Alba, Italy: Expect the Unexpected

by Susan Ludwig (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find USA

My husband and I knew little about Alba, in Italy’s Piedmont region, but its location seemed a perfect home base for visiting Barbaresco, Barolo, and Neive, surrounding wine towns in the region. I devised our plan six months earlier and booked an Alba apartment for a five-day stay. I didn’t expect to find a fabulous, new-favorite town. Our car’s GPS landed us in a cobblestone loading area and I jumped out to look at numbers on the buildings. We needed assistance so I messaged Roberto, our host. The apartment was very close; he would be standing beside the gelato shop across the street. Roberto motioned us into an alley beside the shop and a huge door closed behind us. He helped us get situated in the tiny top-floor apartment, with a bedroom under an eave, a narrow galley kitchen, a washing machine, and best – an outdoor roof deck larger than the entire apartment. We sat outside as he explained we were within close walking distance to everything in Alba. (That cobblestoned area was a ZTL zone – a restricted area, he told us. The police had a photo of our car’s license plate and we would be paying a fine of 140€.) He also told us that Alba’s International White Truffle Festival was in two days. If we had not booked the apartment months ago, we would not have found any place to stay in the town. Roberto left us with a basket of local goods: bread, sausage, cheese, wine, and Nutella, since Alba is where the chocolate-hazelnut spread originated. As he walked out, he pulled a stainless-steel utensil from a kitchen drawer and said it was for shaving truffles into thin slices, suitable for sautéing over pasta, or mixing into scrambled eggs. Centro Storico – is the old city center, a busy pedestrian area five minutes away. We passed a wide assortment of shops in ancient buildings and newer structures and stopped in Agrilanghe Carni, a small butcher shop. We sampled salami, and red peppers in olive oil in varying degrees of spicy heat before deciding which to buy. The next morning we made the tourist information area in the Piazza Del Duomo our first stop, our goal to pay yesterday’s ticket before it got to our car rental agency and forwarded back to us, at double the fine. The tourism agent listened with interest, made some calls, then had us follow her upstairs to the police department. We stood by as an officer checked but couldn’t find our car’s data or photograph on their electronic file. Occasionally the camera is off, or a car is blocking its view. We shook hands and left. Back outside, we joined a walking tour of underground Alba. Archaeologists had uncovered ancient rooms and artifacts beneath a church, a bank, and a police station, with portions of the ruins largely intact. It was lunchtime so we wandered into Enoclub, the restaurant’s front door at street level but stairs took us to a cave underground. The long lunch would also be dinner, and we took advantage of every course offered, from tagliatelle to tiramisu. The White Truffle Festival was the next day with over 100,000 visitors swarming the town. Food was on every corner: boar roasting on a spit, chicken, ribs, kebabs – the aromas were intoxicating. Age-worn, but solid Skittles tables, bows and arrows, a dart board, and ring toss drew lines of people. Attendants wore medieval attire and awarded bottles of wine as prizes. We made our way to the festival tent, where dozens of vendors displayed their white truffles, each a small bug captured under a water glass. An earthy, musky aroma filled the air. Every sale took painstakingly long since the vendors carefully wrapped each truffle like a diamond. Lines seemed nearending. Some buyers stopped at the official judging area to get their purchase authenticated. We bought one marble-sized truffle – for 25€, then walked around the now-rainy festival, people and umbrellas everywhere. We took our treasure back to the apartment and mixed it in with scrambled eggs and opened a bottle of wine. Alba. I didn’t expect to find Italian perfection.