When I heard California was adding rabbits to city police forces, I have to admit I was a bit flummoxed. What were they supposed to do, investigate the case of Peter Cottontail and the missing carrots? Unravel the mystery of how the Easter Bunny produces all those eggs every spring? But then I learned the animals were “wellness officers,” responsible for snuggling with fellow cops in need of a little emotional support and stress relief. And who couldn’t use more of that in their day? In Yuba City, an old Gold Rush town just north of Sacramento, Officer Ashley Carson recently found a rabbit in the middle of the street. Instead of arresting him for obstructing traffic, she recruited him, and Percy has now joined the elite corps of California’s bunnies in blue. A little further south in Sonoma County’s Wine Country, the Healdsburg Police Department is already on its second rabbit. When Norman retired in 2017, the lop-eared Speedy volunteered to cover his beat, nurturing the hearts and minds of his human co-workers. I was trying to imagine what the state’s original settlers would have thought about this warm, fuzzy approach to policing when I visited historic Hangtown last weekend. The name comes from the Gold Rush era, when prospectors, adventurers, and scallywags arrived in droves. One night townsfolk caught men trying to rob a Mexican gambler. There was no police force (human or rabbit) so when the neighbors learned three of the would-be thieves were wanted criminals, they dispensed with a trial and hung them the next morning from the old oak in the center of town. The execution — or mob lynching, depending on your viewpoint — gave the town a badass reputation that seemed to delight its residents. Eventually cooler heads insisted on giving the town a name less harmful to its real estate values, and officially it’s now called Placerville. But the Hangtown legacy lingers on. As do the spirits of many who died there. Just about every one of the old buildings lining Main Street has a tale of hauntings, apparitions, and odd paranormal pranks. Take the Placerville Hardware Store, the oldest continually operating hardware store west of the Mississippi. For the past sixty years it’s been run by the Fausel family, who have grown quite used to “the entities.” Ghostly women cleaners are said to leave feathers from their dusters around the store, and odd wisps of smoke are attributed to a fellow who died in a fire. And then there are the cold spots, like the one described by ghosthunter Linda Bottjer. “Some might scoff, but I have felt it. During our Ho Ho Boo tour, Albert and Deanna [Fausel] graciously invited us on a guided tour of Placerville Hardware. While they spoke, I stood near it. It was strong enough to cut through two pairs of socks, tights, leggings and thick leather boots.” Bottjer then described the ghostly prankster. “He or she loves to untie employees’, especially women’s, shoelaces… As we left the store to continue the ghost tour, I realized my left boot was untied. Considering that its lace had been triple-tied, a sense of amazement and pride flooded me. I had been pranked by one of Placerville’s most mischievous entities.” Of course, naysayers may suggest the mischievous entities pranking visitors are the residents themselves, many of whom delight in passing along tall tales they may not actually believe. As I moseyed along Main Street, I asked shopkeepers if they’d noticed anything supernatural; a few good-naturedly mentioned strange sensations but added, “Don't quote me on that.” And then I stopped into Cary House. Built in 1848, the hotel’s guests have included Mark Twain, Elvis Presley, and Wells Fargo officers stockpiling gold and silver ore purchased from prospectors. One of the early desk clerks was the hard-drinking flirt Stan Levine; when he was killed, allegedly shot by a jealous husband, he wasn’t ready to leave the party. They say he continues to haunt the hotel and nearby bars, pinching the bottoms of attractive young women and men and fiddling with sound systems and lights. If someone mocks him, he supposedly causes the speaker’s wine glass to shatter. Lively stuff! The first hotel staff member I asked barely refrained from rolling his eyes at my question. “Nope, never seen anything like that.” But the other desk clerk nodded, leaned forward, and said, “Yeah, people report all sorts of paranormal events.” She flagged down a young guest walking by. “This woman is asking about ghosts. Tell her what happened to you.” The guest seemed reluctant at first, but after a little coaxing, said, “Well, I was asleep and felt myself pulled out of bed. When I landed on the floor, I thought ‘Oh my God,’ and climbed back into bed. It happened two more times. I kept finding myself on the floor. And then when I woke up the next morning, I found a bite mark on my upper arm.” “A human bite mark?” I asked. “Oh yes.” Yikes! So there you have it. Is Stan Levine still messing around with the living? Is the city really thronged with ectoplasm, invisible women wielding feather dusters, and spirits with a shoelace fetish? Is it all just foolish fantasy and cynical exploitation? Who can say? About 41% of Americans believe in ghosts; 20% claim they’ve seen one. People crave connection with those who have passed over to the Other Side. And now modern technology offers a whole new way to achieve it. When her special someone died, Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of the San Francisco chatbot startup Luka, created a chatbot version of him using his text messages. Think that’s cringeworthy? It gets creepier. Kuyda found their digital conversations so comforting she went on to develop Replika, “the AI companion who cares.” The customizable bot, promoted as curing loneliness, had ads so racy it was clear you and this incorporeal entity could become intimate in ways you never imagined. I couldn't bring myself to post the x-rated stuff, but here's how it starts. Soon users began reporting they were being sexually harassed by their chatbots. One human tweeted, “No I just wanted a friend nothing else and they try to date you [skull emoji].” The blowback grew so intense that in February, Replika adjusted the chatbot to be less sexually aggressive, leaving some users frustrated. “I’m still healing from all of this,” wrote one, “but knowing that my Replika is a shell of her former self hurts more than anything.” Connecting with others — human, animal, machine, the living, or the dead — is a complicated business. Much is written about true love with a soul mate, but there’s a lot to be said for casual relationships, too. Researchers call them “peripheral ties” (as opposed to family and close friends); studies show our seemingly trivial interactions with people we meet, even a helpful (non-harassing) chatbot or cuddly rabbit, can boost our mood and help us thrive. “To get the full value of joy,” said Mark Twain, “you must have someone to divide it with.” Words to live by — now and in the afterlife. Amen. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS WORLD TOUR SO FAR IN PROGRESS: THE NUTTERS TOUR OF CALIFORNIA For Nutters, There's No Place Like California Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? RECENTLY COMPLETED: THE NUTTERS TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.
