Genova and My first week of classes

October 22-26, 2007 Monday through Friday

My first week of school. Class starts at 10am and ends at 1:30pm (with a 20 minute break from 11:40 to 12:00). There are 3 people in class: Liz from Atlanta, Vidir Sigurdsson from Reykjavik, Iceland, and me. The teacher name is Nazarena, a very stylish, young Italian woman living in Genova. She’s studying French and English.

Liz started classes a week ago, so she’s gone over the material in the first week once already. I’ve picked up some Italian over the years, and had 10 2-hour classes last October near home. Vidir has no Italian at all—zip. He speaks pretty good English, but he’s at a disadvantage since all the explanations are given in English, but he has to make sense out of them in Icelandic. Apparently Icelandic is very close to old Norse (the language the Vikings used). Anyway, he’s struggling.

The first week covered about the same material as the 10 classes I took last October (which I’d mostly forgotten). This included the conjugations for present tense for the verbs “to be” (essere), “to have” (avere), and the regular verb conjugations (of which Italian has 4 ending in –are, -ere, and -ire with 2 variations).

Life in Genova. At first, I was disappointed with Genova, but now, it’s growing on me. The apartment I’m in is in the “centro storico” or historic center of Genova. Genova has the largest medieval city center in Europe. The “streets” I walk between apartment and school have been here since the 13^th century. I say “streets” because many of them are only about 5-6 feet wide and are more alleys than streets. Here they are called “vicoli” (or “vicolo” for one). No cars are allowed in the centro storico during the day and only some vicoli can accommodate cars, even at night. The harbor is about 200 yards away from my front door (although I can’t see it from my apartment or the front door).

This all has certain ramifications. If there are no cars (or trucks) allowed, or even possible in a lot of cases, then what? How do they pick up garbage? Well, it turns out that everyone has to carry their garbage to pick-up points either on the edge of the historic center, or on one of the few wider vicoli that can accommodate a specially constructed narrow garbage truck.

In medieval times, the areas around the port or harbor were not the nicest areas in a town (and often were the worst). This still applies in Genova. There are no more warehouses or bars with drunken sailors. But the historic center is still populated with prostitutes and druggers.

One vicolo, which is one of the main routes I use, has LOTS of ladies working the street. Some of them are quite old (60+). The story is that they have had the same clients for decades, which is how they survive. And there's drugs. I was out with some people from school at a nearby bar and we stopped at an intersection to get our bearings before we headed off in different directions. I noticed a couple of boys snorting coke over to one side--I guess we interrupted them 'cause they took off after they finished their "line".

But "everyone" says "it's not dangerous", meaning you might get pickpocketed, but you won't get physically hurt in the process. And if they recognize you as a "local" you're probably safe from pickpockets. Hopefully by now, they recognize me. It's impossible to go anywhere (without going a LONG way around and WAY up the hill) and avoid the area with the prostitutes and "scary" looking crowd, so you just go through, look like you have a purpose, and make eye contact without looking scared (or like you’re "looking" for something). My usual rule to figure out how safe an area is: watch the little old ladies. If they clutch their purses tightly, then you better watch your pockets. If not, then things are okay. If the little old ladies don't even come out at night, then beware! I haven't seen any little old ladies out after the shops close. Hmmm.

At first I was very disappointed in Genova. And not just because the old city center that I thought was going to be cool turned out to be rather unpleasant. Genova is known to have hundreds of piazzas. The historic center is loaded with them. But they’re almost all tiny little things that have 4-5 story buildings on all sides—so there’s little sun except right at mid-day. Many of them are less than 20 feet on a side. But I’ve discovered other parts of Genova than the historic center. Outside the historic center there are piazzas that are worthy of the name, with caffes and a reasonable amount of sun. And shops that stay open all afternoon (and even some on Sunday).

Genova, day 2. Sunday's are closed.

October 21, 2007 Sunday

It’s been a while since I’ve used a caffe moka pot. Of course, there were no directions. So I fumbled around trying to remember how much water, how much coffee, how to cook it (I do remember you don’t want to put it on high and let the water blast through the grinds). Well, it pretty much worked. I didn’t put in quite enough coffee, but it will certainly help wake me up.

This is Italy, and whether they are still devout Catholics or not, Sunday is the day of rest. Very few businesses are open, and then those are clustered around what might constitute the tourist areas (e.g., by the harbor) and are operated almost exclusively by Middle Eastern or Asian merchants.

