 This photo illustrates many articles about "the world's luckiest man" escaping death. However, it's also a meme titled, "And here we see a rare sight: a wild bus drinking water from the river." We may never know the real story behind this image. Let me ask you this: Do you feel lucky? I’ve always considered myself a fortunate person; for a start, I grew up with enough to eat, a good education, and a reasonably sane family (yes, they are!). But these and my many other blessings don’t hold a candle to the karma of “the world’s luckiest man,” Croatian music teacher Frane Selak. His run of fortuity began in 1968, when he was in a train that skidded off the rails and plunged into a river; 17 passengers drowned but a stranger pulled Selak to safety. The following year, during his first and only airplane ride, one of the doors malfunctioned and blew open in midflight; Selak was sucked out but landed safely on a haystack while the plane crashed, killing 20. After that he survived two different accidents where his car — and his hair — caught fire. Then he walked away unharmed after being hit by a bus. A year later, swerving to avoid a truck, Selak struck a guardrail. It gave way and he was hurled from the car; he managed to grab a tree branch and hold on while his car dropped 300 feet into a gorge. Two days after his 73rd birthday, he won $1 million in the Croatian National Lottery.  “I just know there will be no more accidents,” Selak said after winning the lottery. “I am going to enjoy my life now. I feel like I have been reborn. God has been watching over me all these years. The Devil has moved on to torment someone else.” He was right; no more accidents were reported. "You could look at it two ways," said Selak, who died in 2016 at the age of 85. "I was either the unluckiest man in the world, or the luckiest. I preferred to believe the latter." Many details of these stories are difficult to corroborate, but the fact remains nobody who knew Selak would go anywhere with him. As one neighbor put it, “If I heard Frane had booked a flight or a train, I would cancel.” Although I am certainly not in Selak’s league — and I thank my lucky stars for that! — I’m feeling particularly sympathetic about his rollercoaster ride through life. Because I’m finally (knock wood!) wrapping a project that has had some surprising ups and downs. The project I’m talking about my book about the Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. My long-time readers will recall that in 2019 I spent five months on the road traveling through ten countries to discover Europe’s most mouthwatering indulgences. The trip itself was sheer delight. OK, Rich and I had a few hiccoughs, detours, minor health issues, and wardrobe malfunctions along the way, but hey, compared to being blown out of an airplane, nothing to complain about. I ate glorious meals, struggled with a few oddball delicacies (yes, Italian horsemeat, I’m thinking of you), and gathered wonderful recipes, memories, and friendships. After 161 days on the road, I returned to Seville and settled in to write the book. I spent my days typing at breakneck speed, trying to corral my notes, thoughts, and recollections into some kind of coherent form. As usual when I’m knee-deep in writing a book, I mostly ignored the outside world; news and correspondence could wait. When my online inbox got too full, I’d sit down, answer emails from friends and family, and skim through the rest before deleting it. I remember casually glancing at a blog post about the worrying state of the world and coming across word I’d never seen before: coronavirus. The author sounded so alarmed I decided to look it up. That’s when I discovered a million people were on lockdown in China. Wait, what? When had this happened? And how did I not know about it? Was it possible I’d gotten just a tad too wrapped up in the book? I sat staring at the computer screen. A million people on lockdown. Should I be worried? Of course, you all know the answer to that.  I'll say this for the pandemic; preparing 21 meals a week, I really upped my cooking game. Within weeks I was on lockdown myself, and my lighthearted book about finding comfort food on the road suddenly seemed irrelevant. Worse, it seemed insensitive, even cruel, to write about flitting around Europe feasting on magnificent dishes with congenial companions in exotic settings when nobody could even go out for coffee. With regret, I set the book manuscript aside. For two years I focused on my blog, where I endeavored each week to find something heartening, helpful, and if possible entertaining to offer my readers. Then, as it happened — and stop me if you’ve heard this — the pandemic finally loosened its grip on the world. People began traveling again. My thoughts kept straying to the book, and this summer I opened up the manuscript file and dove back in, losing myself once more in the stories of culinary adventures on the road. I finished writing it a month ago. At this phase of every book, I pause and think enviously of the part in Little Women where Jo ties up her manuscript with string and mails it to a publisher. Almost immediately she receives the beautifully produced leather-bound volume and a nice fat check. If only!  Jo's manuscript, from the 1994 version of Little Women. Somehow uploading a file to Amazon's print-on-demand Kindle Direct doesn't have quite the same romance. Nowadays, of course, we self-published authors do all our own production legwork, starting with cover design. After various false starts, this is what we came up with. Rich was the lasagna chef, and I must say, it tasted even better than it looks.  Soon to be available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback One of the big decisions was whether to include all the recipes in the book. I’d originally planned to, but then I realized that would make the print edition enormously long and ridiculously expensive to produce. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never figured out how to download or print a recipe from my Kindle, and I like hard copies so I can make notes. So I decided it would be more practical, and useful for my readers, to make everything available online: recipes (in metric and US measurements), videos, photos, links, notes. My free online comfort recipe cookbook is available now on my website. Have a look, and if you try any of the recipes, please send comments and photos to enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com.  I’m just about ready to publish, but I figure with Thanksgiving on the horizon, my American readers are preoccupied trying to find a big enough turkey and work out a seating arrangement that will keep the peace (or at least a ceasefire) in the extended family. I don’t want to get in the middle of any of that! So the book’s launch date is now set for Tuesday, November 29. Of course, there are no guarantees in this world, and after being clobbered by the pandemic, I’m prepared for anything — alien invasion, zombie attack, WWIII — that could sabotage my plans. So I’ll just say that whenever fate allows this book to make its debut, I promise you’ll be the first to know. And after that, I’m going out and buying a ticket in the Croatian National Lottery. WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish the book and weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding.
