 Here in Seville, the holiday lights are major extravaganzas, like this light show in the gardens of the Alcázar palace. What holiday songs do you find teeth-grindingly irritating? Is there one that makes you want to clap your hands over your ears and run screaming out of the department store? The public-spirited editors of USA Today compiled a list of the worst of the worst, the top ten most horrible yuletide carols of all time. I was pleased to see one I particularly dislike, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, earned the #2 spot on the grounds of sniggering cruelty. I’d never heard of #8, the heartwarming Don't Shoot Me Santa by the Killers. “If ever a Christmas song deserved a ‘what drugs were they on when they recorded this?’ reaction, this is it,” said USA Today, quoting the immortal lines “Don’t shoot me, Santa Claus, I’ve been a clean living boy, I promise you” to which jolly old man replies, “The party’s over, kid, because I’ve got a bullet in my gun.” Egads, when did Santa become such a badass?  Have you been a good kid this year? Well, have you, punk? Image: AI generated If that doesn’t unleash your inner Scrooge, there's always the #1 all-time worst holiday tune, which is (drum roll, please) The Chipmunk Song (Please Christmas Don’t Be Late). Back in the 1950s composer and singer Ross Badasarian (stage name Dave Seville) was down to his last $200 when he purchased a tape recorder that could vary recording and playback speeds. He released the Chipmunk Song on November 17, 1958; by New Year’s Day it was at the top of the charts and has been a bestseller ever since.  Mike, Melissa, Steve, Karen We kids thought it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard, and serenaded our parents with it day and night every holiday season. It's a wonder any of us lived to adulthood. Trying to remember how annoying this song sounds? Just listen. A few days ago I heard The Chipmunk Song (an instrumental version, gracias a Díos!) playing over the loudspeaker in a Seville department store and thought, not for the first time, that globalization has a lot to answer for. Nowadays you rarely hear the Spanish carols, known villancicos, but I was lucky enough to catch one that same day in a small, backstreet boutique. It was Los Peces en El Río (The Fish in the River) in which the fish “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” (drink and drink and return to drink some more” in celebration of the occasion, while nearby the Virgin is washing out the Child’s diapers. It sounds a lot better in Spanish. And then there are all the songs about being home for the holidays; there’s no place like it, according Perry Como and Bing Crosby, while even Elvis grew sentimental about going back “if only in my dreams…” Right now at least half the expats I know are packing up to return to their home countries for family gatherings.  Traveling at the holidays is not for the faint of heart. But Rich and I are staying put. We love spending the holidays here in Seville. The city is madly festive, with extravagant light shows on the Guadalquivir River, in the gardens of the Alcazár palace, and against the back wall of the Ayuntamiento (City Hall). Overhead lights shimmer and dazzle, cafés and shops are open until all hours, and although it is extremely cold by Seville standards (9 C, or 49 F), heaters are everywhere, enabling people to “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” in relative comfort. I got to wondering how expat friends in other countries were faring, so I asked two American couples living in Montpellier, France, about the celebrations taking place in their home-away-from-home. “Paul just got an email from his brother, who lives near Seattle, WA, bemoaning the intense commercialization of Christmas in the US,” said Paula; she and Paul settled in Montpellier five years ago. “Here in France we find Christmas celebrations very low-key, in comparison. Now, in mid-December, there are still stores that are just beginning to decorate for Christmas.” I know, right? Can’t imagine that in the US — or in Seville, for that matter. I started seeing Papa Noel peering from shop windows in October. “A few years ago we went to Annecy, France around Christmastime,” added Paul, “and really enjoyed their small but heartfelt Christmas market.” “Black Friday sales are getting increasingly popular,” Paul said. “We always find that a bit strange. Here in France Thanksgiving is not a thing; as we like to say, the French call it jeudi (Thursday!). But still, the day after our Thanksgiving celebration, stores hold Black Friday sales, even though no one here knows why! (The French always love a proper sale.)” And who doesn’t? We see this in Seville as well: many shops post signs for Black Friday, which sometimes gets extended for weeks. Note how this pharmacy’s display is thoughtfully paired with digestive medication for those whose tummies are already suffering from an excess of jollity.  "Discover our promotions inside," says the placard, using the word "dentro" that also applies to your insides. Well said, farmacia. Well said. Of course, in France food is the centerpiece of any celebration. My friends Maer and Mark go to Montpellier’s markets to eat something called “aligot, which is a regional specialty of mashed potatoes, tons of cream, butter and tomme cheese, served with a sausage,” explained Maer. “You don’t need to eat it more than once a year. Also, vin chaud (hot wine)!” Thus fortified, they brave the cold and wander about looking at the lights. “Christmas Eve is the big deal here,” she added. “French families will do a late dinner called le réveillon, classically with seafood. There’ll be a bûche de Noël, which is a rolled chocolate cake, dressed up to look like a log (bûche means log) and attend midnight mass. I have to wait to get my favorite dessert, galette de trois rois (Three Kings cake) which is puff pastry filled with almond paste. It’s for Three Kings Day [January 6], but it’s so popular that now you start seeing them at the end of December.” Here in Seville, the pastry shops have been displaying our version of Three Kings Day cake, known as roscón, for weeks already. It’s bland, soft pastry filled with whipped cream; I asked Maer how it compared with the French edition. “The galette de rois is a thousand times better tasting than your rascón,” she said. “But yours is more visually entertaining, like a bunch of kids got to design their best cake ever. Sprinkles! Gummies! More sprinkles!”  Seville's roscón de reyes In these shortest, darkest, chilliest days of the year, we need all the sprinkles and twinkle lights we can get. It’s all about creating a sense of what the Danes call hygge (hoo-ga), a sense of warmth, safety, and comfort, a kind of emotional coziness of the soul that is sometimes defined as “cocoa by candlelight.” Now that I know about hygge, I realize that whenever I gather with friends, hygge is in the room. And with all due respect to Bing, Perry, and Elvis, that means wherever we are this time of year, we're home for the holidays. OK, it's possible there is something more annoying than the Chipmunk Song. SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE I think we can all agree it's been a hell of a year. I'm taking a few weeks off to rest up for 2025. Whatever you may be celebrating this time of year, enjoy! See you in January. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  For medicinal purposes, Rich and I ordered the dark chocolate cake at Vineria San Telmo Friday night. “Chocolate is the first luxury,” says actress Mariska Hargitay. “It has so many things wrapped up in it: deliciousness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.” And now you can add another: reducing your chances of getting diabetes. Yes, you read that right. A massive 30-year study showed that regular consumption of dark chocolate lowers your risk of diabetes considerably. When he heard this, Rich exclaimed, “There is a God and She loves me!” He and I are both card-carrying members of die-hard chocoholic families, but like so many sensible people, we’ve grown a trifle concerned about the ridiculous amount of white sugar in the modern diet. For instance, I learned recently the baguettes used for Subway sandwiches have such a high sugar content that Ireland’s Supreme Court has reclassified them as cake.  The "flour" in Subway bread is 10% sugar. The good news? The British Medical Journal reports that after tracking 192,000 participants for three decades, researchers determined that dark chocolate (and only dark, not the milk or white varieties) contains so much cocoa, with its health-boosting flavonoids, that it actually helps break down sugar and protect insulin-producing cells. A mere five ounces a week (in layperson’s terms, that’s slightly under one and a half Lindt bars) reduced participants’ chances of getting Type 2 diabetes by 21%. And it doesn't have to stop there. “For every ounce of dark chocolate that a person consumed per week,” reported the Washington Post, “their risk of developing diabetes fell by three percent.” Eat more dark chocolate to stay healthy? I’m all in!  “This calls for a celebration,” I told Rich. “Let's go to Juan’s for some dark chocolate cake.” Our amigo Juan runs one of Seville’s most popular eateries, Vineria San Telmo, located at the northern tip of the lovely park Jardines de Murillo (Gardens of Murillo). His cozy restaurant has been a regular haunt of ours for twenty years. And in addition to excellent cuisine and an extensive wine list, it offers the finest cakes and pies in Seville, prepared by Juan’s wife, Reyes, at her Pastelería Gollerias. I always tell newcomers, “There are Reyes’ desserts, and then there are everybody else’s. Don’t settle.” I once asked Reyes to tell me her secret. “I cut the sugar in half,” she said. That lets the flavor emerge, which is why her cakes and pies are such standouts here in Seville, where bland, sugary desserts are the norm.  Irresistable desserts from Pastelería Gollerias As it happened, a few days earlier Rich and I had spent the morning talking with Juan as part of our Amigos Project research. I was curious to know how he’d arrived in Seville as a 20-something expat, launched this beloved restaurant, kept it going for two decades, and still found time for adventures such as motorcycle rides through Eastern Europe and hauling medical supplies to Ukraine. Born in Argentina, Juan is a citizen of the world; on one side he’s Spanish and Italian, the other Russian. At 21 he moved to New York and then Washington, DC to work for Marriott. “That was my real university,” he said. Later an airline catering job took him to New York, Washington, Paris, London, and Madrid. Eventually he left to backpack around Europe, fetching up in Seville in 1996 at the age of 27. After holding various odd jobs, he decided to open Vineria San Telmo in 2004.  