The flight through to Venice's Marco Polo Airport took us almost 18 hours, including the transfer in hyperdelic Dubai International. With the baby in tow it was not an easy trip. He is at the age where "Interactive" can be replaced by ACTIVE (in capitals). It was misty coming into Venice. The Emirates plane seemed to be floating endlessly down through a sea of grey, whispy cotton fluff. At the last second the mist lifted and we bumped down on the tarmac.

Although I have flown into Rome before, it was the first time I had encountered the efficiency of the staff in Venice. We were quickly through customs and on our way through light afternoon traffic to Trieste.

The previous 24 hours had been a mess. We were supposed to fly midnight on the 10th of November... which I thought was the evening of the 10th, not early am of the same day! A frantic phone call from the airport "where are you???" alerted me to my error. Living someway out of Jakarta making that flight was an impossibility. Fortunately the very, very efficient staff at Emirates managed to accomodate my error and got us on a flight 24 hour later. As I had planned for the later flight, this actually created no extra problems for us.

Trieste is located up against the hills on the edge of the Adriatic. Sparkling in summer, the sea is icey blue in November. Driving there in the van we could not help noticing the outside temperature guage was locked on 4 degrees centigrade... bloody chilly after the 32 degrees in Indonesia!

We checked into our Hotel on Via Roma and made a mad dash to our favorite restaurant on the Grande Canal. Although it was 2 years since we had been there the staff, menu and quality of the food remained unchanged.

The morning of the first day of the Trieste Espresso Expo was cold and grey. The "Bora" (a cold wind blowing down from Icey St Petersberg) was buffering the city at about 120kph! We were glad to get into the Espresso Expo Hall. We were at the Indonesian Exhibit with two other companies. Merdeka Coffee had been here before- with our 2006 effort being pretty succesful. This time around we were doing an espresso blend, the other 2 companies selling various greens from around the Island nation.

I had a brand new +4U Astoria to play with. This initially proved rather intimidating, as the machine is as similar to my old San Marino Lisa R as a bike is to a Ferrari. However with some guidance from Paolo and Jason (CMA) and Chartree (Zan from BX) I managed to get acceptable shots by early afternoon. The next 2 days were perfect!

The Expo was seemingly quieter than 2 years ago. I think this was for a number of reasons. 1/. Last time the Expo ran Fri, Sat and Sunday (giving 2 weekend days for visitors). In 2008 we ran Thu, Friday and finished Saturday. The weather and the current economic malaise also probably helped none. Still, we had a number of visitors from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Albania, Germany, France ("you know what Merde means in French???"), UK, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Slovakia, Austria, Spain, Mexico, India... and Thailand to name just a few. The comments were generally very good and we hope to get some business out of the show.

Evenings during Expo events are normally taken up with dinners. This was no exception with several good meals enjoyed in good company with good red wine and the local speciality, sparkling Prosseco.

I would recommend a visit to Trieste either during the show, or at anytime. It is a true coffee city. Apart from Illy being based here, many of Italy's biggest green bean importers (Sandalj, Alberto Hesse, Cogeco and Demus) aslo are there. The cafes are numerous, the coffee good and the atmosphere genial.

To be continued...

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Comment by Alun Evans on December 3, 2008 at 5:15pm
Hahaha, 20 shots!!! Not a bad effort. We likewise have the Luwak as well as Bat dropping coffee mainly for special clients in our cafe. Good luwak coffee is rich, fruity and fragrant... So YES lets meet up in Cologne or Milano 2009!!
Comment by nik orosi on December 3, 2008 at 6:06am
man, i had 2kg of kopi luwak in my shop, freshly roasted, one kilo from last years, one from this year, and i can say, its amassing...almost to get hooked on it, some 20 shots for me only, other shots for friends and costumers. we were charging an espresso around 20€! all gone, until xmas that ill have my last kilo. as for milano, its expensive, to many people, but its worth...i was in milan last year just after tokyo wbc and i was amassed how big milano fair is...its huge...anyway, hope to see you somewhere...maybe in cologne...
Comment by Alun Evans on December 3, 2008 at 5:41am
Hey Nic, I am kindda glad you did NOT see me trying to pull shots! Just kidding, would have been great to meet you. Always next time or even next year. Yes I am leaning heavily towards Milan next year, although I hear its pretty ritzy! Also Dr Stephan is trying to convince us all to rope up a live Luwak and bring it to Cologne in 2009
Comment by nik orosi on December 3, 2008 at 5:31am
ah, so sad that we had no chance to meet. indeed, this years expo was not as exciting as last one, why, i dont know. was good that i took my new nuova simonelly mythos grinder, saw all my good friends such as wbc champ stephen, casper, team denmark, friends form u.k., greece...everywhere...i did my first judging at finals of european team chalenge...all in all, great, but something i miss in trieste but again, all in all, great. if youv been to milano fair, man, thats another world...great in every terms...
as for importers of green bean, im buying from sandalj and hesse...
thanks for this post and bringing back trieste to bx.
vivabarista!

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