This is Xenia Yakovleva Zaharova as I met her recently in the GAM in Milan and there are two reasons this is the only picture she agreed to - first: she believes her nose is too big for her face (it is not); the second reason will reveal itself as you read on. Xenia is an anthropologist and one of the world's foremost researchers of all things cultural, she lives in Nürenberg with her two cats and her brother Serghey. She is highly intelligent, devastatingly quick and utterly thorough: she will find all facts and present them totally unbiased. Now: Milan and Viena have a rivalry going back many years which resulted (sometimes) in statues of Generals in public squares and cemeteries filled with dead young men and, at other times, just heated verbal claims and disputes. Many of these have been settled: best Operahouse (Milan), best Symphonic Orchestra (Viena), best coffee (Milan), best pastry shops (Viena) but one item is still debated: where was it first that they deep fried breaded slices of veal called Wienerschnitzel (Viena) and Cotoletta Alla Milanese (Milan)? This is what Xenia was determined to determine (she is a vegetarian, so her interest in the subject was purely academic), it took about a year and a half and trips to Viena, Milan, Paris, and Budapest (where she found the final clue in a letter, dated August 21st, 1832, from Grof Janos to his cousin about a dinner with his friend Karl-Heinz von Gumpelholtz). Xenia's monograph was recently published by "Flyehans et Fils" in Geneva, in a beautifully illustrated bilingual edition and now she, as they say, "can not have lunch" in Milan anymore.
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