Alright, I am half way through my first day at Terra Madre/ Salone del Gusto and already I am exhausted. Upon arriving in Turin after 18 hours or so of continuous transport I was picked up at the airport and taken right to the event venue. There I met up with many other Canadian delegates and we empathized with each other in our jet lag suffering. From there we were bused to another venue to attend the open ceremonies for Terra Madre. The Ceremony was great, but we were all so exhausted from our travels that they were hard to appreciate to the fullest.
We left the ceremonies at 11:30, so at this point it has been about 28 hours since getting any real rest (probably got a total of 4 hours during flights). We were supposed to go direct to our hotel about 20 minutes away, but the threat of a hunger revolt pursauded the bus driver to stop at a sandwich spot on the way. “10 minutes” he said.
45 minutes later we re on our way!
It was about 1:00am when we arrived at the hotel for our first good sleep in almost 30 hours (longer for some!).
Unfortunately for me my body decided that the usual 6 hours of sleep was enough and I was awake by 7:30 the next morning. Our bus was departing for Terra Madre at that time but many of us weren’t ready to go (an amazing number of troopers were up, eager and ready to go – and they went!). So after several coffees and croissants with Nutella we were on our way in a taxi van.
We arrives at Terra Madre 30 minutes later and already there 10,000 people inside the venue and thousands outside! The empty halls of the day before were no more! It seems like all of Turin and someone from every other country in the world is here. And we’re off to the races.
But I am running out of battery power, so more later!