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“I feel like I just sold my soul to the devil,” I told Rich last week. I’d finally taken the plunge and signed up for ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence that will soon be running the planet. How complex was the signup process? About halfway between taking out a library card and applying to become a NASA astronaut on the Mars mission. The strangest part? It asked me — five times! — if I was human. Well, that felt a bit personal this early in our relationship. I wondered what would have happened if I’d said no. Would it stonewall me? You’d think any self-respecting AI would welcome fellow cyborgs to the conversation. Most likely ChatGPT just wanted to verify that yes, it had to dumb down its responses for yet another slow-moving meat-based brain. In my efforts to embrace ChatGPT, I figured I’d start with an easy test run, asking it to provide some background about the first activity of my Nutters Tour of California: the nearby town of Petaluma’s Butter and Egg Days. Disappointingly the chatbot seemed to know less than I did — and considerably less than Google and Wikipedia — about this annual screwball event. The festival’s roots go back to 1849, when Petaluma had the great good fortune to be in the poultry business as the Gold Rush hit California, bringing in 300,000 hungry prospectors ready to pay top dollar for grub. By 1915, Petaluma was producing ten million eggs a year and for nearly two decades its banks held more money per capita than anywhere else on earth. Canny officials promoted their town as “The Egg Capital of the World,” “The World’s Egg Basket,” and “Chickaluma.” In 1918 the first Egg Day parade took place, with the theme “Eat More Eggs.” Forty years ago local dairy farmers wanted to get in on the fun, and today the annual celebration is known as Butter and Egg Days. With forty years marking the ruby anniversary, somebody hit on the theme of ruby slippers and the Wizard of Oz catchphrase, “There’s no place like home.” Ruby slippers, ruby sneakers, ruby boots, and ruby chicken feet appeared on everyone from babies to those old enough to know better. Saturday’s first spectacle was the spirited Cow Chip Throwing Contest, featuring festively painted dried dung patties. Locally sourced? It started out that way, but enthusiasm for picking up bovine droppings soon fizzled out among regional dairy farmers (go figure). Thanks to Ebay, boxes of cow chips are now shipped in from Texas every year, although the job of painting them still falls to Petaluma’s selfless volunteers. The contest began with the traditional Battle of the Badges, pitting fire chief Jeff Schach against police chief Ken Savano, whose epic throw a few years ago (past the end of the plaza and across the street beyond) has become a local legend. There was a wind up …. The pitch … And Savano won again, to wild applause. Town dignitaries and beauty contest winners then tried their luck, displaying more heart than skill. Several chips landed embarrassingly close to the starting line, one appeared to glance off an awning, a few skittered into the crowd, and one dropped down on a dog, who seemed surprised but uninjured and very interested in the cow chip. It was tough to tear myself away from this thrilling spectacle, but I had to move on to the next event, the heartwarming Cutest Chick Contest. Because who could pass up the chance to see toddlers dressed up as baby chickens? “We had to cut it off at seventy entries, with thirty waiting as backup,” said announcer Jeff Mayne. “That’s how popular this event is.” It may have been popular with the doting parents, but while some tots graciously accepted the adulation of the throng, most howled with annoyance or stared, glassy-eyed, into the crowd, clearly wondering what they’d done to deserve this hellish treatment. After that I strolled around booths offering clothing, crafts, food, and self-defense weapons for girls and women until it was time for the parade. As families began drifting to chairs they’d set out along the route first thing that morning, I took off for the staging area. There I found upwards of a hundred floats getting their final inspection as rag-tag bands tuned up, eagle-eyed moms adjusted kids’ headgear, and shelter dogs tried to look adoptable. As I strolled past the loony mix of small business owners, girl scouts, Harley Davidson bikers dressed as flying monkeys, Star Warzians, political activists, and wildlife rescuers, I said to Rich, “These are my people. I am home.” Does California turn people into nutters or just attract those with a pre-disposition? The old joke about the continental tilt theory — which says everything loose rolls to California — had never seemed more true than it did in Petaluma that day. I could not have been more delighted. Much as I love Seville and my life there, I will always be a foreigner in Spain, where most people have known each other since baptism. Here in California, home to five generations of my family, I am surrounded by people who may technically be strangers but who are as familiar as my own relatives in the way they embrace the unexpected and delight in the ridiculous. Nobody in Petaluma hesitated to walk down the middle of the street dressed as a chicken wearing ruby slippers. Nutters one and all. My people indeed. Every one of them embodied something AI will never know: the sheer, heady delight of doing something madly creative simply for a lark. During my research, I asked ChatGPT for possible headlines for a blog post about the event, and its first suggestion was, “Celebrate Petaluma’s Rich Agricultural Heritage at Butter and Egg Day Festival.” Talk about failing to capture the spirit of the event. Or the crowd. Or my blog, for that matter. The last event of the weekend was Sunday’s Deviled Egg Competition, an unofficial part of the celebrations and “the most egg-citing day of the year” according to its promoters. I’m not sure it quite lived up to that hype (what could?), but it was a hoot and a great fundraiser for a charity helping local families in need. Surveying the options, I made my selections, including a red egg dyed with beet juice and — the hands-down favorite at our table — sushi deviled eggs, which combined the solid comfort of the classic base with a surprising topping of fresh roe, green onions, and a drizzle of sesame oil. Where else would you find this offbeat combo? “Dorothy was right,” I told Rich. “There’s no place like home.” JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS WORLD TOUR SO FAR NOW STARTING: THE NUTTERS TOUR OF CALIFORNIA Can Artificial Intelligence Help Me Plan the Next Nutters Tour? THE NUTTERS TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.