The supermarket was open 9-12, but of course, I missed that. Apparently there was a bread shop open this morning, too. Now, however, everything is closed. I took a walk up to the school to be sure I didn’t get lost tomorrow morning, the first day. And I thought, I’ll get some lunch while I’m out. Not. I walked for nearly 2 hours along some of the streets that seemed most busy yesterday. Almost deserted. Very few people about. It was spooky with everything locked up and hardly anyone else walking around.

I finally got a slice of pizza at a shop on the harbor (choices were pizza or gyros).

So back to the apartment and up the stairs. Fortunately I have enough stuff to fix dinner tonight. But no wine. Next week, I’ll be better prepared.

Genova, day 1. Setting up the apartment

October 20, 2007, Saturday

Time to inventory the apartment to see what groceries and other items I need. The kitchen has 3 pots (7 liters, 5 liters, 1.5 liters), one skillet (non-stick and badly scarred), a bread knife, an assortment of dishes, cutlery, and one abused caffe moka pot.

So I needed to get at least a decent chef knife and a decent skillet/sauté pan. And a new caffe moka pot. Plus groceries: pasta, olive oil, garlic, onions, etc. Of course I didn’t remember everything on the first round (besides, I couldn’t have carried everything in one go). So back out. As in most of Europe, there are specialty stores for some kinds of foodstuffs: meat and/or cheese, bread, pastries/desserts. Also as in other parts of Europe, which is way ahead of the US in this regard, they irradiate some perishable items: like milk and eggs. They keep them on the regular grocery shelf, not refrigerated. Just in case I needed some, I got a small carton of cream that way (it has an expiration date of Jan 28, 2008).

I found, by accident, a shop that sells kitchen stuff. Just what I needed for the knife and pan. It was one of those places that have stuff piled, stacked, shelved, nook and crannied everywhere. And one shopkeeper, a nice woman who put up with my broken Italian. I wanted some tongs, and not knowing the Italian for it, I mimed it. She thought I meant a hot-pad. Then she thought maybe a lobster cracker. Finally, after some more words and gestures, she got it. All she had were tongs that looked like brobdingnagian tweezers, long and thin. Hardly something you’d want to use with pasta or to turn over a cotolette.

Then I went into the bread shop. “What did I want?”, they said. I looked at the variety of shapes of breads and thought: okay, steady now. And blurted out: “Io sono un Americano, e parlo solo un poco Italiano” or I’m an American and I speak only a little Italian. So the first thing they propose is a loaf that is a bit crunchy on the outside, but soft on the inside (they think I want something like Wonder bread). But then I saw a few loaves with names I knew, but I wanted to try some of the other shapes. I got one roll that was good for two meals and another item that looked vaguely like the head on a stalk of wheat, but with grains that were about 3 inches long and 1-1/2 inches wide (and yes, it was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside).

I went to the cheese shop for Parmigiano. The chef at La Strada, one of my favorite Italian restaurants in Palo Alto, said I should really try some Castelmagno. This is a cheese made in a town of the same name east of Genova and that is aged in caves with a special kind of mold that causes the rind of the cheese to turn brown. He said it was the ultimate Italian cheese, and could I send him back a round of it. Well, I checked. A round is 5-6kg, at close to 30 euro/kg, and then shipping…. Sorry Donato, you’ll have to get your Castelmagno yourself. But I did get a chunk. It’s a semi-hard cheese and tastes a bit nutty, with a hint of blue about it. It’s more crumbly than Parmigiano, with almost a chalky texture. And it’s pretty good stuff to taste.

It’s a strange thing. I can understand a lot of what people say to me, but I can’t say much back. And local customs vary. In other parts of Italy they greet you with Buongiorno (or Good Day). Here often they say Salve (which I think means Hail, at least that’s what it means in Latin, as in “Salve Maria” or “Hail, Mary”). I suspect it’s like going from Germany, where they say they say Guten Tag (Good Day), to Austria where they say “Gruss Gott” or God’s Greetings.

Well, back up the stairs one more time. Dinner tonight is chicken sauted with garlic and mixed with penne rigate and pesto Genovese. Side salad. Nebbiolo d’Alba. My first self-cooked meal in Italy (I almost said my first home cooked meal in Italy, but I’ve had home cooked in Rome at Marco Sampaolo’s parents’).

