one of our favored professors (can i say that?) invited us to join him in attending a pil's pride beer fest near como. "a little and great beer festival," he says, "devoted to pilsner beer style, not enough appreciated among the italian craft microbreweries. The festival will be hosted in Birrificio Italiano (Lurago Marinone - Como), for sure one of the best italian microbreweries (www.birrificio.it), which won, some days ago, the golden medal at the Chicago world beer cup." of course, the seats on the bus fill up quickly, but luckily for us, popi has her car. with our porta-party picnic foods in newly bought ikea tupperware, we pile into her car. my buddy bryan from portsmouth, who is currently living in holland, was visiting italy to go "creeking" north of milan and stopped by colorno to visit me for the weekend. we meet up with the parma people where they are supposed to get on the hired bus and while we wait for it to arrive, on italian time, we discuss all the food everyone has prepared - yum, starving already. eventually....the bus arrives and we follow behind in popi's car. twenty minutes later, we stop. why? i don't know. bathroom break? the bus driver gets out of the bus and gives us the naasssttttyyy look - why are we following her? why are we parked behind the bus? we're together with the group, popi tries to explain from the car. she understands and is all smiles. everyone on the bus is drinking supersweet homemade vin santo. it burns holes on the inside. our professor tries to dictate directions, but we say no problem, we won't speed ahead, we'll just follow the bus. back on the road. tollbooth traffic. we lose the bus. no problem, we call jules, who is also following the bus with his visiting girlfriend celine in their rented smart car, and says that they have stopped again at the total gas station. 
little and great.
we drive on with no sight of a total gas station. we're unsure and hesitant on where to go - well, no, actually, we just wanted to drive around the outskirts of milan to show bryan what italy's like and get really familiar with italian highways. we learn all about the A1's, the A4's, the A8's and the A9's. we drive towards venice, the wrong direction. we drive towards switzerland, the right direction. we drive back to linate, the wrong direction. we drive towards como-chiasso, the right direction. follow the blue signs, not the green signs. eventually, somehow, we make it to the little town of lurago marinone.
supersweet. gorgeous houses. now we just have to find the brewery. we get to the end of the road and we see signs that we are exiting the town already. we probably enter and exit it at least 4 times it is so small until eventually we find the red awning that says birrificio italiano and it's not a brewery like we expected at all, but more of a restaurant with an outdoor patio and the beer production facility looks more like a garage. 5 hours later.
there is a great assortment of food - luckily, going to a school to study food and drink where everyone is equally passionate about food, we all aim to please and eat well, so there's always enough food to feed the entire village. even if you walk down the street and around the block and that's the entire village....but still. we bought our beer tickets and souvenir glass and were able to sample all the different pilsners they had on tap. some were more bitter, more flavorful, more drinkable, more watery, more bubbly than others.
tutto birra. all beer.
it was nice to sit outside, enjoy the beer, food, and company, but luckily, the ride back was not as long as the ride there.
popi, celine, arina, me, jules.
life is delectable.
italy isn't known for it's microbreweries so it was nice to experience and nice to taste. the small tour of the facilities was so small that the pipes were running directly from the tanks in the back of the building to the taps in the restaurants. maybe not that directly. but it was VERy local. carlo petrini would be proud.
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