood around outside watching people come and go. I did everything I could to kill time and still there was over an hour left and nowhere to sit or a restroom to use. Luckily, I ran into some people I knew who were just as disgusted and disappointed as I was and we chatted until the train arrived. It was 7:30 p.m. by the time the train departed Perugia for Firenze. Another 2-1/2 hour ride back, and a cold drizzly walk back from the station to my apartment. I was cold, I was wet, I was tired, and even hungry. Not one piece of chocolate did I taste, not one cool chocolate-related activity or event did I witness, and not a single souvenir did I bring back with me except two used train tickets and two used bus tickets costing me a total of 25 Euro and an entire day and evening.
The following day, I ate at a local haunt where a waiter I had become friendly with told me he had the same experience when he went on a weekend, and that during a subsequent trip during the week, there were no crowds and he bought all the chocolate he could carry. I thought about going back during the week. But after the experience I had, I just couldn't bring myself to do it again.
So that was it. My first chocolate festival. It was going to be an amazing introduction, the chocolate festival of all chocolate festivals. Instead, it's a day I'm trying hard to forget ever happened. The whole way there I told myself, "I must really love chocolate to be going through all of this to get there." And the whole next week I told myself, "If you really love chocolate, you'll get back on the train and go back." But I don't think anyone loves chocolate that much. Maybe if it was the only place you could get chocolate, ever. But there was plenty of good chocolate at the market, the pastry shops and even specialty chocolate stores in town.
As a chocoholic, I have survived without Perugia and chocolate festivals all my life, as I am sure many other chocoholics have as well. So if you're bummed that you have never been to a chocolate festival, cheer up, go raid your chocolate stash and be happy you don't have to spend a miserable day in the rain to get your chocolate rush!
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