Not much to report this week as I have been running around town with errands and attending my Italian as a Second Language class. However, on Friday a friend and I attended the Bella Bafana Bazaar at Aviano Air Force Base. http://bellabefanabazaar.com/photos/ This is similar to an upscale arts and crafts show back in the states but with vendors from all over Europe, and more food, wine and beer than you could want! My friend and I arrived early enough to be one of the first 25 entrants into the hangar where the show was being held. The organizers of the show had cute little signs they walked around with telling us to spend money to support the activities on post and how many shopping days were left until Christmas, but most importantly, shipping dates to get things home in time for loved ones. Then, in true military fashion, the Chief opened the bazaar with a few words and shopping encouragement. As the people in front of us ran through the banner, we walked in behind them and received $20 in free bazaar bucks, which was awesome since it paid for my bottle of homemade Moscato at the end of the show.
Our first vendor was the German nutcrackers, smokers, and ornaments handcrafted by Christian Ulbricht. Beautiful items. The craftmanship on these items is simply amazing. I really enjoyed the frog nutcracker and the large old world Santas, too bad my purse strings weren't that deep today. I purchased a small item for a present and we continued on our journey. Check them out here: http://www.ulbricht.com/
We passed by the silk oriental rugs and the handmade furniture, although my friend was hard pressed to pull me away from a dark wood hutch I absolutely fell in love with. I am not sure my husband would have been pleased with a $1790 purchase, but there's always next year! My favorite olive oil lady from Bonamini, http://www.oliobonamini.com/eng/visite.php, was there. From her, I got another jar of pesto and some black olive spread. Both are out of this world delicious! We passed by some wine makers and sampled a little Moscato at our second wine stall. Unfortunately, it was a little dry to me. We continued to pass many vendors before stopping at a man who had Turkish puzzle boxes from Orhangazi, Turkey. http://www.pandoraspuzzleboxes.com/turkish_puzzle_box.htm Beautifully handcrafted, the puzzle boxes have a little puzzle you must first solve to release the key. Once you get the key, then you find the secret lock location. This opens the box which is lined in velvet for a wonderful jewelery box for any girl. I hope my nine year old appreciates the inlayed dolphin on hers. (It only took my husband and I 10 minutes to figure out how to open it. Hopefully one of us will remember come Christmas morning when the poor thing will thing mom just gave her a big wood block.)
We then tried some yummy homemade bruschetta where we purchased the ever delicious risotto with asparagus. http://terradellupo.com/ We came back later to sample his soup and wow! It was phenomenal. I think it was some sort of bean soup, but it was good! Next to him was a lady who had hand crafted kitchen bowls, platters, cutting boards, utensils, and many other items, including a chess set. I thought of my husband wanting one, but he would prefer one from Marostica, so I opted against it. We continued to peruse and came upon the man with the chocolate! www.cremacioccolata.it I tried the marmalades first. He gave me the chocolate with orange which just melted in your mouth and left you with orange zest pieces. I mean who doesn't like orange and chocolate? Then he gave me pineapples and rosemary. Eh, not my first choice. The rosemary was really strong. After purchasing some of the chocolate and orange marmalade, I tried the dark chocolate candy and it was out of this world! Much better than I expected!
After the chocolate, cheese from Holland was next! I could have stayed at this booth ALL DAY. His cheeses were mouthwatering and had just the right blend of herbs and spices. http://olddutchcheeses.com/ He had several gouda selections and after several minutes, i decided on a butter gouda, an herb gouda and a jalapeno pepper one for the hubby. The guy also had some Belgian waffles that were prepackaged and ready to eat. I picked up some chocolate covered ones for the girls and they loved them.
I stopped by one wine booth for another present, a small wine set which includes a seal cutter, corkscrew and thermometer. I hope the special recipient enjoys it!! My friend picked up some German beer for her hubby. We passed the pewter folks from Nove, Italy. They have many items made from pewter to include winestoppers, pewter figurines, glasses, etc. We browsed through the pottery from Nove and some pieces from Tuscany. Nothing really caught our eyes. Then we headed down the main strip and stopped near the lady with the Russian santas! http://www.russiansantas.com/ Amazingly light pieces, they are all hand carved out of wood from the Linden tree which is carefully selected and dried for two years! "Carvings are traditionally carried from village
to village to be exquisitely hand-painted by selected, talented
artists. In some cases, figures travel over a thousand miles and it
may take several weeks to complete a single piece. The magnificent
painting on each woodcarving is unique to that artist and usually
portray scenes from the winter holiday seasons and characters from
Russian folklore." Of course I had to purchase these from Svetlana too!
Then we found some more wine, cheese, salami and grappa. This is where we found the moscato my friend and I both enjoyed. It was all homemade, sweet with flavor and very smooth. It was a definite buy! The cheese and salami had some wonderful parmesan, which of course I purchased, and some salami which I tasted but did not buy. Wild boar salami was not too delicious and the rest of the salami seemed rather fatty. We turned around and decided to try the blueberry grappa liquer. I have never tried grappa before so i figured, why not? Big frickin' mistake! Holy cow. Do you know the alcohol content in this stuff? Another friend and I tried to swallow this but it was strong and burned the back of my throat. When asked about its alcohol content, the guy told us it had 22% alcohol, but that grappa normally has 40%! Wow, just wow. Cleared my sinuses up but good! We then visited the handcrafted wood barrels and unique gifts at the next stand. There were signs tell you to purchase your barrels for Christmas. Now the barrels were large in size, although there were a couple smaller ones. I am not sure what I would do with an empty barrel, perhaps refill it with wine, but they were nice!
All in all, the bazaar exceeded my expectations which is good because I have a love affair with craft shows and have been to several with many artisans, food vendors and crafters. It was a different pace and a little smaller than I am accustomed to but in all, it was an enjoyable time! It comes twice a year, so if you have a chance to experience it, stop by!! (Oh and while you're at Aviano, be sure to visit Cinnabon in the food court!!)
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