White Truffle Wonderland

Each year the White Truffle festival is held in Alba, Italy.  It spans well over six weeks and includes flag throwing, donkey races, a marathon reading of Fenoglio, markets, tastings, truffle dogs, a dinner in the dark, art, handball tournaments, music, and the best hazelnut in the world.  But these are all opening acts leading up to the main EVENT: “Truffle of the Year.”

Is one of these the diamond in the rough?

Spending a weekend eating homemade tagliatelle pasta, coated in butter, flavored with sage and generously topped with freshly shaved white truffles leaves your taste buds wondering how they will manage through the rest of the year.  Especially since adding fresh ones to your plate puts you back 30 Euros, not to mention the obscene cost of the ones kept guarded behind glass cases.

I wonder where this falls on the Weight Watchers point scale….

Although it is no longer possible to take a stroll through the woods with a truffle hunting pig (they use dogs in Alba), navigating the truffle market is an adventure in itself.  Whether a well-heeled, bourgeois Italian foodie or a fresh from the forest, muck under their nails farmer, everyone under the tent knows a bit of heaven can come from the ugliest of places.

The mustache helps savor the flavor for longer. 

We’ll be coming round the mountain…..

Switzerland likes its’ cows.  They let them roam free in picturesque pastures, decorate them with bells, and include them in most of their festivals (either as contributors or observers).  They also give them summer and winter homes.

Sauntering into their party. 

Each fall, many Swiss villages participate in a festival called Desalpes.  During this festival herders bring their cows from the Alpine mountain top pastures down the mountain to a valley pasture for the winter.  The festival busts at the seams with alphorns, traditional costumes, crafts, dancing and of course plenty of cheese, sausage & wine.

Smoking without hands is a prerequisite for herders.

The festival also includes a pageant where one bovine beauty is crowned the queen.  But at the end of the day, come rain or shine, there’s work to be done.  And the cows are led down that windy mountain road to their winter homes.  If you go, plan to stay well past the cows,  as they turn into real hogs on the road….

Why don’t we do it in the road? 

 

Krakow, Poland: Not for the squeamish.

For such a cozy, clean, convivial, cosmopolitan city, Krakow packs a death and destruction double punch.  The city is aesthetically pleasing and easy to walk around; however, literally just under the surface lies an excavated burial ground.

Golf cart rides to ghettos….does it get more mixed up than that?

The Rynek Underground is an interactive exploration of the old city that remains under the current city square.  It is complete with ruins, bones and hologram photographs that follow you with their eyes as you walk down the corridors.

Rather than gravestones, you can communicate directly with the dead.

Wawel Castle is another attraction that lures you with it’s grandeur and then exits you through the “Dragon’s Den.”  The castle grounds are complete with the only fire-breathing statue I’ve ever seen….nothing like shooting flames into a crowd of tourists.

Probably this statue stays relatively pigeon poop free….

But you find the real horror story after a short bus ride to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  A day wandering around the death camps is so intense that you can’t help but feel flooded with gratitude for freedom & sorrow for all the people who witnessed this history without a tour guide.

The last stop for so many unfortunate souls.