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 Why is the straightest street in Seville's shopping district called Snake Street? I'm so glad you asked. When I first moved to Seville, Halloween was not on Spain’s social calendar. Oh sure, everyone had heard of it and seen it in the movies, but celebrating it themselves? That would have felt as alien to them as we’d feel about holding the running of the bulls in New York City. But that was nearly two decades ago, and since then, little by little, Halloween has crept into Seville’s culture. In a way, it’s a natural fit. This city can never resist the chance to party, especially in fancy dress. And everyone here loves a good, blood-curdling ghost story. Tall tales and legends have been passed down for generations — and I suspect get more dramatic with every re-telling.  A Spanish friend told me why a long, straight street in Seville’s maze-like shopping district is called Calle Sierpes, meaning “Snake Steet.” The backstory begins during a terrible time the late 15th century when little kids began mysteriously disappearing without a trace. Families were inconsolable, civic leaders baffled. Then Quintana, a young political prisoner in a nearby jail, offered to solve the mystery and reveal the culprit in exchange for his freedom. The authorities agreed. Quintana explained he’d dug a tunnel out of the jail and was making his escape along ancient Roman subterranean passageways when he came upon the villain, surrounded by the bones of many children. Being armed with a dagger, Quintana slew him and fled back to his cell, having decided against a life on the run. When he took authorities to the spot, they found the murderer wasn’t human but a giant snake. They put the serpent’s corpse on display in the street that soon became known as Calle Sierpes.  Seville's cathedral is said to be haunted by a woman in white who disappears into a thick fog. Nope, I've never seen her. But I keep looking. Another famous legend from that era involves Susona, the beautiful young daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant. She was in love with a young Christian aristocrat, which didn’t sit well with either family; the Spanish Inquisition had just started, and the Christians were carrying out persecutions and pogroms against the Jews. One night, Susona overheard her father and his friends discussing the likelihood of being attacked by the Christians and debating whether they should arm themselves for a preemptive strike on the aristocracy. Fearing for her boyfriend’s life, Susona told him what she’d overheard. That night, a group of Christian knights went into the Jewish quarter, seized the conspirators, and turned them over to the authorities; by dawn, everyone who’d attended the meeting was dead. Horrified, and knowing the community would rightly suspect her of being the informant, Susona ran to her beloved and pleaded with him to marry her right away. "Me? Marry you!? You, who have betrayed your family, your community,” he said. “Do you think I can trust you? No, leave, you will never be my wife." At this point in the story, I always expect Susona to say, “And that’s when I shot him, Your Honor.” Instead she entered a convent. After she died, her head was hung on the wall outside her family’s house, where it stayed for 300 years; a picture of a skull still marks the spot. Everyone started calling that street Calle de La Muerte (Street of Death). Not surprisingly, this had an adverse effect on real estate values, so eventually the street was renamed Calle Susona.  Yes, who wouldn't want to live on Calle de la Muerte (the Street of Death)? I don’t know for sure which convent Susona took refuge in, but it was quite possibly nearby Santa Inés, which has its own ghostly tale. This humble convent was blessed with a magnificent organist, the blind Maestro Peréz. His playing was so spectacular the Archbishop (and crowds of lesser folk) used to come every Christmas Eve to listen. Nearing the end of his life, Peréz still insisted on performing, even when he had to be carried in on a litter. At the age of 76 he expired just as he finished the Christmas Eve service; they found him dead at his keyboard, as he would have wanted. The following year another organist was hired, but of course, he could not compare. The Archbishop went to Christmas Eve mass at the cathedral instead of Santa Inés, and the much-reduced congregation grew restive at the poor performance. And then suddenly, the glorious music they remembered filled the church. Everyone was mystified. Then a woman screamed. People rushed up to the organ loft and saw that the bench was empty, but the organ continued playing. It was a miracle. The Archbishop was furious at having missed it.  The organ at the Convent of Santa Inés was recently restored to its former glory. Half the buildings in Seville have some sort of ghost stories, and that includes the old Hospital of the Five Wounds. No, you didn’t need to have five wounds to go there, the name refers to the wounds of Christ on the cross: hands, feet, side. It was originally built in 1546 to care for sailors returning from the New World with exotic diseases. A century later came the Great Plague of Seville, which claimed a quarter of the city’s population. The hospital admitted 26,700 patients; medicine being what it was in those days (no vaccines, no Paxlovid, etc.) 22,900 of them perished. The hospital closed in 1972, and twenty years later became the seat of the Andalucían Parliament. To this day, people report sightings of the malevolent nun, Sister Ursula, who stalks the corridors looking for her patients. Politicians working in the building say they’ve heard fiendish laughter, hysterical screaming, and agonized wailing, but that could just be parliament in session.  When it was built, Seville's Hospital of the Five Wounds was the largest building in Spain. Every culture and every generation has its own ghost stories. When my nieces and nephews were younger, I’d spend family vacations at the lake telling them such classics as the man with the hook, the babysitter, and the vanishing hitchhiker. “It was a night just like this one…” I’d begin, watching them lean forward, shivering in delight and apprehension. “Thanks a lot,” my sisters always said afterwards, as they loaded sandy, overexcited kids and damp towels back into the car. “Nobody’s going to sleep tonight.”  Many of the people in this photo have been scarred for life by my ghost stories. Sorry, kids! Sometimes I worried that scaring the living daylights out of these youngsters was wrong, even a form of child abuse. But learning to confront fear is one of the basic building blocks of life. It’s why, in spite of all the worries about sugar overload, unwholesome themes, and fears of fentanyl in the candy, we still celebrate Halloween every October 31st. It’s why Seville will continue to relish the fun of passing on its old legends until the end of time. “All across the world, ghost stories are designed to evoke the same thrill of unease,” wrote journalist Dylan Brethour. “Being afraid isn’t the price we pay for ghost stories, it’s part of the package… We’re animals that are made to be afraid, our survival premised on the awareness of danger. The compensation for that fear is how it also makes us feel alive… In the end, ghost stories are a good way of holding on to something slippery. They give form to our nightmares, both petty and complex, and offer catharsis in return. And that, whether you believe in ghosts or not, makes their stories worth telling.”  Rich and I like to do our bit to get Seville into the Halloween spirit. WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  "I need a sense of adventure in my life," says Rich, shown here in Ikaria, Greece. "Travel is all about dreaming up new possibilities and looking forward to the future." “Look at this island! People there live longer and healthier than just about anywhere. We should go. Maybe it will rub off on us,” I said to Rich a few years ago, while researching our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. “They did a study and 80% of the men between 65 and 100 still enjoy an active sex life.” Impressively, these guys still had plenty of energy leftover to get out on the dance floor as well. The island was Ikaria, Greece, one of the Blue Zones, regions famous for vitality and longevity. I went to an all-night party there, and the 93-year-old who opened the dancing was still at it when Rich and I stumbled out the door in the small hours of the morning. Yowza!  The 93-year-old life of the party is the guy on the right. Young tourists get a kick out of dancing with the islands famous oldsters, and the guys don't seem to mind. There's a famous story about one island resident's powers of recovery. Several people on Ikaria told me the tale, and Dan Beuttner wrote about it in The Blue Zones. During WWII, a young Ikarian named Stamatis Moraitis had an injury that required treatment in the USA. He stayed there, married, and raised a family. At 60 he learned he had lung cancer; his five doctors gave him six to nine months to live. He decided to go back to the island so he could die among his own people; he and his wife moved in with his parents, and Moraitis retired to bed to await the inevitable. Old friends dropped by to share a glass of wine. Occasionally Moraitis would sit in the garden. One day he planted a few vegetables. He started puttering around tidying the vineyard. Pretty soon he was building an addition on the house. “Today,” wrote Buettner, “35 years later, he is 100 years old and cancer-free. He never went through chemotherapy, took drugs, or sought therapy of any sort. All he did was move to Ikaria.” Buettner asked Moraitis if he had any idea how he’d recovered from lung cancer. “It just went away,” he said. “I actually went back to America about ten years after moving here to see if the doctors could explain it to me.” Buettner asked what happened. “My doctors were all dead.”  