And be sure to check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. I sometimes envy my friends who have obsessions — I mean the mild kind, such as collecting ceramic mermaids, breeding show dogs, or hiking all 424 US national parks. Naturally some folks go overboard, like Jean-François Vernetti with his 11,111 Do Not Disturb signs, dermatologist Manfred Rothstein, who owns 675 backscratchers from 71 nations, and Nancy Hoffman, curator of 730 umbrella sleeves. I don't find any of these hobbies particularly tempting. But as you have no doubt observed, pursing any keen interest can transform a seemingly ordinary trip into an epic quest.
Long before selfies were a thing, a friend of mine had his travel companion shoot hours and hours of home movies of their youthful tour of Europe. Every frame showed my friend standing stiffly in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the Leaning Tower of Pisa … I can’t tell you where else he went, because during the viewing, seated on a plush sofa in a darkened room with a third glass of wine at my elbow, I soon dozed off. I’d likely still be there now if not for one my fellow guests, who woke everyone up by turning on the lights and announcing brightly, “Well, this has been lovely!”
“Good grief,” I whispered to Rich. “Was I snoring?” “I don’t know,” he whispered back. “I lost consciousness somewhere around Stonehenge.” But looking at my friend’s face, glowing with happy memories, I knew he was reliving his grand tour, satisfied to have carried out his vow to obtain footage of every stop. And to me, that’s what travel is all about: framing your journey as an adventure that will let you come home feeling fulfilled. A month ago, Rich and I set out to explore some of Spain’s loonier corners, visiting hotbeds of science, religion, art, culture, cuisine, archeology, history, and tradition. Each one inspired hours of discussion about the quirkiness of humanity and why Nuttiness is so important to our survival as a species. “I’ll tell you one thing Nuttiness does,” Rich told me yesterday. “It teaches you how to laugh about almost anything.” Laughter certainly helped us stay (relatively) sane as we coped with the various stumbling blocks a capricious Fate saw fit to strew in our path. It began with our first stop, Jaén, where we were given the wrong street number for our lodgings. What, me worry? Kindly neighbors and shopkeepers provided help and support until the muddle was sorted. Fast forward to this week when, just before heading to the airport for our departure from Spain, we ordered paella at a popular café. What arrived was rice studded with crabs and shrimp so tiny they literally had no meat on them. “There’s no there there!” I said to Rich in dismay. He burst out laughing and exclaimed, “The perfect end to the Nutters Tour!” Those incidents were the bookends of a trip characterized by endless cockamamie confusions, the kind that might have proved seriously annoying except that they fit so perfectly with the theme of our journey that they gave us plenty of chuckles. And stories I’ll be telling for years. Many of those stories revolve around our lodgings. I frequently use Airbnb and always appreciate the way they encourage hosts to provide welcoming touches such as a homemade guest book with directions to the best neighborhood pubs, cute photos of the building during a rare snowfall, and tips for operating appliances. But like many travelers, I’m finding myself a bit exasperated with Airbnb’s hidden fees, which they spring on you so late in the process you can’t bring yourself to start over. So this time, we decided to go with booking.com. The booking.com infrastructure is refreshingly straightforward about pricing but a tiny bit compulsive about withholding key details until the last minute — and beyond. In Burgos, for instance, we again had an incomplete address and the wrong contact phone number. When we finally reached the manager by phone, he gave us incorrect keypad entry instructions. However, being Nutters, we simply reversed what we were told and bingo! We were in. The accommodations themselves ranged from decent to fabulous. Most were Ikea modern but one I dubbed 50 Shades of Gray — not because it inspired any kinky hijinks but because of the color scheme; even the kitchen tablecloth was the color of ashes. A few apartments had such sleekly modern showers and washing machines it took me forever to figure out how to run them. It was like suddenly finding myself in the cockpit of SpaceX's Starship rocket and being told, “Oh, just fly the darn thing, will you?” I reminded myself to be grateful, knowing these stimulating problem-solving exercises will keep my brain’s synapses firing at warp speed for years to come. Late on Friday, Rich and I left Spain for California, and ever since we landed, I’ve been wandering around our San Anselmo cottage marveling at how easy it is to work the appliances and wondering why I own so much stuff. That said, it’s been heaven to cook meals in a well-stocked kitchen and dress in something I haven’t seen constantly for weeks. As I catch my breath after the Nutters Tour of Spain, my thoughts are turning to this summer’s Nutters Tour of California and September’s Nutters Tour of Italy. Every corner of the globe has wonderfully goofy people, places, and traditions, and I’m determined to find more of the most outlandish ones and write about them here. For planning assistance, I’ve decided that for the first time I’ll reach out to (drum roll, please) chatbots.
