Morning was nondescript. I did some work. Excited to meet Muriel for dinner.
In the late afternoon I took a beautiful run. The sun was just fading and at the overlook near Irchel I must have stood 5 minutes looking over the city in all its glory. I listened to ‘Taranta’, by Einaudi. That song put iron in my bones and fire in my heart. I thought of the days when I was little and had dreamed of building empires, of conquering civilizations and administering them with guile and grace. The city of Zürich below looked to me like it would to a conquering warlord, for a few minutes; and I sprinted down back to Culmann. On the way back I picked up some groceries, #majestic.
At Culmann I followed Kevin’s directions, dunked half a cube of yeast in some water and sugar. Quantum. Back to the kitchen, weighed out flour, salt and sugar; kneaded together with some oil. That was fun; the dough eventually came together into a glossy and elastic ball. Quantum.
Muriel was arriving! I met her at the tram stop. We came in and made pizza like bosses. I’d wiped down the counter and arrayed the ingredients, and it looked absolutely gorgeous. We had a great time. Muriel tried to spin the dough on her fingers, with only a little bit of success. Cooked crushed tomatoes and garlic to make a sauce, made a salad, chopped all the ingredients, drained the mozzarella, and assembled the pizzas. Muriel had brought capers and bell peppers (which confused the hell out of me when she said “pepperoni”), and put everything in the oven.
Watery vegetables meant the pizza took a long time to cook. Muriel tried to show me some salsa moves while they were cooking. It was difficult for her to teach leading as a follower, but I got a few basic moves down.
Pizza was tasty! I want to make pizza again–the dough was way easier than I expected, just took time to rise.
We went up to my room to finish my salsero training. 20 minutes in we decided I was about as prepared as we could make me and we headed out.
The place was hopping! It was hard for me to get right on the beat. I just wanted to dance, and I had too few (and too imperfectly learned) moves to keep replicating them. About an hour in something clicked and I started getting inside the music and the patterns. But it was getting relatively late and Muriel had a train to catch. So we got a tram back to Culmann, hung out for some too short minutes, and then walked down to the station.