Stamatis Moraitis healed while puttering around the family garden on Ikaria. He lived to 102. Stories like these are inspiring headlines asking, Should I Retire in a Blue Zone? The short answer is probably not. There are five identified Blue Zones: Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; and the Seventh Day Adventist community in Loma Linda, California. Although they all enjoy good weather, a laid-back lifestyle, and healthy eating, each has drawbacks. Ikaria, for instance, has no major airport or hospital and is a long ferry ride from anywhere. What the Blue Zone folks have discovered isn’t a fountain of youth, it’s a lifestyle that removes major stressors that make us age faster: time-pressure, isolation, unhealthy food, and the self-fulfilling expectation that at 65 we’ll begin to deteriorate in a variety of embarrassing and debilitating ways. People in the Blue Zones don’t share those habits and attitudes, and maybe it’s time we got rid of them, too. You don’t have to move abroad to do it, although there are places — like Seville — that do make it easier.  Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, Duquesa de Alba, was the richest and most titled aristocrat in Spain. Here she is dancing barefoot at her third wedding, which took place in Seville when she was 85. Personally, I am doing my best to adopt these eight elements of the Blue Zone approach. 1. An active social life. In the US, we tend to live further apart, and everyone’s so busy even dinner with close friends requires planning weeks in advance. On Ikaria, people tend to stroll out most evenings after dinner and drop in on their neighbors for a casual chat. Likewise, in Seville impromptu gatherings are common. New expats join social clubs such as the American Women’s Club and InterNations to find kindred spirits. This is vital, says psych professor William Chopik, because “as we get older, our friends begin to have a bigger impact on our health and well-being, even more so than family.” 2. The Mediterranean Diet. All Blue Zoners follow some version of it, bucking the American fast food trend spreading across the globe. Here in Spain, it’s much easier to eat a natural, plant-based diet. I follow Michael Pollan’s shorthand definition of this approach: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” 3. A little wine every day. A few glasses of wine in the evening is standard on Ikaria. I generally have just one, but I am considering upping my game. Strictly for health purposes, of course.  I'm doing my best to meet the recommended daily dose of vino. Rich is very supportive about helping me stick with my regimen. 4. No gym, just natural exercise. I remember years ago dragging myself to brutal fitness classes. Never again. In Blue Zones, daily life includes a lot of walking and other gentle exercise, such as gardening. A large Swedish studied showed gardening and similar forms of puttering around can increase longevity by 30%. Put the money you save on gym fees into tomato seedlings. 5. Daily siestas. People in the Blue Zones tend to rest after lunch. They don’t always sleep; sometimes they read, meditate, or do something equally relaxing. But they hit the pause button and feel better for it. “Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day,” said Winston Churchill, who lived to 90. “That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one — well, at least one and a half.” 6. Sense of purpose. "Everybody needs a passion. That's what keeps life interesting,” said Betty White, who lived and worked to the age of 99. You'll never lack for things to do during a move abroad, but eventually you will settle in and then it's time to develop other interests. Travel is top on my list, with writing and painting in the offseason. Rich has taken online classes on happiness, grumpiness, memory, justice, and astronomy. He arrives at every meal with lots to talk about.  "If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints," warned Betty White in her memoir If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won't). 7. No retirement from life. I start worrying whenever I hear recently retired friends say, “I never do anything. I have six Saturdays and a Sunday every week.” Leaving a job can be liberating; becoming a couch potato is less so. George Burns, who lived to 100, agreed. “Retirement at 65 is ridiculous. When I was 65, I still had pimples.” 8. Positive attitude. Blue Zone people don’t fret about aging because they don’t view old age as God’s waiting room but rather as having more time to do things. “Get busy living or get busy dying,” says Morgan Freeman, actor, producer, and political activist. He got his pilot’s license at 65, and at 85 is still having fun doing guest roles on shows like The Kominsky Method.  "You gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving," says Morgan Freeman. So to recap: No, you probably don’t want to live in one of the Blue Zones. Yes, their lifestyle makes sense, and it’s not a bad idea to see if you can adopt some elements of it wherever you may be. If you're dreaming of living abroad, see how many of these eight elements you’ll find in destinations you’re considering. Maybe someday you’ll be the 93-year-old life of the party on an island somewhere. It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it. I'd love to think Rich and I could learn to do this, but to be honest, I couldn't dance like this on my best day at any age. Dietmar & Nellia, you rock! WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  One of my best strategies is recombobulating with a cup of espresso when I feel flummoxed. On Saturday, the young waiter at the sidewalk café wanted to practice his English. This is common now in Seville, and at first he did well. Rich and I ordered a platter of scrambled eggs with asparagus, ham, and shrimp that was big enough to share. The waiter nodded, returned with two plates and a bread basket, then said, “You do not need forks, do you? Instantly I pictured myself scooping up handfuls of scrambled egg and stuffing stray asparagus spears into my mouth with my fingers. I stared at him blankly, he repeated the question about the forks, and then added something that I swear sounded like, “For the sex.” Huh? What exactly did he think we were doing with those eggs? Glancing in the bread basket, I saw we already had forks, and pointed this out. He looked mortified and said, “No, no, I am very sorry, I meant knives. You do not need knives.” I agreed we did not. And decided not to press him further on the question of sex. Young people are so easily embarrassed.  When I saw this sign in Hawley, UK, I thought, "I know just how that door feels! Aren't we all?" The really astonishing thing about this conversation was that it was somebody else butchering the language. I’ve been on the other end of countless similar confusions over the years. How well I remember one Spanish class that went like this: Teacher, holding up a flash card: “¿Que hace ella?” (What is she doing?) Me, after a long pause: “¿Cepilla su pollo?” (Brushing her chicken?) Rich, after a longer pause: “¿Camino su pelo?” (Walking her hair?) Whenever I get lost in a welter of linguistic or cultural confusion — and yes, even after all these years, it happens — I pause a moment, recall that day in class, and picture a woman brushing her chicken. It makes me chuckle, if only to myself, and then I’m calm enough to marshal the known facts so I can get a handle on the moment. On Saturday I knew that A) this was a respectable, old-school Spanish eatery, B) nobody in Seville eats scrambled eggs with their fingers, and C) whatever else was about to happen, it was unlikely to involve sex. At least not right there at my café table.  Confusion is commonplace when we travel. What does this Corfu sign mean? Who knows? I made a mental note not to tie any donkeys to stop signs while I was on the island. Like that conversation with the waiter, I find much of the world feels nonsensical and cattywampus these days. How do we keep from feeling confused and bumfuzzled? The New York Times recently polled its readers about small rituals that help them keep their mental and emotional balance. One woman reads a Nancy Drew book for five minutes before bed. Another sits in a recliner, petting her cat, after dinner. There’s a reader who counts yellow doors, keeping a tally during daily walks. One couple spends a half hour each morning watching birds flutter around the backyard feeder. Everybody had some small daily ritual they considered vital for keeping their sanity.  Taking Nancy Drew along on your e-reader? Blogger Michelle demonstrates how to make a Kindle sleeve showing the classic silhouette of the plucky young detective. Find it here: https://mychellem.blogspot.com/2012/10/nancy-drew-book-or-kindle-sleeve.html Rich recently revealed he loves doing the dishes after every meal. “I don’t think of anything,” he says. “It’s very relaxing.” Being a supportive wife, I am naturally encouraging him to indulge in this habit frequently. Three times a day, in fact. For his own good, of course. Unfortunately, our routines tend to go out the window when we travel. Rich doesn’t always have a kitchen full of dirty dishes available. It’s not practical to bring your cat everywhere or pack the backyard birdfeeder in your carry-on. We travelers have to get creative about coming up with alternatives. “We’re allowed to make up rituals,” said author Elizabeth Gilbert. “We’re here to find meaning, and meaning is the way we make sense out of chaos. Do whatever you need to do to transition safely from one point in your life to the next.” Of course, there’s a fine line between ritual and superstition. Actress Jennifer Aniston, Duncan James of the boy band Blue, and Kit Harrington, who played Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, all tap the outside of the airplane before getting on board; each has their own specific number of raps, and Aniston always boards right foot first. Hey, whatever gets you through the flight.  