Juan in front of Vineria San Telmo He attributes much of his success to choosing the right staff, many of whom have been with him a decade or more. “Your attitude is more important than your aptitude,” said Juan. “I can teach you how to put out a cup of coffee, but your attitude comes from within yourself.” The red tape wasn’t as difficult to navigate as he’d expected. “It’s not that crazy and not that complicated. Once you turn in your papers, you can open up. It took four years to get my license, but I was open the whole time.” Inspectors visited, saw he was following the filed plans and local regulations, and left him in peace. Today Juan’s menu includes classic Spanish dishes such as salmorejo (cold tomato-based soup), and pluma (the fattiest, yummiest cut of pork), along with squid-ink seafood pasta and other original dishes. He was experimental back in the days when Seville served nothing but traditional fare, and it won him loyal customers among locals, expats, and international visitors. Juan has resisted all suggestions that he expand into additional locations. “My day-to-day life is much more important than having a few more thousands of euros in my bank account,” he told us. “We have our needs completely covered, my wife and I. We don’t need more.” Having a manageable work life makes it possible for Juan to take off from time to time on travel adventures, including long, unstructured solo trips on his motorcycle. In the summer of 2016, when our itineraries brought us all to the Baltics, Rich and I met up with Reyes and Juan for a lively lunch in Riga, Latvia.  Reyes and Juan took a professional interest in the delicious food we shared in Riga, Latvia, in July, 2016. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Juan set off on a different kind of road trip. He and Ukrainian friends Isabel and Vladmir rented a van, filled it with medical supplies, and drove to the Poland-Ukraine border. That’s when they discovered their rental van couldn’t be driven outside the EU. “So I picked up the medicines and walked across the border with them,” he said.  Ukrainians fleeing across the border into Poland in March 2022. Photo: Reuters After multiple trips the van was empty, and the trio went and collected a Ukrainian family of six. They'd crossed the border into Poland and were now attempting to reach the island of Mallorca off Spain’s east coast, so Juan and his amigos gave them a lift. “They were scared at the beginning,” Juan recalled. “But after an hour in the van, we were like friends. I’m still in touch; I spoke with them a week ago.” “What’s your next big adventure?” Rich asked him. “I don’t know. I just go. I think that's the best thing of Europe. Right now it’s midday; in ten hours, the three of us could go through fifteen countries. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's amazing. The fact that you can jump onto your motorcycle and head to Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic — just like that.”  Map: Worldatlas I can only hope that wherever his wanderlust takes him next, Juan will be packing plenty of dark chocolate. In addition to fighting hunger and diabetes, dark chocolate lowers cholesterol and protects the memory. And it’s a powerful, feel-good mood enhancer. In fact, researchers have discovered that thanks to a compound called anandamide, chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. I've heard the researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are. So there you have it, folks. Eat more dark chocolate! Doctor's orders!  THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Lee Kramm has lived abroad and worked remotely for 11 years. Commuting to an office five days a week; I still shudder when I remember how many hours of my youth were spent crammed into subway trains and buses, navigating crowded transit hubs, and hurtling along freeways, pedal to the metal in the 8:40 Grand Prix, trying to comb my hair and put on lipstick using the rear-view mirror. Looking back, I'm amazed that I — and the drivers around me — survived long enough to reach the office every morning.  Just wondering how many commuters have crashed trying to read this sign. Like most Americans, I usually spent nearly an hour a day in transit. That's 232 hours a year — the equivalent of nearly six 40-hour work weeks. Do I miss it? Are you kidding? I’ve worked from home for decades now, and I still feel the thrill of playing hooky. Cooking breakfast, I listen gleefully to traffic reports so I can revel in the fact that snarled off-ramps and blocked bridges won’t slow down my morning commute from kitchen table to home office. Thanks to the pandemic (a phrase you don’t often hear from me!) millions discovered the convenience of working at home, and today around 32.6 million Americans (22% of the workforce) are still doing their jobs remotely at least part of the time. Not all of them are working from the USA.  We all have different reasons for moving abroad. According to Reddit, “There are 17.3 million American digital nomads or people that travel freely while working remotely.” My math isn’t great, but doesn’t that add up to around 11% of the US workforce? No wonder I've had so many enquiries about this lately — like the visitor who recently asked, “How do people manage their jobs remotely? Think I could do it?” To answer him properly, I sat down this week with Lee Kramm, an American amigo who has spent the last eleven years working remotely in Seville and, more recently, in the Algarve region of Portugal. I asked him to share his family's story.  