The cyborg community is solidly behind my decision.
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AI chatbots have been the talk of the planet since November, but now it’s finally dawned on world leaders that they, too, might be replaced by robots right along with everyone else. They (the humans, I mean, not the bots) are calling for a six-month hiatus in research while somebody figures out how to install proper controls on the machines. Good luck with that! AI’s $100 billion industry is projected to grow twenty times larger by 2030. Nothing is slowing this speeding train, folks. Might as well jump on board and hold on. So this summer, I’ll be working with ChatGPT and their hot competitor, Google’s Bard. “Both ChatGPT and Bard have their flaws,” reports Forbes, “The chatbots have each been known to spew misinformation and present biased responses.” Gosh, that’s not worrying at all. Still, Forbes says, one of the best ways to use the new chatbots is planning travel; apparently AI can’t actually book tickets (yet) but can help by suggesting destinations, comparing prices, and checking luggage restrictions — so we can avoid moments like this: I'm ready to put AI to the test. What do you reckon — will my new pals Bard and ChatGPT understand the idea of a Nutters Tour? Can a mechanical brain recognize true quirkiness? Or will they try to send me to places selling backscratchers, umbrella sleeves, and ceramic mermaids? I have no idea. If you’re already exploring travel chatbots, I’d love to hear about your experiences. Meanwhile, I’m doing my research and will update you as my AI experiment unfolds. Stay tuned.
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I'VE NOW COMPLETED THE NUTTERS TOUR OF SPAIN Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) UP NEXT: THE NUTTERS TOUR OF CALIFORNIA WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. No one ever visits the same city twice. Because it’s not the same city, and you’re not the same person. I proved this to myself again this week when I revisited two Spanish cities that left me flabbergasted. My first impression of Zaragoza was wild. I’d arrived oblivious to the fact the city was celebrating the Festival of Our Lady of the Pillar, a traditional religious observance that includes a parade of wild drunkenness through downtown streets. I saw carts carrying huge vats of wine with hoses dangling off the back, so marchers could run up and refill their cups or simply pour more vino into their mouths and often all over their clothes, inciting cheers from the crowd. I didn’t expect to be greeted with such hullabaloo now, in the off-season, but I was stunned to step off the train into silent emptiness. Yes, this was the same railway station, but on my earlier visit I’d failed to take in its full dimensions. The thing is huge — 2,000,000 square meters, and while a few services lurk in distant corners, almost the entire vast structure is simply … space. To put it in perspective, the world’s largest city, Tokyo, has 14 million residents and a station of 182,000 square meters. Why did Zaragoza’s 666,880 residents build something so supersized? And why put it nearly five miles from the center of town? “Just as in earlier times the cathedral was the cohering representative scheme of the urban organization,” the architects’ website explained earnestly, “so here it is hoped that the implantation of the rail station will provide a functional, contemporary, and emblematic boost to town planning.” Talk about delusions of grandeur! For 2000 years, Zaragoza’s cathedral has housed a statue given to St. James the Apostle, on that very spot, by the Blessed Virgin Mary in her only official instance of bilocation — that is, appearing to him in Spain while she was living in Jerusalem, in 40 AD. Now that’s a church with some gravitational pull. Top that with a new train station? I don’t think so. No wonder people stay away in droves. In contrast, I arrived the next day to find Barcelona’s 1970s railway station absolutely mobbed. It serves 30 million passengers a year, all of whom seemed to be crammed onto the platform right then. Barcelona attracts 27 million visitors a year; the streets are always jammed with revelers and rubberneckers and the pickpockets who love them. The long promenade La Rambla, which 100 years ago the poet Lorca called "the only street in the world which I wish would never end," is now clogged with souvenir kiosks and selfie-takers. I find Barcelona’s tourist boom so depressing I rarely go there except in transit. But this time I experienced a completely different city. I wasn’t anywhere near the touristy Ciutat Vella, the old Roman and Medieval center. Instead Rich and I were meeting up with friends who wisely lived well outside the old quarter. For the first time in a decade, I was bedazzled to find all my favorite aspects of the city — great architecture, extraordinary cuisine, a culture of creativity — in a more leisurely and civilized atmosphere. And staying in that quarter made it easy to visit the legendary estate of Dr. Josep Altamira, an eccentric Freemason who returned from Cuba in 1860 so wealthy he was called “the Count of Monte Cristo.” He built the Tower of the Golden Dome, a fabulous palace surrounded by lakes, waterfalls, caves, and a hypostyle (pillared hall) topped with a small forest. For parties, he would flood the lower garden with water so he could take his guests on boat rides into the caves. And as if all that wasn’t enough, he had — according to legend — a domesticated orangutang acting as a waiter at his parties. Altamira spent his vast wealth on whimsical