Paula Maia's Wine blog

Thank you for joining me in my wine journey. I have now documented every wine trip I have taken so far in this personal wine journal. It has been a tremendous experience and an invaluable growing opportunity to visit so many countries and meet with so many talented wine producers that I can’t help but feel incredibly blessed.

After running my own Wine Bar in New York for the last 2 and a half years, I have finally taken the plunge and decided to become a chef. From February 2010 to June 2010 I will be studying Culinary Arts at the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners in Flores da Cunha, a rural tiny town in the southern most state of Brazil.

For those not familiar with it, the south of Brazil has a staggering number of Italians and Germans settlers and it is the largest and most important wine producing area of Brazil. If you want to check how I am doing, read my postings under Culinary School, a category dedicated entirely to my studies at the ICIF. All other wine related entries will be posted under Wine Journal. I look forward to going back to school and to reporting all about it here. Stay in touch.

Stepping off the train from Vienna felt just like coming home. I love Munich for many reasons beyond my understanding. Maybe those deep roots do have an influence after all. My great grand-father was German and my great grand-mother was Austrian or Hungarian- or both. I, on the other hand, never had any interest in Germany until I met my husband, who’s German.

I don’t know if it’s the beer, the wine, or the Schnitzel that gets me, or if it’s something about their obsessive methodology, efficiency and perfectionism that draws me to it. Perhaps it’s all those wursts, all that green and all those fancy cars, but there’s definitely something about Munich that feels so homey. I love to walk around the historical city center, to stroll through the Englischer Garten and to simply wait and count the seconds until the bus arrives at the exact scheduled time.

From the Hauptbahnhof we walked to Hofbraukeller at Wiener Platz, where we had a Schnitzel of course, in their Biergarten near the Gasteig- Munich’s Philarmonic. It was the perfect way to end the trip and prepare myself psychologically to go to my real home in New York. Actually, the trip really ended at the airport, where I enjoyed a Currywurst with a Weissbier at the Airbräu- the next closest thing to heaven.

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