One of my rituals is well known to my regular readers: the recombobulation coffee. The moment I step off a plane or train, I’m looking for a café where I can sit down, sip something, and regroup. There’s the practical side, such as making sure I have the address of my lodgings and enough local currency to get there. But it’s also a way of reminding myself the headlong rush of getting there is over. Now it’s time to be there; I try to tune into the moment and connect with my new surroundings. I have another small ritual for settling into my room: I immediately place my Kindle and sleep mask next to the bed. I may not need nightly doses of Nancy Drew (although she and I are old and dear friends), but reading before sleep is a deeply ingrained habit. And how’s this for luck? I get to do it twice a day, as my most essential ritual is taking siestas. American friends tend to roll their eyes and suppress a snicker when I say this. But just ask the NASA astronauts, executives wanting to boost productivity, and the longest-living people on the planet about the value of resting each afternoon. It’s a lifesaver, and thankfully it can be done just about anywhere.  A carriage driver in Seville takes a quick siesta between customers. Whatever our personal rituals, they are vital to our happiness. Why? Scientists and spiritual teachers agree it’s because they offer a sense of predictability in a topsy-turvy world. They let us know we are exactly where we need to be, doing just what we need to be doing, at precisely that moment. We come away more grounded, relaxed, and confident, able to see things more clearly, from a broader perspective. Harvard research shows that rituals alleviate the natural grief that comes with loss, including homesickness and the head-spinning, out-of-control, what-happened-to-my-reality sensations we sometimes experience in foreign places. Especially while having surreal conversations with strangers about eggs, forks, sex, and brushing chickens. Taking time to identify our own rituals, or create new ones to take with us on the road, can help us relax and reconnect with the sense of joy and adventure that caused us to travel in the first place.  Now, thanks to that NY Times article, I find myself counting yellow doors when I go out. You too? WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Can you spot the real Vermeer? If not, don’t worry, because neither could the National Gallery of Art in Washington — from the time it was donated in 1942 until last week. New tests revealed Vermeer didn't paint the one on the right, which I call “Girl with an Even Goofier Hat,” although the museum displayed it as “Girl with a Flute.” As if anyone was going to pay attention to the flute with that striped headgear staring them in the eye. The National Gallery of Art is busy wiping the egg off their faces and consoling themselves that at least they didn’t pay a cent for the painting. Not all their colleagues have been so fortunate. Master forger Hans van Meegeren alone sold “Vermeers” to seven other museums for a total of $20 million. As for the highly respected Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, 40% of the works in their collection are fakes, according to its former director Thomas Hoving.  After World War II, Dutch forger Hans van Meegeren was accused of selling national treasures to the Nazis. Figuring forgery was a lesser sentence than treason, he revealed they were fakes. They were so good, nobody believed him until he painted, in front of their eyes, this work in perfect imitation of Vermeer's style. I’m always shocked by such revelations. My mother brought me up to revere museums as temples of civilization’s achievements. In college, my art history professors taught me to respect art for revealing unsuspected truths about our culture and ourselves. It’s demoralizing to know so many museums I’ve loved are filled with knock-offs and pirated goods, like the lair of a successful con artist. Staff member Xiao Yuan said he spotted fakes on the first day of his job as chief librarian at the Guangzhou China Academy of Fine Arts. After a while, he decided to get in on the action. Over time, he made 143 copies, leaving them in place of originals he auctioned off for $3.5 million. Then he discovered he wasn’t the only one getting up to such hijinks. “I realized someone else had replaced my paintings with their own because I could clearly discern that their works were terribly bad.” At least Yuan still had some aesthetic standards. And what about Jackson Pollock’s paint drips or Mark Rothko’s fuzzy rectangles? A math professor in Queens created such convincing “new” works by these and other modern artists that New York’s venerable Knoedler Gallery bought them for twenty years — and sold them for enormous profit. There’s still hot debate about the legal outcome of the $80 million scandal, as told in the film, Made You Look: A True Story of Fake Art. OK, I agree it’s hard to work up sympathy for billionaires bilked by greedy art dealers. But what about nations whose historic treasures have been looted? Most famously there are the Elgin Marbles, hacked off the Parthenon in the nineteenth century, sold to the British government, then donated to the British Museum. Lord Elgin claimed he’d obtained permission from their legal owner, the Ottoman Empire, but the documentation is dubious, an English translation of an Italian transcription of the lost original. The Greeks want their sculptures back, but the prevailing attitude has been, “Finders keepers.” “We can’t even think about returning the Elgin Marbles to Athens until the Greeks start caring for what they already have,” said archaeologist Dorothy King, author of The Elgin Marbles. “If you knew a woman was abusing her child, you wouldn’t let her adopt another. And that’s what the Greeks are asking for.” What? No, it’s not! In that scenario, the Greeks are the mother demanding the return of her kidnapped child. The Greeks kept the sculptures safe for 2000 years, the Venetians blew them up, and the British damaged them with wire cleaning brushes. Who's the fit custodian? Rumors abound that the Elgin Marbles will someday be “shared” with Greece. I’m not holding my breath.  Built in the 17th century, Seville's Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) was originally a convent. You can’t actually call it looting, but Seville’s Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) is likewise filled with ancient works of art removed by force from their original home. During the nineteenth century, Spain’s government decided to redistribute some of the wealth of the Catholic Church by closing down convents and monasteries and seizing their possessions, including art and real estate. Priceless paintings and sculptures went to museums or were sold to enrich government coffers. Among the seized real estate was the 17th century Convent of La Merced Calzada, now home to the Museo de Bellas Artes, which I visited this week. The room marked Colección permanente houses some wonderful medieval works, and from there the galleries continue chronologically through the Renaissance and pieces by such Spanish grand masters as Velázquez, Goya, Murillo, and Zurbarán. But for me the exhibits really come alive in rooms XII, XIII, and XIV, which house more modern paintings that certainly never graced the walls of religious institutions. This is where my Spanish teacher took me so I could witness Andalusian life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Las Cigarreras (The Cigar-makers, 1915) is one of my favorites. When tobacco began arriving from the New World, Seville built a huge factory and hired women for their agile fingers and lower wages. It became one of the first places women could work at a paying job outside the home (or the streets). Women brought their nursing babies, inspiring artist Bilbao Martínez to give the central figure a Madonna-like pose.  Bullfighters rarely die in the ring itself. In Muerte del Maestro (Death of the Master, 1913), artist José Villegas Cordero shows Bocanegra on his deathbed after being tossed and gored in Seville’s bullring in 1880.  Before air-conditioning rendered the steamy Andalucian summer nights more bearable, people used to go sleep by the river, with the night watchman in attendance.  The Romani people have been part of Seville’s culture for as long as anyone can remember, introducing flamenco to Europe and inspiring the colorful dress worn in Seville’s annual Feria de Abril (April Fair). I can’t swear there isn’t a single fake in the Museo de Bellas Artes, although if I were a forger, I’d certainly stick with more marketable, lucrative artists like Pollock and Rothko. Spain considers this museum second only to the Prado in importance, but you don’t really come here for celebrity artists, you ramble about enjoying intimate glimpses of the past. “Don’t go to a museum with a destination,” advised New York art critic Jerry Saltz. “Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines. Follow your eyes to wherever they lead you, stop, get very quiet, and the world should begin to change for you.”  The Museo de Bellas Artes is never crowded. And did I mention admission is just $1.50? WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  I've looked at Seville's cathedral countless times, but seeing it at sunset this week just took my breath away. “My trip back to Spain? Oh, yeah, it was fine.” That’s what I tell everyone. And it’s mostly true. But every time I say it, there’s a mini movie montage playing in my mind. The Lyft driver who was late picking us up for the airport shuttle. My kind neighbor who offered to drop everything and drive us. Arriving at the San Francisco airport to learn the Heathrow-Málaga tickets, which were absolutely booked and confirmed, had somehow not gone through. Overcoming ridiculous roadblocks to fix that. Rich taking his onboard sleeping pill too early and having a truly bizarre conversation with me over a meal he doesn’t even remember eating. Both of us stumbling off the plane like zombies. The truth is, the trip didn’t start feeling fine until I stepped onto Spanish soil (OK, airport asphalt) in Málaga, where we were spending the night before returning to Seville by train. Within an hour of landing Rich and I were sitting in a tapas bar enjoying ice-cold beer and a plate of jamón (ham), Spain’s most beloved comfort food.  