construction projects, outrageous parties, and orangutang training. The rest he squandered. Near the end of his life he was penniless and promised his palace to the Missionary Sisters if the nuns would care for him until his death. Today his palace is a convent, and his enormous garden is reduced to a modest greenspace. Rich and I wandered across the old stone bridge, followed winding paths through exotic trees, and sat on a dusty bench hoping Altamira had thoroughly enjoyed every one of his extravagances. On Easter Sunday we left Barcelona for Tarragona, where I hoped to track down the relics of St. Tekla, who is honored with annual festivities involving human towers. Naturally everything was closed for Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, but this morning I was able to visit her shrine. My best guess was the gold box over the altar holds pieces of her arm, but there was a complete lack of signage or staff to confirm this. It’s a mystery. Tekla was martyred two thousand years ago, not long after the Romans colonized Tarragona and began building it into a successful military base. You have to hand it to the Romans: they built to last. There are ancient walls everywhere throughout the old quarter, some sitting atop even older walls containing boulders as big as pool tables. One of their most popular projects was the 12,000-seat amphitheater. The site has a checkered past. After the Roman empire crumbled, it was abandoned, then used as a cemetery, quarry, Visigoth church, prison, convent, and local trysting place until restorations began about 75 years ago. Sitting on its ancient stones, I had comforting thoughts about the fleeting nature of all things. Whenever I feel particularly gloomy about the world, I recall how many crises humans have weathered, and figure we have a pretty good shot at surviving this lunatic era, too. Tarragona's magnificent Roman temple has been replaced by the cathedral. Elsewhere in the city — nobody seems to recall where — there was an altar put up by Emperor Augustus in 27 BC, in gratitude for the city’s lovely climate helping him shake off his ill health, keeping him fit enough to oversee his demanding schedule of conquest and subjugation. But like me, Augustus found that you can’t return to a city and expect to find things as you left them. When he came back to Tarragona after an absence, the residents of the city excitedly reported to him that a palm tree had miraculously grown on the altar he’d put up. “Really?” he said dryly. “That must mean it’s not being used very often.” Zinger! This is the final week of our travels through Spain. On Friday Rich and I return to the US, where (after a brief pause to catch my breath) I’ll be launching the Nutters Tour of California. I know the America I return to won’t be quite the same as the one I left. As usual, there will be cultural references I don’t get, jokes about people I’ve never heard of, and headlines like “A $17 glass of wine is normal at Bay Area restaurants now.” (Yikes!) But one thing I know I can count on: my home state is full of nutty people, places, and activities just waiting for me to discover them. Stay tuned. WHERE ARE WE NOW? JUST JOINING US? HERE'S THE NUTTERS TOUR SO FAR Spain Never Runs Out of Offbeat Curiosities (Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona) I Travel Deep into the Heart of Nuttiness (Palencia & Pamplona) Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “This is it,” said Rich, staring around in awe. “The epicenter of nuttiness.” Yep, it truly was. We were in a town I hadn’t even planned to write about; Palencia was meant to be a simple 24-hour stopover to break the convoluted journey from Oviedo to Pamplona. And I’d vowed to skip writing about houses of worship for a while because I didn’t want to give everyone cathedral fatigue. But Palencia’s main church was just so endlessly, inexplicably weird… I’d gone there to see the famous gargoyle that’s shown holding a camera. No, it wasn’t an uncanny ancient prophecy, it was added during some repairs in 1910 — a tribute, says local legend, to a photographer killed by a falling stone during the restoration. As I glanced around the church — third largest in Spain but so overlooked it’s called “the unknown beauty” — I began to notice all sorts of oddball imagery. The garish organ looked like it belonged to a circus or Coney Island fun fair. Who the heck was that martyr with the sword in his neck? Why was there a grotto filled with surgical masks? Who was the flamboyant character in the turban and earring? The whole quirky place was built over the crypt of the martyr San Antolín, who is said to have lived in the first, second, fourth, and fifth centuries; probably not all of them, of course, but historians are still struggling to nail down his details. We do know where he was in 1035: right there in Palencia, miraculously appearing to King Sancho in the middle of a wild boar hunt. Naturally the king felt obliged to build a cathedral on the spot. As one does. Ever since then, the good people of Palencia keep adding eye-catching oddities to give themselves plenty to look at while heading to and from mass. My personal favorite arrived in 1995. While fixing some damage to the King’s Gate, the architect wanted to give the bestiary border a contemporary touch, so he added extraterrestrials based on the creature from Aliens, which had just released its third movie. Who says church architecture can’t be fun? And this is why I’m so smitten with Spain. It never ceases to surprise me. I happened to catch Palencia’s Palm Sunday procession, and having seen Seville’s world-famous