Last day in Alba. Going to Genova

October 19, 2007, Friday

My last day in Alba. I packed up to begin the trek to Genova, but went for a last stroll around the town to take more pictures. I had lunch at Locanda del Pilone and met some folks from LA and their friends who had just moved to Alba (they’re Texans with a drawl—they spoke Italian, but I didn’t notice if it had a drawl, too). It turned out that the restaurant was owned by the Cerreto family, who also have a winery just outside Alba. The restaurant manager was able to get me a slot in a tour at 2pm, which just fit my schedule.

So packed, checked out of the Hotel Savona in Alba, I went to the Cerreto cantina (winery). Most wineries require reservations, you can’t just walk in like you can in Napa or Sonoma. They are also much more personal. There were 3 of us on the tour. The other 2 were a couple from Australia. He worked for an Aussie wine company and was in Piemonte getting clues for wine-making back home. So we were treated very well and offered tastings of wines that usually didn’t make it to the tasting table. The first part of the tour went over the Cerreto family holdings vineyards in Alba, Barolo, Barbaresco; what sorts of wine they made at each of them, etc. We toured the wine making facilites and met a couple of the Cerreto sons that currently run the winery. For the tasting, they take into the tasting room and all sit at a table where the tour guide pours the selections (this is the way that Caymus sets up their tastings in Napa). All in all, a very nice tour (but the Cerreto wines aren’t that good).

From there, I hopped onto the Autostrada and drove to Genova (about 1-1/2 hours at 80 mph or 130kph). Well, I arrived in Genoa (Genova in Italian) and checked into my "studio" apartment. After the GPS misdirected me to the Hertz rental place (I'm not sure what they mean by their "Neverlost" brand name, but it's pretty bad when it can't even get you back to Hertz!). Finally a guy from Hertz came by and showed me where it was (I wasn't far, but I couldn't understand what he was telling me to do).

I get a taxi and meet the landlady, Signora Giovanna Pescetto. The building she says is 16th century, and the floor is original brick (and sags in the middle). Anyway, the building is in a pedestrian-only zone, so I have to lug my bags up a stairway to get from the plaza where the taxi left me off to the front door of the building. Then she says someone is staying in the apartment they sent pictures of and so she's given me a bigger unit on the 3rd floor (remember here, the first floor is one flight UP, so an Italian 3^rd floor is a US 4^th floor). So more lugging (my big bag weighed in at 53 pounds when I check in at the airport, and felt like 63 pounds after the first flight, 73 pounds after the second flight, …).

So much for wondering if I was going to get enough exercise. Just walking up to the apartment a couple times a day will do it! Even without luggage.

We get to the apartment. The front door opens on a kitchen/dining combo. Off to one side is my bedroom with 2 single beds. So far, so good. There is a washing machine, but she says it doesn't wring all the water out, and a clothes line is out the window, just like in the movies!

Then there are set of stairs going up to a loft. The original room must have had 14 foot ceilings. This has been divided vertically to make the loft. From the bath level, there are another 3 steps to the living room and a second bedroom (anyone want to visit?). However, there's a catch. The clearance between the floor and the original beamed ceiling in the loft is about 5 feet. I can just stand up if I put my head between the beams. Fortunately, the bath ceiling is a normal height.

It's fairly nice, all in all. It even has DSL (with a wired connection), so I won't have to take my laptop to the school to do email.

After quickly unpacking, I head back down the (way too many) stairs to find dinner. Luckily there’s a pizzeria just a few yards from the front door. Time to eat and crash.

Torino, day 2, and the Benedictine Abbey of Vezzolano

October 18, 2007, Thursday

I decided to go back to Torino to check out Eataly (www.eataly.it) and then go northwest to Albugnano to see the Benedictine Abbey of Vezzolano. Getting to Eataly was pretty easy as it’s right off the main road going into Torino from Alba. Eataly is one of the centers of the Slow Food movement here in Italy (www.slowfood.com). The slow food movement was started in Italy in 1986. It’s publication office was opened in Bra in 1987 (there’s a picture of the office in the Bra, La Morra, Barolo photo album).