The taste of homecoming Despite my jet lag, I actually managed to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. Then I was jolted awake at 2:00 in the morning by raised voices in the street, followed by a marching band. I stumbled out of bed and pulled open the shutters just in time to see the Blessed Virgin being carried through the streets. Why she wanted to go out at that hour is anybody’s guess, but half of Málaga had turned out to cheer her on. “It’s official,” Rich said. “We’re back.”  Why was the Blessed Virgin carried through the streets of Málaga at 2 am? Did someone feel we all needed less sleep? Perhaps the strangest thing was arriving in Seville after six months away and finding the city and my apartment just as I’d left them. My time in America had been vivid, filled with many adventures, quality time with family and friends, and two bouts of Covid. No doubt it all had changed me in ways I barely understood yet. And while I knew it was illogical, I found it hard to believe the physical landscape had not rearranged itself to a similar degree. The city was just the same as always … or was it? “Why do you go away?” asked sci-fi author Terry Pratchett. “So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors.” I’ve been back just over a week, and I keep walking through familiar streets, eating my favorite tapas in my customary cafés, and marveling as if it were my first time here. Everything seems to have extra colors. “We’re surrounded by the wonders of what we love so much," said travel guru Rick Steves about his joy at being on the road again. "And it just makes our endorphins do little flip-flops."  Seville's Guadalquivir River has been enticing visitors for two thousand years. That heady endorphin rush of seeing a well-known place with fresh eyes is one of the greatest gifts travel offers. Many of us have felt it at one time or another. But few — only about 600 in all — have felt the profound euphoria that comes with looking at our home planet from afar. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, grew up in a world where she often got the message she didn’t belong, didn’t count. “Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe,” she said. “I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet.”  Dr. Mae Jemison says she was inspired by Star Trek's Nyota Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols. Jemison is now working on the 100 Year Starship, a project developing interstellar travel. After his 1971 moonwalk, Edgar Mitchell described looking at Earth as an "explosion of awareness" and an "overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness... accompanied by an ecstasy... an epiphany." Lots of astronauts have reported a staggering, sublime shift in consciousness after seeing the Earth floating in space. They call it the Overview Effect, and it can be lifechanging. “You develop an instant global consciousness,” Mitchell said, “a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”  “It didn’t take long for the moon to become boring. It was like dirty beach sand,” said astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped this shot on impulse in 1968.“Then we suddenly saw this object called Earth. It was the only color in the universe.” This iconic photo helped launch the environmental movement. Some people feel the Overview Effect just looking at it. Two years after returning to Earth, Mitchell co-founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which researches the link between science and consciousness and gives a biennial award for creative altruism. Not every traveler, or even every astronaut, has an epiphany that inspires them to devote their lives to doing good in the world. But sharing time, conversation, and laughter with people from other cultures, even if it’s just during a tour or a meal, can send us home with greater feeling of connection to all humankind. We may find we have a greater sense of empathy and compassion toward all our fellow sojourners on this planet's journey through space.  I’m so disappointed. I keep pressing the space bar on my keyboard, but I’m still on Earth. “I think travel is a powerful force for peace and stability on this planet,” said Rick Steves. “We would be at a great loss if we stopped traveling, and the world would become a more dangerous place … What you want to do is bring home the most beautiful souvenir, and that’s a broader perspective and a better understanding of our place on the planet.” Travel makes us fall in love with the world. With luck it lets us feel the Overview Effect and fills us with so much wonder that our endorphins start doing flip-flops all over the place. That’s how I’m feeling right now, being back in the city I love most in the world, and having the pleasure of rediscovering it all over again.  Let's get those endorphins doing flip-flops! Photo of Rick Steves by Zachary Scott. WELL, THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  Rich enjoying supper in one of Sarajevo's more offbeat restaurants, Zlatna Ribica (it means Goldfish, don't ask my why) in 2019. “I never meet American people who don’t like to eat,” said Martine, my hostess at a dinner in the French alps a few years ago. “You all like to eat. You are very curious.” When you think about it, that may be America’s finest gift to world cuisine: curiosity. Our own culinary traditions are all over the place. We have to maintain constant vigilance to keep pernicious corporations from sneaking harmful substances into our diets. Most of us don’t know a sous vide precision cooker from a masticating juicer. But we tend to be enthusiastic omnivores who aren’t afraid to try new things.  For one horrified moment at a CA café last week, I thought my salad was sprinkled insect larvae, but it turned out to be blackened rice. Whew! Yes, experimentation can go too far! Not every culinary experiment is a howling success. I won’t be ordering more Mongolian бууз (dumplings) any time soon. At home, my riskier recipes occasionally teeter on the brink of disaster and can only be saved by the lavish application of last-minute rescues: olive oil, salt, lemon juice, wine, a dollop of Greek yogurt, and/or chocolate chips. And sometimes even those Hail-Mary ingredients can’t stop the train wreck. One of my worst disasters started innocently enough. To set the mood for a discussion about a possible future trip to Scandinavia, I decided to try making Lohikietto, Finland’s most popular chowder. Salmon, cream, potatoes, dill, and a recipe from the world’s happiest country — what could possibly go wrong? And in my defense, for once I scrupulously followed the recipe instead of improvising. The result was the kind of bland, watery soup I’d expect to be served on a tin plate in a maximum-security Russian prison.  I didn't take any photos of my Lohikietto, which was more of a grayish color. This picture is from food blogger Alisa, who clearly had better results. One by one I threw all my rescue remedies into the pot — except for the chocolate chips, which went directly into my mouth to steady my nerves. The remedies improved the soup just enough so that now it tasted like food you’d get in an American county jail. Rich manfully downed a bowlful, but he has never asked for it again. Despite the occasional dud, trying new food is one of the great joys of life, especially when we travel. Most of my road meals have been good to great, and whenever I write about them, people ask me for pointers that will help them find terrific eats in foreign towns. So here goes. To prepare your taste buds for the treats in store, look up local specialties in advance. Google the cuisine, check out blogs, and consult apps such as Culture Trip and Triposo, which describe the cuisine and give directions to places providing outstanding examples. As early in the trip as possible, book a food tour — or, if none is available, a walking tour. Warsaw’s Eat Polska food tour introduced me to the Soviet-era snack of brown bread with pork lard and gherkins (not nearly as bad as you’d think, especially with vodka) as well as gorgeous duck breast with buckwheat groats, honey, beets, and cranberries. “In the past, before McDonald’s and new kinds of processing arrived, the food here was more flavorful and nutritious,” said Ula, who led the tour. “There wasn’t much food in the stores, but at least everything was fresh and not full of chemicals. Many people here are quite nostalgic for food from the 1970s.” That was a perspective I didn’t see coming. In Dijon, France, my guide Philippe introduced me to the city’s iconic mustard, its famous gingerbread — which he ate (brace yourself) topped with chopped liver — and the 11:00 am aperitif. This French-style elevenses included gougères (cheese puffs) and kir, a mix of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) and white wine. At the colorful 19th century Les Halles Market, he showed me Europe’s most expensive poultry, blue-legged Bresse chickens, which go for $50 and up per bird. “Don’t even think about it,” said Rich. Traditional markets like Les Halles often have bustling eateries in the middle; I look for small diner-like counters serving incredibly fresh fish and bread hot from the oven. Open air markets are generally surrounded by cafés, and I like to wander around, snapping photos of anything that catches my fancy so I can try to find it again at mealtime. About now you may be wondering about consulting Trip Advisor, but frankly, I don’t advise it. In Seville, the European city I know best, cookie-cutter corporate chains rise to the top of Trip Advisor lists simply because people find them easily due to location and advertising. Sadly, visitors who are unfamiliar with good paella don’t always realize they’re being served inferior frozen versions. You can do better. What about asking at your hotel? In a big city, such as Paris or Rome, I find concierges will usually send me to “safe” places, soulless tourist venues they’ve recommended a thousand times. But in a more remote locale, with less jaded staff, I listen closely to what they say. Three years ago, on the Greek island of Ikaria, the desk clerk Dimitri told me Popi’s had the best cuisine on the island, possibly in all of Greece. It sure did. I fell in love with the food (the wild goat was amazing) and the Popi family; Rich and I ate there often. As it happens, friends were on the island this week and wrote, “We were treated like royalty when we dropped your name! We loved their food and meeting them!”  