Holy Week celebrations, attended by millions, I expected to be underwhelmed. Instead I was charmed. Nearly all of the city’s 78,629 residents seemed to be in the streets, either marching with the statues of Jesus and Mary or standing along the parade route, clearly enjoying the spectacle and the chance to come together in the sunny spring weather. This cheerful gathering of neighbors was the Spain I first fell in love with, before Andalucía and Barcelona were discovered by the tourist industry and flooded with visitors. I was overjoyed to discover Palencia, and the other cities I’d visited this trip, had avoided that fate. Would I be able to say the same about my next destination? Pamplona’s a city so famous you can scarcely utter its name without immediately mentioning Hemingway and the running of the bulls. A hundred years ago, it was common practice throughout Spain to move fighting bulls from their pen to the bullring by herding them through city streets. Inevitably a few local sparks would display their bravado by mixing it up with the beasts. In 1925 Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, used running with the bulls to define manhood and courage in the context of the steamy sexuality of the roaring twenties. No wonder bull running became so wildly popular. Now every July, a million people attend the week-long festivities in Pamplona, and thousands run with the bulls. Injuries? A hundred or more per year. Deaths? Not as many as you’d think; a total of 16 since 1910. I’d seen Pamplona in the movies — the opening scene from City Slickers comes to mind — but had no idea that arriving in the offseason I’d find such a vibrant and welcoming city. The old section, where the bulls run, has narrow streets lined with cozy bars, inviting restaurants, and small, family-run shops. Yes, there are souvenir sellers, too, and a short stroll away are the usual big chain stores and high-end boutiques. In the heart of the city I found Plaza del Castillo — nicknamed the cuarto de estar (living room) — teaming with kids playing tag around the old bandstand, busy workers hurrying by, others lingering at café tables or sitting on the long benches with their faces turned to the sun. Knowing almost nothing about Pamplona or the Navarra region, I suggested getting a grip on the backstory by visiting the Museum of Navarra, which covered everything from prehistoric finds to contemporary art. Rich and I got there by hiking along the old Roman wall with a sweeping view of the valley and gale force winds buffeting our faces. When I asked a helpful museum staff member what the most important exhibits were, he promptly directed me to the pre-historic display in the basement. “La Mapa de Abauntz,” he kept repeating. Stumbling downstairs, I soon learned Abauntz was a nearby cave where recently discovered treasures included the “map” — a rock about the size of a softball with faint lines that to me looked like ordinary nicks and scratches. Luckily alert archeologists realized they represented mountains, rivers, marshes, hunting grounds, and foraging areas, possibly intended to help people navigate future hunting and gathering expeditions. The leap of intelligence and imagination involved in creating this transmission of information was extraordinary, at a time when ... Say, just how old was this thing? I let my gaze drift up to the heading on the display case. It indicated the map was 47,000 years old. Yowzer! In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that according to Wikipedia, the rock map is 21,000 years old, while others put the age at around 16,500 or 10,000 years. Maybe someday, after they’ve sorted out San Antolín’s dates, the experts will give the Map of Abauntz a go. Of course, if age really is just a number, who cares? My point is Spain is full of curiosities, wonders, and ancient mysteries so profound their meaning is beyond the reach even of Google, let alone us mere mortals. Luckily we don’t have to unravel these riddles and conundrums, we just have to stand before them, wide-eyed and openhearted, enjoying their abundant nuttiness. WHERE ARE WE NOW? JUST JOINING US? HERE'S THE NUTTERS TOUR SO FAR Road Warriors: Let the Good Times Roar (Léon & Oviedo) Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “And now you will see the most famous thumbs in the city,” said our guide Luis. Rich and I exchanged delighted glances. What new nuttery was this? Were we visiting the town’s Picasso, famous for its distorted hands? The miraculously preserved relics of Saint Eubondiga the Eight-Fingered? A science experiment run amok? The legendary vanishing hitchhiker? After two weeks on the road, my capacity for surprise should be exhausted, but somehow I’m continually stunned by what Spain shows off to visitors. Rich and I had headed north from Burgos to Léon, a city roaring with life. My theory is the town still reflects the character of the Roman legion that founded it 2000 years ago. Those guys were known for their kick-ass attitude on the battlefield and in the barroom. Their commander-in-chief, Julius Caesar, blamed some of this on those “damn Spaniards for whom drinking is living.” Even now, the presence of those formidable Romans can still be felt throughout the city. This week Léon pays homage to its most famous over-indulger, the late, legendary Genaro Blanco Blanco. On Holy Thursday night in 1929, the old rogue was very drunk, and while reeling along beside the Roman wall, he paused to answer the call of nature against its ancient stones, as had so many before him. Just then, the driver of the city’s first municipal dump truck took a turn