Eataly bills itself as the largest food and wine market in Torino (they have plans for stores in Milan, Genoa, New York). It is a huge store for Italy. Probably about the size of the Whole Foods on El Camino Real at San Antonio in Palo Alto, with products that are along similar lines. Eataly places more emphasis on explaining the origin of the food they have, and also on the connection of the food with the locale in which it was grown. Eataly has a large education program with cooking classes, etc. I forgot to take pictures while I was there, but their website has several.

After strolling through Eataly, I drove to the Benedictine Abbey of Vezzolano. The guidebook said to go to Albugnano, but the abbey is in Vezzolano, so why not go there first? I programmed the Hertz Everlost to Vezzolano. After leaving Torino, I went most of the way back to Asti before heading north again (there are no highways between Torino and Albugnano/Vezzolano, only small roads). Once heading north, I kept getting semi-lost because the Everlost didn’t have the most current maps—especially for roundabouts. There are LOTS of roundabouts in this part of Italy where many roads come together. The Everlost system only tells you to take the 1^st (2^nd, 3^rd, etc.) exit off the roundabout, not the direction. But they add new roads to the roundabouts, so the Everlost count it off. Usually you’re okay because the signs tell you what exit takes you to towns in that direction. But for small towns, well, they aren’t listed.

At one point, Everlost took me across a field on a “road” (I’d have called it a tractor path—dirt, rocks, and any pavement disintegrated long ago). Finally it got me to what it thought was Vezzolano. I was in a small village of maybe 6 homes on the side of a hill. The road was almost wide enough for the tiny Fiat I was driving and it wound around buildings before coming to an even narrower path (another tractor path). I looked around and saw nothing that looked like an abbey, only farms and farm buildings.

So I pull into a yard with an old woman feeding chickens and ask. Where is the Benedictine Abbey of Vezzolano? She looked at me like I was crazy (whether because of my Italian or at the sight of some lost idiot from the city), but finally shook her head and explained that yes, Vezzolano was the way I was going, but that way was only a goat track she wouldn’t try in a 4-wheel drive truck (yes, I did get all that after she slowed down and repeated herself). She said, go back the way you came to the main road and go to Albugnano, and then to Vezzolano from that side, not from this side. She then added a bunch of turn left here, right there, go up the hill and turn right at something or other. Never mind. Even if I’d understood, I couldn’t have remembered. Grazie. Arrivederci.

Getting back into the car, I turned off the Everlost and tossed it into the trunk. Back to the main road and follow the signs to Albugnano. Albugnano is a small village (but huge compared to the little place I’d just been). It sits on the top of a hill and has great views over the countryside (there are pictures). From Albugnano, there are signs to Vezzolano. As near as I can tell, the only thing in Vezzolano are a few farms and the Benedictine Abbey which was built in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. It is the “finest example of Romanesque architecture in Piemonte.” By this time it’s 5:20pm. I approach the abbey and it’s locked. But someone is driving up to a solid wood gate, which is opened by a young boy. The car drives through and I try to ask the boy if I can get into the abbey? No, it closed at 5pm, he says as the gate swings shut with a deep boom. Okay. I drove 3 hours to get lost and get to the abbey after it closed.

The grounds around the abbey remind me of the descriptions of abbey life in the Cadfael mystery stories by Ellis Peters. There’s a walled orchard, and outside the wall there’s fields of vegetables. Too bad I didn’t get to go inside.

On the way home from Vezzolano, I see a sign to Pino d’Asti. This is a town that makesa white wine from pinto noir grapes. So I say, why not take a look. It’s another hill town, but the hill is very high and precipitous, and a pretty nice drive to the top. The road through the village comes up one side of the hill, wanders across the top, and down the other side. The road is seldom straight, but has switchbacks going up and down, and winds through the village, probably following cow paths or pedestrian ways from the past.

Finally back in Alba (it took much less time to return since I didn’t get lost as often). I had dinner at Osteria la Libera (Michelin recommendation). Nice place. The food was good, but not great.

Note: The cost of unleaded gas is about euro 1.35 per liter, which is about $1.89 per liter, or approximately $7.80 per gallon. It took euro 53 ($74) to fill up a very small Fiat Punto. So when I come home, I don’t think I’ll be complaining about gas prices!