Lee with his wife, Emily “I'm trained in engineering and medicine,” Lee explained, “I worked in the FDA for five years, serving as a medical officer for the regulation of ophthalmic medical devices and drugs.” His job was to determine what scientific evidence needed to be gathered to ensure that a clinical trial provided definitive proof. He liked the work, but neither he nor his wife, Emily, felt at home in Washington, DC. “You go on long walks through the neighborhood and you talk about moving. It's more like a fantasy at that point,” he recalled. “We were fed up with living in DC. Emily had lived in Barcelona, studying. She told me if we could ever find a way to move to Spain with the children to learn the language, it’d be a great opportunity. But how to make it happen? What are the logistics of it all?”  First, Lee left his government job and spent a year in the US setting up a private consulting practice. Instead of evaluating clinical trials presented to the FDA, he now advises companies how to design clinical trials for new products they want approved. He joined a consulting group with an international reputation and soon had plenty of clients. “Then Sandy Hook happened,” he said. As you probably remember, that was the deadliest elementary school shooting in American history; 26 people were killed including 20 first graders — little kids about the same age as Lee’s two children. That’s when Lee and Emily, then in their mid-thirties, got more serious about living in Europe. The following summer they moved to Seville and enrolled their kids, aged seven and eight, in a local public elementary school. “A lot of expat families we know send their kids to bilingual schools as a soft landing,” said Emily. “And we just threw our kids in, as hard as you can do it. But they learned Spanish down in their souls, and they'll always have it.”  The Kramm kids walking to school in downtown Seville, 2013 Family life is very different in Spain. “One of the things people enjoy here,” Lee said, “is not to have a whole life that’s centered around driving among different activities, like sports. That change is like a breath of fresh air. And kids don’t have to think about things like wearing clear backpacks for weapons checks or training to hide under their desks [from a shooter]. You transition to a more sane way of living.” I asked Lee about his work-life balance. “I'm disciplined about getting my work done. What I'm not disciplined about is taking personal time. My clients are all over the world, in different time zones. So my work bleeds into Sundays, into night, into early mornings. I enjoy what I do, but I need to segregate my work life better. But that's one of the beauties of working for yourself, right? It's all within my control.”  As for Emily, she started a nonprofit called Diálogos para Construir (Constructive Dialogues or “DPC”). “I founded it with some Spanish aid workers, heroes with capes. We provide legal aid, housing, educational, and basic needs support for refugees and migrants who are already here.” She mostly works with African and Middle Eastern youths who reach 18 and are no longer eligible for state services. To help fund the nonprofit, she and some friends launched Uprooted Theater, Seville’s first English language live theater. It’s been a huge hit in the community and a personal delight for me.  Cabaret night at Uprooted Theater This nonprofit and the people they support will benefit enormously from last month’s Spanish legislation reforms that will provide them with work visas and encourage them to assimilate into society. “Spain needs young workers,” Lee explained. “And these young men want to work. Spain said, ‘We’re going to look at this as a practical matter. We are going to fulfill the labor needs of Spain and the production demands from Northern Europe; we cannot segregate refugees and migrants away from the work.’ This is big news. And it’s good news.”  As a future expat, how might you find work? Lee has used Upwork to hire freelancers for various tasks and projects; some consultants say it is useful for finding jobs online. Other sites Lee hasn’t tried offer similar services. What about navigating the transition? Lee recommends Jackie “the Fixer” Baxa’s Family Move Abroad. Got teens approaching college age? More and more Americans are opting to get quality, affordable degrees in the UK and the EU; the consulting group Beyond the States can help you research options. Spain began offering Digital Nomad Visas in 2023 — just one of the reason it’s often ranked among the top countries for remote workers. Beyond that, Lee pointed out, “You pay less for housing, health insurance, basic needs, and you don't need two cars…” In fact, you may not need a car at all. Rich and I have lived in Seville for nearly 20 years without a vehicle, walking everywhere, enjoying the city’s exuberant nuttiness every single day. Where I come from, you don’t find entertainment like that on a city bus or crowded freeway!  SPAM ALERT! Lately I've been flooded with spam comments, sometimes 200 or more per blog post. Each has to be removed individually. I'm experimenting with ways to block them, which may result in some delays in posting legitimate comments. Don't worry — your words will appear! In the unlikely event they don't, write me at [email protected]. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
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Karen McCann
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