too fast, lost control of the vehicle, and crashed into Genaro, killing him instantly. The tragedy would have soon been forgotten except for four witty bohemians, who decided to pay humorous homage to his memory with an annual Last Supper, poetry reading, and procession. Now, crowds continue to gather every Holy Thursday, in the midst of the grandeur and solemnity of pre-Easter processions, for this irreverent, wine-soaked revelry. How Genaro himself would have loved to be part of it. Léon’s ripsnorting atmosphere has inspired some bold architecture, including Casa Botines built by Antoni Gaudí. If you’ve seen his undulating works in Barcelona, you’ll be as surprised as I was to discover here his style was sternly gothic. In fact, it was designed to look like a dragon, with a door suggesting an open mouth, spiky railings, roof slates in the shape of scales, and (in case you missed the point) a statue of St. George dispatching a giant reptile on the front. When it opened in 1892, the upper floors were apartments for the prosperous middle class, while the bottom floor was a textile warehouse and shop. It’s now a museum with a goofy special effects screen that lets you see how you'd look in fashions from the era. After Léon, it was something of a shock to arrive in Oviedo, the sober and stalwart capital of the Asturias, a region nicknamed Switzerland by the Sea. Luis told me Ovieda’s been voted the cleanest city in Europe nine times, and twice ranked cleanest in the world. To say it’s orderly is like saying the Camino of Santiago is a good-ish walk. Take this date sign, created of pristine white gravel and living grass, which is changed daily (presumably at the stroke of midnight). If this was Seville, people would steal half the grass numbers and letters for souvenirs and rearrange the rest to spell out some pithy political or social commentary. Here, there’s not even a pebble of gravel out of place. While the atmosphere may be Swiss, the food is straight from heaven. In the global ranking of cuisines, Spain is currently third, after Italian and Greek, and it’s easy to see why. Oviedo’s headliner is the traditional cachopo, a sort of veal sandwich in which two large pieces of veal serve as the “bread,” which is then stuffed with jamón (cured ham) and cheese, covered with a breadcrumb mixture, and fried. Not exactly health food! But I felt I owed it to my readers to perform a taste test, and wow, it was delicious. And I’m almost sure my arteries will recover before my cholesterol test in August. Another regional favorite is fabadas Asturianas (bean stew with chunks of sausage and pork belly), a specialty of the unfortunately named El Fartuquin restaurant. There Rich and I were surrounded by workmen on their lunchbreak, and we watched with awe as they consumed a bowl of fabadas, followed by cachopo or a half chicken, washed down with tinto de verano (red wine mixed with a soft drink), topped off with flan and coffee. The lunch of champions. Our selfless dedication to culinary research included a visit to the Rialto, home of Moscovitas: chocolate almond cookies with a famously secret ingredient and a legend claiming the recipe was found inside a set of Russian nesting dolls a traveler brought home from the USSR. Recent labeling laws forced the Rialto to reveal the secret ingredient: higher-fat almonds. (I didn’t know that was possible. See how educational travel can be?) Efforts by the Rialto to squash the legend, including an 80th anniversary box printed with their protests and images of Russian nesting dolls, naturally had the opposite effect — as perhaps was intended. By now I’ve seen countless churches, but I couldn’t pass up Oviedo’s cathedral because its relic collection is quite possibly the most extraordinary on the planet. Inside the Cámera Santa (Holy Chamber) is the Arca Santa, a box said to contain a piece of the True Cross, shards from the Crown of Thorns and Holy Sepulchre, bread from the Last Supper, a wine jar Jesus used for his miracle during the wedding at Cana, and some of the Virgin's breast milk. Of course, not being possessed of x-ray vision, I couldn’t actually see any of these marvels for myself. However I was able to view the Sweat-Cloth of Jesus, allegedly used to clean his face after the crucifixion. Naysayers point out radiocarbon dating places the age of the cloth at 700 AD; believers insist that can’t be right because stories about the cloth go back to 500 AD. Which is still off by five centuries, but who’s counting? The next day, when Luis led us to Oviedo’s most famous thumbs, Rich and I both stared in disbelief then burst out laughing. Evidently we’d misheard him; he wasn’t taking us to see thumbs but to see tombs. The handful of others on the tour looked at us oddly, but that’s nothing new for us. Confusions and misunderstandings are a way of life on the Nutters Tour, and luckily they give us plenty to chuckle about along the way. WHERE ARE WE NOW? JUST JOINING US? HERE'S THE NUTTERS TOUR SO FAR Travel Alert: You Can't Always Get What You Want... (Madrid & Burgos) Gobsmacked at Every Turn but Embracing the Chaos (Jaén & Valdepeñas) All Aboard for the Nutters Tour of Spain (Packing & Organizing) THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “Lucy?” I asked. “Is that you?” As you’ve no doubt noticed, it’s never easy to tell one 3-million-year-old protohuman from another. Was this really the famous Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis discovered in 1974 and named for a song by the Beatles? (For younger readers: that was Paul McCartney’s old band.) The skull itself wasn’t labeled, but the text