Torino, day 1

October 17, 2007, Wednesday

Today is the destination is Torino. It’s about an hour’s drive on the autostrada, or two if you take the back roads leisurely. Not being in a hurry, I figured a nice drive through the countryside would be nice. More hills, vineyards, etc. Eventually I have to get onto the highway to get into Torino, which is one of the larger cities in Italy and home to the Savoy kings (so there are lots of palaces, etc.).

Since I had no clue where to go, I just got horribly lost. I finally saw a parking place on the street and got out of the car. I did have a paper map (Alwayslost was no help since I didn’t know where I wanted to go). I headed for the nearest café, had some coffee, and figured out where I was and likely where I wanted to go. Fortunately I was somewhat near one of the areas with palaces. After a 30 minute walk, I was there. The tourist information booth wasn’t where it was supposed to be. So I wandered around looking at architecture, shops, etc.

The palace, most recently occupied by Vittorio Emanuele II (1820-1878), was open for tours, but it was guided tours only. The next one left too late. Even so, you got to walk through a bit of the palace to get to the ticket office (no photos allowed, so sorry). I wandered toward a museum next door that had an exhibit of Afghan antiquities. I thought, okay, why not?

I’ve been reading Mary Renault’s books on Alexander the Great (356-323BC). It happens that he conquered Persia and parts of Afghanistan. There were a lot of articles in the exhibit from that period showing the Greek influence on the native jewelry, pots, plates, serving utensils, etc. It was an unexpected, and happy, conjunction to be able to see some of the things that might have been used in the story.

Back in Alba, I had dinner at Conte Rosso. Ravioli with tartuffo bianco; veal with Barolo sauce (this seems to be a habit, pasta and meat in Barolo).

Hill towns near Alba and Asti

October 16, 2007, Tuesday

I decided to drive around some of the small hill towns in the region. I saw a couple while I was driving around Bra, Barolo, etc. and thought it would be nice to visit a few.

This takes another note to explain: I got the GPS thinking that it would help me find wineries and get around easier. Well, we saw how mistaken that idea was earlier. I also found that the antenna kept falling off, so it would lose the satellites and have to resync (a process taking several minutes). All in all, it’s been pretty useless. But not to fear, driving around isn’t a problem. What you have to do is find a sequence of mid-sized towns toward any small destination and just follow the signs. This isn’t hard if you have even a moderately decent map. There are good signs at intersections and roundabouts showing which direction to take toward a destination. But, of course, they only list the major cities and next size down of towns at most places (like Alba, Asti, Torino) and small villages in the nearby vicinity. So you have to get in close, but then the signs take you right there. I had no problem finding villages of only a few 10s of homes.

The trick is, when you see a hill town, how to find out the name of it. This is usually pretty easy. Just stop someone, point at it, and ask. Then you can follow the signs. In this fashion I visited: Santa Vittoria d’Alba, Canale, San Stefano Roero, San Damiano d’Alba, Asti, Isola d’Asti Villa, Neivi, Barbaresco, and Tre Stelle.

Santa Vittoria d’Alba is the village on the hilltop I’d seen while driving to Barolo yesterday. It has a castle with a big tower on it that has been remade into a hotel. And an old church with a parish house. And that’s it (well, there may be a few houses on the approaches going up the hill, but there are no shops of any kind). Sort of isolated (you have to drive down into the valley to anything). The castle/hotel does have a restaurant with the hotel that has a gorgeous view out over the grape fields. Alas, they were closed, so I couldn’t even sit there and sip an espresso.

There is a very small town near here named Cinzano. There is a manufacturing facility for the aperitif called Cinzano here, but there are many towns in different provinces named Cinzano, so it’s not really all that special. I had to take a picture of the sign, though!

Canale. A larger town (maybe 10,000 people). They had a nice farmer’s market, and yes, there were vegetables on offer. I bought 3 clementines and an apple for $1.50. Yes, that’s right—buying food at markets here is very cheap. Lunch at a random place here (the “typical” tagliatella with butter and sage) was pretty good.

San Stefano Roero. Another hill town, a bit larger than Santa Vittoria. It had a decent center, but nothing special. Just outside of town, however, there was a church that had a set of Stations of the Cross. Actually there are a few churches in the area that are connected by these Stations, so that you start at Saint James and Saint Philip chapels and progress through them to end at Saint Sepulcher chapel. These Stations are called Sanctuario del Piloni. There’s a picture of the explanatory sign (in English).

