Desperate battle with scented candle against rotten fish

“In Italy, there is always something to say, even in a small town like Grado,” said author and Kleine Zeitung columnist Stefan Maiwald, summing up his book presentation after three-quarters of an hour before heading into the lobby for a book signing.

And he has a lot to say, the German from Braunschweig, who has been “married into an Italian family for 20 years” and lives in Grado. On a first-name basis with his listeners – all Grado fans – he talks about pizza and pasta, his visit to the legendary bartender at the Cipriani bar in Venice and his culinary quest to learn to cook like an Italian.

“History of Failure”

In his book “Spaghetti Vongole Diaries,” he explains how things can go wrong if you soak dried fish for days in midsummer heat, and even the scent of cinnamon from a scented candle can’t counteract the stench. He admits with a smile that his attempt to make “baccalà mantecato” cod “was a failure.”

The writer illustrated his adventures on the upper Adriatic with special pictures, gave advice and let his audience guess how much coffee Italians consume per year (answer: 4.3 kg less than the Austrians, 5.2 kg). He actually wanted to “bring the Italian sun with him from Grado”, Mewald lamented at the beginning of his meeting with visitors to the Kleine Zeitung: “It didn't work out once, but that wasn't quite right: the literary journey”. To the sea he left his fans forgetting about the rain outside.