Kathryn, Mrs. Popi, her son Zisis, and Pete on the terrace of Popi's in Ikaria, Greece this week. Eating out can be great, but sometimes you just want to stay in and cook. On the road, you’ll want simple ingredients and recipes that won’t overtax your Airbnb’s modest kitchen equipment. I remember one rental apartment had no saucepans so I had to make my oatmeal in a frying pan. Yep, it works! Cooking in your lodgings lets you experiment with local ingredients you couldn’t resist purchasing and now realize you don’t want to lug home. If you splurged on tarragon mustard in Dijon, use it to create Mushroom Chicken in Dijon-Wine Sauce or Baked Dijon Salmon. Couldn’t resist buying Greek yogurt during your food tour of Athens? Try this Tzatziki Sauce on anything from raw vegetables to oven-roasted lamb. Don’t feel like cooking or going to a restaurant? EatWith offers private dinners and cooking classes put on by chefs in their own homes. It’s a great way to sample local fare and chat in a leisurely way about food, wine, restaurants, and life. You’ll walk away with a satisfied tummy and tons of ideas about what to see, do, and eat next.  Carlotta showed me how to make this Sausage Risotto at an EatWith dinner in Turin, Italy in 2019. I've been making it ever since; it's a huge hit with my family. You can find a link to the recipe below. Living in Seville, I’ve learned to view eating as the Spanish do — not as squandering time but as making the most of it. Growing up, I often viewed cooking and eating as an inconvenience, just one more obligation to squeeze into my day when I’d rather be doing something else. Now I look forward to every meal as the gift that it is. Good food not only nourishes body, soul, and brain, it provides opportunities for connecting with people wherever we are. Sitting down to a great meal with congenial cooks and a curious attitude creates memories that will last forever.  The world is full of intriguing little eateries like this café-bar in Chambéry, France. Where are you traveling these days? RIch and I are heading back to Seville next week, so I'll be taking a few weeks off to reorganize my life. I look forward to posting again in October, with all new stories about life in Spain. WANT TO KNOW WHEN I'M PUBLISHING NEW STUFF?
If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Yes, my so-called automatic signup form is still on the fritz. Thanks for understanding. Technology. Always a moving target.  Who's ready to travel among the stars? Disconcertingly, friends driving through Spain this summer had two of their car’s tires go flat at the same moment. When the tow truck arrived, the mechanic told them the extreme heat of the pavement had actually melted their tires. OK, technically the tires-plus-scorching-pavement equation couldn’t have added up to the full 1000 degrees Fahrenheit required to liquify rubber, but apparently it reached the 250 degrees that make tires fall apart. Let’s not quibble. My point is: the fate of those tires is yet another canary in the climate change coal mine. Here in California, where we normally experience mild summers, thermometers seem permanently stuck in the “Are you kidding me?” range. It’s 109 today — almost twenty degrees hotter than in Seville. The governor has declared a Heat Emergency plus a Flex Alert begging us to conserve energy. I guess I’ll find out just how long I can put off doing the laundry and running the dishwasher.  As for showers, this sensible Californian is making good use of a fire hydrant in her LA neighborhood. Photo: Jae C. Hong, AP Of course, lowering my household’s hygiene standards is a modest sacrifice, given what’s at stake. “Blistering heat waves have smashed temperature records around the globe this summer, scorching crops, knocking out power, fueling wildfires, buckling roads and runways,” reports MIT Tech Review. Thousands have died in Europe's heat wave. One third of Pakistan is under water. Antarctica's so-called "doomsday glacier," an ice mass the size of Florida, is hanging on by its fingernails, and if it goes, sea levels will likely rise significantly. Headlines use words like “apocalypse” and “the End Times” with alarming regularity. So it’s small wonder some of our best and brightest (or at least richest) visionaries are trying to figure out how to get off the planet while there’s still time. The real surprise is that they’re prepared to take quite a few of us — possibly millions —into outer space with them. The exodus isn’t happening any time soon. So far there’s a trickle of space tourism, mostly Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Off-planet hotels will likely be next, followed by colonies — and not the NASA model of a few hand-picked astronauts subsisting in domes. Musk dreams of large-scale communities serving as a second home for the human race on terraformed Mars. Can we do that yet? No. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. “We want to make life multi-planetary,” said SpaceX Director Benji Reed, “and that means putting millions of people in space.”  Elon Musk wants to get going soon on a million-person colony on Mars — which might look something like this. "It is extremely uncertain," he says, "how much time is left to become multi-planetary." Some believe the first step is creating vacation playgrounds among the stars. "Eventually, going to space will just be another option people will pick for their vacation, just like going on a cruise or going to Disney World," said Tim Alatorre, senior design architect of the Von Braun Space Station. “The goal of the Gateway Foundation is to have the Von Braun operational by 2025 with 100 tourists visiting the station per week.” How realistic is that dream? A quick trip to the Gateway Spaceport website suggests they’re still in the fundraising stage, so I wouldn’t order your designer spacesuit just yet. Naturally, Elon Musk has bigger ideas. He wants to send the first humans to Mars in 2029 and establish a self-sustaining, million-person colony there by 2050. Plans call for terraforming Mars, a tricky prospect at best on a planet whose average temperature is -82 F. Although I have to admit, being that chilly sounds more attractive than it normally would as I swelter in my non-airconditioned office today. Galavanting around the galaxy isn’t cheap. Space tourists are currently paying $250,000 to $500,000 for a suborbital trip, one that reaches outer space briefly, without making a full orbit or reaching escape velocity. Industry insiders predict the cost of suborbital travel will drop to “just” $100,000 within the decade. Want the whole megillah? This April, SpaceX sent three billionaires up to the International Space Station for eight days in the first all-private astronaut mission. Price tag: $55 million apiece.  From left, Eytan Stibbe, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Mark Pathy, and Larry Connor. Lopez-Alegria is a former NASA astronaut and mission leader; the other three are ordinary guys (well, ordinary billionaires) who paid $55 million each to visit the International Space Station. Photo: Axiom Space I don’t know about you, but $55 million ia a stretch for my vacation budget. However, I’ve discovered a more affordable alternative. Sadly you won’t get the chance to take any selfies, or enjoy the view, or brag about your trip afterwards. I’m talking about, of course, having your cremated remains fired into the cosmos. Turns out there’s a whole industry just waiting to serve your post-life travel needs. And those of your animal companions. Who knew? For $12,500, your ashes (or your pet's) can be deposited on the moon or launched into deep space forever. They make it sound pretty romantic, with your loved ones gazing up at you in the night sky, but frankly, I wasn’t too keen on spending eternity as space debris. For $2500 your “cremains” will be shot up in a canister that’ll orbit Earth then reenter our atmosphere, where it will burn up and become a shooting star. Or space pollution, depending on how you look at it.  Yes, your best friend is also welcome to find a forever home in space or on the moon. You can also send “a symbolic portion of cremated remains” to the moon for $7500 — about the price of the average American funeral or cremation. Of course, since they’re only sending up a smidgeon of your remains, you’ll have to pay all the other costs anyway, so if you’re looking for a frugal solution, this isn’t it. That got me wondering about other alternatives for those who think basic burial or cremation is simply too ordinary. I’ve learned entrepreneurs are standing by with unique, outlandish, sometimes macabre memorials that’ll give your relatives something to talk about for generations. Are some of these final resting places a bit creepy? You be the judge.    The Bios Urn will turn your ashes into a tree someone can plant in the garden. Pine tree seeds are included.  Your beloved can get a tattoo with your ashes worked into the ink.  Your cremains can be turned into a diamond. Of course, this one’s going to set your heirs back $750 to $20,000, so it’s a big ask.  An Alabama company called Holy Smoke will insert your ashes into cartridges or shotgun shells — the perfect memento for hunters or assassins.  My personal favorite, the miniature Viking ship, is designed for burning your cremains at sea. Have your relatives start practicing now so they’re ready to shoot flaming arrows accurately when the time comes.  One thing is clear; the sky is no longer the limit when it comes to travel. You might begin your space odyssey in this lifetime, afterwards, or possibly in the form of a memento carried by a loved one honeymooning on a space station or emigrating to Mars. Or maybe this is all futuristic fantasy, on a par with the individual jet packs they thought we’d all be wearing by now. Whatever happens, I don’t think we’d better bank on outer space as the solution to our problems here on Earth. It’s up to us to solve them as best we can, and try to leave as many options as possible for those who come after us, wherever that may be. Well that was fun! YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY WANT TO KNOW WHEN I'M PUBLISHING NEW STUFF?