San Damiano d’Alba is a larger town, but without anything of interest. There is, however, a large Campari plant just outside town…

Asti is one of the larger towns in the area and is the capitol of the province of Asti. It’s about the same size as Alba (maybe a bit larger), but it’s much better connected to the Autostrade and rail lines. If I were choosing again, I might stay in Asti rather than in Alba, although Alba has better restaurants.

Isola d’Asti Villa. This is a very charming hill town. It has a tower, and the homes in the small center are beautifully kept. Just like out of a storybook. It’s twice the size Santa Vittoria, but that isn’t saying a lot.

Neivi is another small hill town. It has a castle (the Counts of Castelborgo lived here) in which the Nebbiolo grape was first pressed into Barbaresco wine. The Counts did the experimentation that yielded the wine type. There is also a garden with the castle, but neither has been kept up.

For all it’s fame, the village of Barbaresco is tiny. Hardly anything but a church, a winery, and a town hall (oh, and two 1 star Michelin restaurants). There may be 50-100 homes in the village. Most of the people live out in the district, nearer the vineyards. The hills surrounding Barbaresco undulate gently and are covered in grapevines. It’s really very enchanting.

Tre Stelle is really just a bump in the road and hardly qualifies as a “suburb” of Barbaresco. But this is where one of Barbaresco’s two Michelin 1 star restaurants is located. I stopped to look, but it was closed.

Back in Alba, I had dinner at a restaurant/pizzeria, called Cincilla (and pronounced chinchilla) I found and tried to eat at on Sunday (but they were way too crowded for that). The food was “typical Piemontese” meaning I had the tagliatelle, but with white truffles (paying the 25 euro premium for some shavings).

The Barolo Wine District: Bra, La Morra, Barolo

October 15, 2007 Monday

Oh boy. After half a bottle of Barolo with dinner last night, I had a hangover that lasted all day. That’ll teach me! (yeah, right).

Notes on Italians. There aren’t many public places to access the Internet in Italy. I think part of that is because the culture puts much more emphasis on verbal communications among people, especially family members. This is evident on the street, in restaurants, shopping, etc. They seem to crave interpersonal communications, and the computer represents the complete opposite. So they don’t use it as a communications device, e.g., the Internet. This talking can become problematic, such as when your waiter in a restaurant spends more time chatting with his/her co-workers than paying attention to you and your food. But this may explain the relatively low level of Internet adoption in Italy.

Another note is that in smaller cities and towns, Sunday and/or Mondays are days off for the shopkeepers. Most places are closed on these days. During the truffle festival, many stay open on Sundays when the crowds are here. Even some of the supermarkets close or have shortened hours on these days. And even during the week, many shops close for the afternoon (siesta in Italy?). Quite an annoyance when you’re used to having shops open 7 days a week.

Today I visited some of the towns/villages in the Barolo district: Bra, La Morra, and Barolo. This isn’t like visiting Napa. These towns are small (but so is Napa). But there isn’t the touristic following or the huge land prices that there are in Napa. Many of the wineries actually have production facilities in town. I asked about possible tours of the region—there aren’t any. Not enough concentration of tourists to justify it. But there are more sensible approaches to the issue: more tasting houses that are in business to sell the wine (regardless of producer). This way you can limit your tasting to the kind of wine (Nebbiolo, Dolcetto d’Alba, etc.) from multiple wine makers. To my mind this is a much better tasting than comparing different types of wine within the same wine makers offering.

Most of the wine makers don’t have tasting rooms that are normally open to the public anyway. The book I got indicated that nearly all of the wineries required a call to make a reservation. So the visit to the towns/villages is really more about driving in the countryside, seeing the vines in the fields, seeing the architecture of these old towns, and so on.

I got a dinner recommendation from the hotel staff for Ristorante da Stefania. Nice place, but they didn’t have anything with truffles! They made up for it by carrying a half-bottle of Gaja Barbaresco for only 19 euro. This is the fist Gaja I’ve seen with a bottle price of less and 100 euro (many are over 200 euro)! The service was good, but it was very strange that they didn’t clear the unused settings. When I sat down, the table was set for 2, and they served around the extra setting, rather than clearing. Oh well.

