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INTERNATIONAL Adventurer Profile- Aaron Cruz

This is hilarious. Reading Aaron Cruz is like reading the ramblings of a more dirtier, less neurotic David Sedaris chronicling his misadventures across Europe. In the past, some International Adventurer Profiles have painted world travel as all lofty ideals and breathtaking encounters with the colorful Other and his foodstuffs. Aaron Cruz will to disabuse you of all that. Here’s the truth about travel. Happy reading.

I have a really hard time travelling without a goal. I don’t like to go on walks unless I am walking to a bar. I ended up in Austria because I wanted to be a better cook. If you are thinking “Austrian food? WTF?” first of all, the food here is pretty good, second, I was actually headed to Italy. Home of the Slow Food Movement. I’ve always wanted to eat a BigMac on the steps to the famous restaurant in Bra(the town name still makes me giggle) where the famous foodie movement started.

I had some restaurant lined up where I would work for a couple months for free and they would feed me and bed me. My travel agent said that I didn’t have to fly directly to Italy so I decided to fly first to Madrid, where I falsly believed that a friend of mine lived, and ride my bicycle from there to Granada. I don’t know if I would call it spontinaety or stupidity but I usually don’t do a lot of planning when I go somewhere far away and unknown and it usually works out for me. This time was different. It was 110 degrees. I took the advice of a deaf Japanese cyclist and rode on the Autovia. It was like riding on an Interstate. It was riding on an Interstate. I was alone in central Spain in 110 degree heat riding on I-5. I had the lamest burn line on my legs from the bike shorts. I was really sad.

So when I was a few days away from getting to Italy, I called the restaurant and they informed me that they were closed for the first month that I was supposed to work there. Oops. I had really planned this. I have a friend that had worked there and he had made everything golden. So after camping for a couple weeks I decided to volunteer on a farm.

This place was fucking nuts. It was in Piemonte in Italy and it was run by a Swiss woman. It wasn’t really a production farm, she just picked fruit and made ghetto cheese and had some ferrel sheep. Her ex-husband lived in a house a half a mile away with his new wife who was super pregnant. I arrived there a day after another American, who also arrived on a bicycle. We milked goats, learned how to make cheese by leaving milk in the sun, hence ghetto cheese, and we picked a shit ton of plums. She showed us how to make juice and jam with this crazy steaming contraption. Then she left. It was amazing. She went to meet a family in Switzerland to try to convince them to come to her farm and live with them. We had the whole place to ourselves. The way she had made money was by teaching piano classes, so she had a piano, and it just happened that Daniel, my new companion was an amazing piano player. He would play Chopin and I would make fresh pasta rolled out with a wine bottle. It would have been the most romantic time of my life if I was into the dick. So everything was wünderbar until she came back. She was back with a vengence. Unbelievable. She was having us do things like pick rotting plums off the ground so trees wouldn’t sprout and raking the forest. So Daniel decided to escape. I didn’t want to explain it to her so I fled with him. We woke up at 5:30, hopped on our bikes and rode as fast as we could, as far as we could. He rode off to the French Alps and I rode to the restaurant.

No work, no place to sleep. Really? Are you fucking kidding me? So I went to another farm in Tuscany. I go there every winter to slaughter the pigs, grind them up and stuff them back into their own intestines. We also make proscuitto and head cheese and other goodies. Everytime I go back there I get kinda gaga over the pointy trees and the windy roads and the guys out sweeping with witches brooms. I love it there. It is brown but beautiful. Once you go Montepulciano you never go back. I was a shepherd. I learned how to make the some of the best cheese I have ever tasted. I chased sheep through the woods. I chased half-wild pigs through the garden. I used a drill jackhammer thing to break boulders. I met my wife, who was the goatherd. My friend Marco, a Swiss guy, often says, “the sheep are assholes.” I hate sheep. Really. They are assholes. I accidentally taught one of the family’s sons the word “motherfucker” after I herded the flock into a vineyard.

So I followed my wife home to Vienna where I live now. Vienna is Wien in German and being someone who lives in Wien, I am called a Wiener. And my wife, Helene, is a Wienerin! I love it. You can also order a childrens portion of sausage and it is called Kinder Wiener, which sounds to me like kid penis! I love it. The language is hard, the pig knuckle is soft, the beer is warm. My favorite restaurant in the world is near Salzburg in Scharfling. It is called Holzinger and it is the model of what I would like to someday open. They have an apple, pear, cherry and plum orchard and their own pigs. They cure and smoke their own ham that is like proscuitto only smoked. They make their own juice. They still their own schapps. And schapps is different here. It is clear and it has a stong flavor of the fruit that it is made from and it is not sweet at all. You can get Steltson, or in Germany Schweinhaxen(one of my favorite words), is pig shank that is cooked in a low oven for a long time. You get a plate of meat, cheese, spreads, fresh grated horseradish, a big basket of amazing dark Austrian bread(best bread in the world here) and pitchers of fresh pressed apple and pear juice and alcoholic cider. Your stomach almost explodes and it costs like €12 per person with schnapps and dessert. Amazing.

Come visit. This country is beautiful. I think that Austria borders seven countries so it’s close to everything. Let me see Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Germany. Ha! Eight. And really, the best bread in the world.

Happy Travels,
Aaron

And now, some pictures to illustrate Aaron’s story. In chronological order.

Toledo, Spain my bicycle parked at bench I had to sleep on

Toledo, Spain. Pool at hostel that is a big fucking castle, across from another castle!!!

Interstate in ??? Spain with tumbleweed. I was soooo sad

Me and my Spanish friends eating sandwiches at the beach. And we're naked!!!!!!!

Me bareback drunkenly riding the donkey bareback into a ditch at night

Dog on farm in Tuscany with blood on it's head

Me fake humping sheep. (I have a bunch of these)

me and farm boy Rino cooking fresh potato gnocchi (The only recipe I learned in Piemonte)

Cat with lamb foot. Pienza, Italy

Me being fed largest wiener schnizle in the world. Vienna, Austria

Me and my wife. Niederösterreich, Austria

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