My automatic sign-up form is on the fritz. Yes, still. If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Thanks for understanding. Technology. Always a moving target.  After two hours of sampling coffees in Thessaloniki, Greece in 2019 I felt like a new woman. "To travel is to take a journey into yourself." — Danny Kaye One of the great things about travel is the way it lets us reinvent ourselves. The “me” who is sipping espresso in a strange city isn’t exactly the same me that days earlier was racing around the supermarket, cursing under my breath because I couldn’t find the coffee filters. Nor is it the same me that stumbled zombie-like off my last long plane ride, or the me that in July was stretched out on a sandy beach, too lazy and contented even to read the book I’d brought. Travel constantly invites us to be new and different. Our destinations shape us in unexpected ways. Which is why I was so delighted when I was kidnapped and taken to Treasure Island this week. OK, maybe kidnapped is too strong a word. Some friends had planned a surprise expedition to an undisclosed location, and when Rich and I climbed into the backseat of their car, they gave us eye masks to blindfold ourselves in order to draw out the suspense. Actual hoods, like the ones in TV crime thrillers, might (they felt) attract unwanted attention from random passing officers of the law. I put on the eye mask feeling that little thrill of excitement that always comes with heading off to a mysterious destination. Eventually our friends instructed us to remove the blindfolds and I discovered where we were headed.  To create Treasure Island, the Army Corps of Engineers piled hundreds of thousands of tons of boulders onto the the shoals north of Yerba Buena Island. They dug up the equivalent of 2½ million dump-truck-loads of bay mud and sand, dropping the muck inside the boulder dam. Treasure Island is one of San Francisco’s least visited and most oddball neighborhoods, an artificial land mass created to transform some dangerously rocky shoals into “Magic City” just in time for the 1938 World’s Fair. All it took was the Army Corps of Engineers, hundreds of thousands of tons of boulders, and 2.5 million dump-trucks-worth of bay mud and sand. The new 400-acre island was bursting with style and glamour. Everyone from Judy Garland to W.C. Handy, the father of the blues, performed there. Most of the entertainment was suitable for the whole family, but there were a few burlesque shows, the most notorious of which was Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch with its scantily clad (but far from actually nude) cowgirls. The sexiest seaplane ever — the China Clipper — had its own hangar on the shore and regularly flew (gasp!) to Asia. According to local legend, someone claimed gold had been found in the island’s mud, and the name Treasure Island was born and stuck. And then, just as the party was really getting started, WWII broke out, and Treasure Island was turned over to the Navy for the rest of the century. When I first met Rich, he was still in the Naval Reserve and spent his weekends serving there. For him, traveling to Treasure Island was a journey back in time to his youth.  This was taken on Rich's graduation from Officer's Candidate School in 1966. Despite having grown up in the Bay Area, I’d never set foot on Treasure Island until that day, and I had the novel experience of feeling like a tourist in my own city. I was impressed with the hustle and bustle, and hoped the island wasn’t on a collision course with climate destiny. Right now, Treasure Island is knee-deep in a multibillion-dollar renovation project. Recreational space: 210 acres. Hotel rooms: 500. Retail: 550,000 square feet. New homes: 8000, with 27% of them reserved for low-income and homeless households. Everyone’s excited about the potential. All the developers have to do is solve a few pesky little problems — like what to do about the rising water in the bay. Stop me if you’ve heard this, but apparently climate change is melting the ice caps and causing seas to rise all over the planet. I know, bad news for everybody, and especially people in coastal California. “It’s unlike any disaster we have ever seen,” warn scientists, who have this crazy idea we ought to try to curb carbon emissions so it doesn’t keep getting worse. Last I heard, the bay's water levels are projected to rise a foot by 2030, three feet by mid-century, and seven feet by 2100. Yikes! Good thing I took swimming lessons as a kid!  Engineers are hoping the dirt pile shown at right will help the island settle. Not surprisingly, Treasure Island has been identified as one of the most vulnerable locations in the state. “Engineers built the island atop a bottom layer of mud,” explains science writer Kevin Stark. “The weight of earth and buildings on this gooey muck compresses it like a sponge and over time causes the island to sink. Treasure Island is descending at about the same rate as the sea is rising.” So islanders can look forward to twice as much flooding in half the time. Of course, this being let’s-try-something-new California, engineers are embracing all sorts of innovative solutions. Giant straws knows as “wick drains” are sucking water out of the mud. Towering cranes are hammering the ground to compact it. Enormous mounds of earth are weighting down the island. House are being moved back from the shore. And everyone is sending up prayers to whatever Higher Being they believe in. If the effort’s successful, it could become a model for other coastal cities preparing for higher and higher tides.  Towering cranes slam long, vibrating beams into the ground with the idea that the vibrations cause the land to settle quicker. “We are well-positioned to adapt to even some of the worst-case scenarios,” insists Bob Beck, director of the Treasure Island Development Authority. Which sounds worryingly close to the deckhand on the Titanic who said, “God himself could not sink this ship.” But Beck’s right; the only thing we can place our faith in is our ability to adapt. Nobody knows how high seas will rise or what other natural or man-made disasters may befall us. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that we humans are remarkably gifted at course corrections. And that’s especially true of Treasure Islanders, whose stories are being preserved in an oral history project. MeeSun Boice, for instance, left corporate life to reinvent herself as a restauranteur. She and her business partner, chef Parke Ulrich, opened Mersea (it’s Old English for "island oasis") serving delicious food on the Great Lawn with stunning views of the San Francisco skyline. The buildings are repurposed shipping containers, and many of the tabletops started life as bowling alley lanes in the officer’s club of the Naval base. “We made the tables ourselves,” Ulrich told me. “One day I found an old man wandering around and I asked if I could help. He said he’d heard about our tables and wanted to see them for himself. Many years ago he’d been stationed here and met his wife while she was working at that bowling alley. They’d been married all these years. And then he told me she’d just passed away.” Everyone brings a different part of themselves to a place like Treasure Island; our visits transform each of us in different ways. For some, it’s deeply nostalgic, for others it’s a journey of discovery, for environmentalists it’s an exciting chance to try out innovations, for developers it’s a nail-biting business risk. How will it all turn out? No idea. And that’s what makes it interesting. I’ll keep you posted as the project progresses, even if I have to write my rough drafts in waterproof ink.  I loved the way this scary warning sign captured a little of the pirate spirit you'd expect to find in a place called Treasure Island. How have your travels transformed you? Do you feel like you come home a different person? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY WANT TO KNOW WHEN I'M PUBLISHING NEW STUFF? My automatic sign-up form is on the fritz. Yes, still. If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Thanks for understanding. Technology. What can I say?  