The food that I thought I was going to die for in Piemonte is a bit disappointing. Most restaurants’ menus are called “typical” Piemontese, which means they have some antipasti; a tagliatella with olive oil, butter, and sage; beef braised in Barolo. And a few assorted other things. But there don’t seem to be any vegetables (unless you count eggplant, which isn’t something edible in my book). Occasionally they will include a few rounds of zucchini—one place even served grilled slices of zucchini and bell peppers with a dish! But otherwise you have to order vegetables separately from a fairly restricted list (mostly sauted spinach).

Of course in Alba and many other localities, you can get truffle on just about anything. Since truffle is so expensive, there is a quantum price jump, and often the cost of the underlying dish is "lost in the noise". For example, if there are a few pasta dishes at varying prices, once you add truffle to any of them, the price is the same. Typically a dish of pasta with white truffle goes for about 25 euro ($35).

So what is about white truffles for which people will pay these outrageous prices? It’s almost undefinable. Yes, if you’ve had white truffle OIL, you have an idea of the aroma and flavor. But when you truly have the truffle, it’s much more subtle and indescribably delicious. Dishes prepared with truffle oil are as heavy metal rock to a Mozart sonata. One just blasts you out of your seat, while the other’s complexity and elegance simply takes you on a magnificent aural journey.

Truffle festival in Alba

October 14, 2007 Sunday

I didn’t sleep very well, but that’s life with jetlag. The hotel provides a breakfast buffet with cold cereals, assorted cold meats, pastries/breads, juices, and coffee. Not bad, but not exactly what I wanted.

Today is the “Fiera del Tartufo Bianco d’Alba”, or translated: The Alba Festival for the White Truffle. It runs 5-6 Sundays in Oct and Nov. And it draws an amazing number of people. Every piazza in the city is transformed into a sort of farmer’s market. There’s honey, salumi, cheeses, arts and crafts, flowers, clothes, etc., but no vegetables. And the truffle exhibition in a large hall that also includes a number of booths with wines, cheeses, etc. The truffle exhibition hall was redolent of truffles. The Alba white truffle is a rare thing: it sells for about 5000 euros per kilogram (that’s $142/ounce). A truffle is a fungus, sort of like a mushroom, so a white truffle about half the size of a fist weighs about an ounce. Pretty pricey, but wonderful to taste. Black truffle is also on display, but it sells for a small fraction of the price of a white truffle and isn’t as rare, so it takes 2^nd billing.

There are so many people at the festival that there aren’t enough restaurants to feed them all. It’s almost impossible to get anything to eat for lunch as there are lines to get in everywhere. I got a table at one place, but was ignored by the staff, and left after 45 minutes of waiting.

Dinner tonight is in Alba at Osteria dell’Arco (Michelin guide recommendation). While Barolo isn’t as expensive here as it is at home, it still isn’t cheap. Most bottles in restaurants are 35-75 euro ($49-$105), or about the same as in the wine shops at home. Gaja wines are still pricey, no matter where.

Arrival in Italy

October 12-13, 2007 Friday/Saturday

After many weeks of planning and at least one postponement, I finally left San Francisco on British Airways for Italy. Late. 1-1/2 hours late. But there’s a silver lining to this cloud. My 3 hour 45 minute layover in London was only 2 hours 15 minutes. And this time it seems I went the right way through the airport. The last time I went through Heathrow, I ended up going through passport control and security. This time there was no passport control (I guess last time I goofed and took a wrong turn). Anyway, I made it from one gate in Terminal 1 to another gate in Terminal 1 in only 1 hour! (I hate Heathrow.) By the way, by now it’s Oct. 13 and Saturday due to going forward 8 time zones to London (9 to Italy).

The flights were uneventful otherwise. At least British Air tries to feed you. The dinner SF to London wasn’t bad. Breakfast was interesting—a cold egg salad sandwich? They even served a lunch (sandwich) on the short flight from London to Milan. Their coffee is nasty! Stick with the tea. Figuring that there’d be no lunch on the London-Milan flight, I ate a sandwich in the terminal—it was lunchtime anyway. This was my first non-US dollar purchase. Ouch! One measly little sandwich for $12 (5 GB pounds)! The euro won't be quite as bad, but still the exchange rates are painfully high.