Not all bluebirds are happy these days. Are you sitting by a window? Look outside. See any birds? If so, let me ask you this: Do you trust them? Because I’ve just learned some worrying facts about the wild birds in my garden — yes those innocent-looking chickadees, finches, and titmice — and I’m not sure what to do. It all started innocently enough, when Rich took up birdwatching. This summer he put up a second songbird feeder and splurged on upscale feed, making him a hero — a god, almost — to birdkind. Then I saw that a nearby bird and animal rescue center was finally re-opening to the public; I knew Rich would love to visit their courtyard to see what kind of wild birds they were nursing back to health. I expected a serene sanctuary and arrived to find the place in a state of considerable alarm. A notice posted out front warned about Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is bird flu back?” “It’s not back exactly,” she said. “But yes, it’s here again.” The distinction was way too subtle for me to grasp. “So where are all the birds?” I asked. “We’ve removed them. A highly contagious strain of avian flu is spreading across the country. It’s everywhere.”  "If you have backyard birdfeeders, get rid of them," the staffer continued urgently. "Where birds congregate, the flu spreads. You're going to be seeing birds falling out of the sky. Swans swimming in circles." The woman next to me had just handed over a hummingbird she’d transported to the center in a cardboard box. Another woman ran in from the street calling out, “I’ve got an injured cormorant in the car.” Two staff members appeared in hazmat gear and sprinted across the street to the woman's SUV. Yes, of course we followed them. One of the hazmat-wearing staffers scooped up a blanket-wrapped bundle and dashed off, presumably to the avian emergency room. Yikes! Before I could panic properly, Rich was shaking his head. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve got catastrophe fatigue. I just can’t worry about this, too. ” He had a point. Even by California standards, this summer has been overloaded with potential emergencies and disasters. We’ve had horrendous wildfires. “Used to be,” a firefighter said in a Zoom meeting, “a 100,000 acre fire was a career-defining moment. Now we’re getting million-acre fires.” A major earthquake is predicted within the decade. We’re 22 years into the worst drought in 1200 years. But what has us reeling right now is the news that one day, possibly soon, we’re going to be hit with a megastorm of biblical proportions. How biblical? Think of the parting of the Red Sea — not the bit about the Israelites crossing dry-shod to safety, but the part where the walls of water closed over the heads of the Egyptians.  Apparently California will soon look like this, only without Moses. In this megastorm, the West Coast will be hit by a vapor plume hundreds of miles wide and 1200 miles long. I know, vapor doesn’t sound too scary, but when it crashes into the mountains it will fly upwards, cool, and turn into rain and snow. The deluge will likely last forty days and forty nights, causing thousands of deaths and $725 billion in damage. Does anybody think we should we start building an Ark? I could see why Rich felt he didn’t have the bandwidth to worry overmuch about whether wild swans were swimming in circles. But we agreed that we’d stop filling our birdfeeders for the duration. It’s been brutal for everybody. Our once cheerful feathered friends are morosely circling the empty feeders in silence, landing on nearby branches to stand glaring at us. “I’m not sure I can take the pressure,” I said to Rich yesterday. “You don’t think they’re massing for an attack, do you?”  A lone goldfinch perches near the empty feeder to glare at me. “Do you think we should break it to them that birds aren’t real?” Rich asked. He was referring to the famous “Birds Aren’t Real” movement, launched in a prankish moment by young Peter McIndoe in 2017. A new president had been elected, emotions were running high, and having grown up a rebel in a hyper-conservative community rife with conspiracy theories, he felt inventing one would express something of the absurdity and angst embedded in the moment. En route to a protest in Memphis, McIndoe scribbled the absurdist statement “Birds Aren’t Real” on some cardboard and took his sign to the streets. A friend’s casual video went viral. McIndoe created a backstory involving avian genocide and the rise of spy drones masquerading as birds. Incredibly, despite frequent tell-all interviews, many of McIndoe’s fans refuse to believe it’s a satire. “McIndoe says more than a million people now call themselves bird truthers,” reported CBS News. “They've flocked to rallies around the country. In front of Twitter's headquarters, they demanded the company drop its bird logo… In an age of outrage, Peter McIndoe is hoping to drown out the chorus of crazy in this country. With a little crazy of his own.”  Peter McIndoe takes his parody on the road. These days it’s not easy to out-crazy anyone or to distinguish fact from fiction. My own world view was shaken by Lulu Miller’s book Why Fish Don't Exist. It explains that taxonomists, the scientists tasked with classifying the natural world in an orderly and sensible manner, completely blew it when it came to aquatic creatures. You probably learned in school that whales and porpoises are not fish but marine mammals, but beyond that we all got the impression every other scaly aquatic creature was a legitimate fish. However, scientific grouping requires tracing things back to a common ancestor, and that’s where things get dicey. The lungfish, for instance, is technically more closely related to a cow, because they both have lungs, than it is to a salmon, which doesn’t. In short, the whole 33,000-species classification system is a disaster and someone is going to have to untangle it. This has been clear since the 1980s, but ichthyologists, the scientists studying fish, find the idea so counterintuitive and depressing they are largely choosing to ignore it.  So we live in a world where fish don’t exist, birds do but people think they don’t, and the weather is turning biblical on us. In the midst of all this chaos, one fact has emerged with searing clarity: Rich and I are going to keep feeding our wild birds. It turns out songbirds don’t fall ill with avian flu, although they can be carriers. Minnesota’s Raptor Center, which in spring advised taking down birdfeeders as a precaution, now says this isn’t necessary. And as we all know, raptors are the total bad-asses of the bird world; I am not about to second-guess them. Besides, according to astrologists, “keeping food and water for birds, or feeding a dog or a cow on regular basis, increases one’s prosperity, eliminates conflicts, lessens the impact of past life sins, and brings victory in court cases.” And with luck it will generate enough good karma to keep us out of harm’s way until we return to Spain next month.  Our backyard feeder is back and more popular than ever. Are you feeding any backyard birds? Have you figured out how to get yours to start social distancing to avoid spreading the avian flu? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY WANT TO KNOW WHEN I'M PUBLISHING NEW STUFF?
My automatic sign-up form is on the fritz. Again. If you would like to subscribe to my blog and get notices when I publish, just send me an email. I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Thanks for understanding. Technology. What can I say? |
Welcome travelers, future travelers & armchair travelers!
This blog is a promotion-free zone. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things that interest me and that I believe might prove useful for you all to know about. Whew! I wanted to clear that up before we went any further. Thanks for listening.  Karen McCann
I'm an American travel writer based in Seville, Spain. Wanderlust has taken me to more than 60 countries. Every week I provide travel tips and adventure stories to inspire your journeys and let you have more fun — and better food — on the road Don't miss out! Sign up for my blog. MORE INFO HERE 
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