Arrival in Milan Malpensa airport was a breeze. I picked up my Hertz rental car, which was supposed to have a Neverlost GPS system. I found out it was a portable GPS (gee, for what they charged, I could have bought one). Anyway, after a bit of experimenting, I figure out how to stick it to the windshield, plug it in, and set it up. Strangely, the European map system it uses doesn’t let you enter the street number. It only gets you to the street. I wonder what happens if the street is one of those that has multiple disconnected segments?

So off I go. The GPS is not helpful. It says go to the route. What route? So I follow the signs for the airport exit. Still no help. I figure I need to head toward Torino (aka Turin in English) so I go off that way. Finally the GPS says something: the dreaded “recomputing route”, meaning, of course, that you took a wrong turn. Even worse, the highway exit toward Torino is closed. Okay, recomputing route. The GPS takes me along a 2-lane road for 30 minutes before finally getting me on a multi-lane toll road. Very scenic, but it’s telling me that I have 2 hours 30 minutes to Alba. When I looked it up on the Michelin website, it said 1 hour 30 min. Not happy, and being tired, I’m cranky. Fortunately, being a geek, I know better than to yell at dumb machines (yeah, right).

So we take the scenic route out of Milan and get on the tollway. I’m going along swimmingly when the GPS tells me I need to exit to get to Alba. But I’m nowhere near Alba and on a perfectly good 6 lane tollway that has (infrequent) signs telling me Alba is straight ahead (as I remembered when I looked at the paper map Hertz kindly provided). Of course, at this point you’re thinking: uh, oh. It was really weird, you could see where the car was going on the display, but the GPS didn’t think there was a road there. It thought I was driving 85 mph out in the middle of some field or something. And you could see the route it wanted me to take off to the side, sort of parallel. So I figure that the GPS maps haven’t been updated in a while. I also figure it’s time to pull over and check the paper map to be sure. Yep, it clearly shows a major toll way from Alessandria to Asti and Asti to Alba (yes, that’s Asti as in Asti spumante and Barbera d’Asti).

So I ignore the GPS and follow the highway. Good thing. It cut about 20 min off the trip and landed me right back on the route the GPS wanted me to take going into Alba.

BTW, the A series toll ways in Italy have speed limits of about 66 mph/110 kph, but you’d get run over if you only went that fast. I was going 85-90mph and people were blowing past me going at least 110mph. At least they are very conscientious about staying to the right and keeping the left lane free for passing (a most welcome change from California).

The GPS got it wrong again as it tried to get me to the street my hotel was on. It told me to turn left into opposing traffic on a one-way street. After going past and getting the “recomputing route” treatment I got back to the same place. Luckily I saw the train station and a parking garage next to it. I knew from the hotel that this parking garage was where I’d have to park anyway. I unloaded and started schlepping my bags. It wasn’t far and I got to my room in Hotel Savona. Not a bad place. Large room (for an 80 euro/night place in Europe) and a large bathroom with shower, tub, bidet, and toilet.

I had lunch in Heathrow, so now I needed dinner. This is Italy where they eat late, right? Well, not in Alba. I took a shower and changed and went out looking for a restaurant at about 9:50. The story was the same: our kitchen is closed for the night (and it was Saturday night!). I went back to the hotel and asked the desk clerk—he gave me a few suggestions. Two of three were closed. The last, Buontempo, looked pretty nice and was very popular. Saturday seems to be a night for big groups to eat out—most of the restaurants I looked into had several tables of 6-12 people.

The manager of Buontempo chatted me up while I was waiting for a table and poured me a glass of Barolo (I wondered: how much is this going to cost?). I ordered the prix fixe menu at 28 euro: crudo di manzo all’Albese (like carpaccio), tagliatelle al sugo con porcini, vitello brasato a Barolo (veal braised in Barolo wine). I also got another glass of the Barolo and a bottle of sparkling water. Service was okay, and the food was good, but not great, and there were lots of rooms with lots of tables. It reminded me of Buca di Beppo back in Palo Alto (but with better food). After I was done, no one came by to see if I wanted the check. I saw another table leave and go upstairs to pay, so I followed.

The manager tapped some numbers on a calculator from some scribbles on a small piece of paper, typed a number into the cash register and printed off the receipt. 25 euros? I ordered a 28 euro prix fixe (but didn’t get the dessert). I had 2 glasses of Barolo (not a cheap wine, even here where it’s made) and a large bottle of water. Hey, I must have gotten a hell of a deal on the dessert! I left a nice tip. Some things do go right.