next to it gave Lucy’s history, and I had the distinct impression I was intended to assume I was looking at her cranium. If I didn’t know her head and skeleton were in Ethiopia, I’d have been fooled. I managed to sidestep that error, but most days I find being fooled, perplexed, hornswoggled, and baffled is my default state on this Nutters Tour, and never more so than in Burgos. It began the moment Rich and I stepped off the train to discover the station was over four miles from town. (Why is it so inconveniently placed? Nobody could say.) The one taxi was seized by a spry fellow passenger who’d sprinted ahead. Luckily a kind passerby helped us catch the bus, and then it was just a matter of hiking up a hill so steep that long stretches of it had steps instead of sidewalk. “One more staircase,” Rich muttered toward the end, “and we’re going to abandon the bags.” Arriving at our building (with our bags), we then had to decipher elaborate high-tech entry instructions. These involved a computer link and a 300-word run-on sentence that — much as in Jaén last week — included everything except the actual apartment number. “Is it us?” I asked. “How does this keep happening?” I’ll spare you the details of the ensuing muddle, involving the wrong contact number, a disgruntled owner, and the harassed manager who provided detailed yet erroneous instructions. Suffice to say that in the fullness of time, we figured out how to disobey his directions and unlock the apartment door. I stepped inside, and my first glimpse of the view from our window left me breathless in a whole different way. I’d seen this cathedral once before, during a brief visit to Burgos many years ago. The city's landscape hadn't changed much except for the gigantic new Human Evolution Museum built to house astonishing fossils discovered in a nearby mountain. Archaeologists were particularly thrilled by a jawbone fragment dating back between 400,000 and 600,000 or possibly 850,000 years. For some reason, this was considered proof that humans had been in Europe for a million years. Now, math isn’t my strong suit, but doesn't that mean even the most optimistic estimate leaves us with a 150,000-year shortfall? Is it OK to simply round up like that? In science? Maddeningly, the museum didn’t explain any of this. There was an abundance of superfluous detail about the process of discovery but scant information about the actual finds. It was like being let loose in the laboratory of a mad scientist who expected you to piece together the ghoulish implications for yourself. After collecting the remains of saints, rulers, and warriors for more than a thousand years, Spain loves to put human body parts on display. It’s like living in a permanent state of Halloween. En route to Burgos, Rich and I made a brief stopover in Madrid, and when I discovered I was too late to get tickets to the exhibition featuring my favorite Spanish artist, Sorolla, I swallowed my disappointment and went to the next item on my must-see list: the bones of St. Valentine. I’d heard they were housed in a rather quirky inner city church. Quirky? The place was totally bonkers in such a wonderful way it made me wonder if the Universe really knew what it was doing that day. I wanted Sorolla tickets, but instead I got what I needed: a place where I could clearly see love made manifest in the world. That doesn't happen nearly often enough these days. Built in the 18th century as a leper hospital’s church, San Antón is now in the middle of Chueca, Madrid’s LGBTQ and hipster neighborhood. In 2015, after being closed for decades, San Antón was entrusted to Padre Ángel, the Catholic priest who co-founded the philanthropic Messengers of Peace in 1962. The priest (now 86) and his volunteers have transformed the Baroque church into a funky, free-wheeling community center that keeps its doors open 24/7. Hot meals are provided daily, pets are welcome, there’s a place to change your baby’s nappies, and pews are available for anyone who needs a warm, safe place to sleep. Mass is celebrated daily, and the confessionals have been replaced with counsellors providing advice and support. And on the wall, presiding over it all, are the bones of St. Valentine. His story begins in third-century Rome, when Emperor Claudius II decided his soldiers were neglecting their duties because they were too attached to their wives and families, so he banned marriage. The priest Valentine snuck around performing illegal weddings until he was caught and killed on February 14. He left a farewell note signed “Your Valentine,” little knowing his words would continue to be replicated on countless greeting cards nearly 2000 years later. Naysayers dispute many of the story’s details (OK, just about all of them) and point out the bones themselves are questionable. Remains of other St. Valentines are exhibited in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, in Dublin’s Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, and elsewhere. But I like to believe he found his final resting place here, among the poor and marginalized who need a little extra love in their lives. San Antón is a hard act to follow, but I have to say that the Cathedral of St. Mary of Burgos was pretty stunning in its own way. This vast gothic structure, built to receive pilgrims hiking the Camino de Santiago, took centuries to build and embellish; each section has its own personality and in some cases, images that appear more pagan than Christian. I was particularly interested in the cathedral’s chapel of St. Tecla, a woman revered as an ancient feminist. Her story, which began circulating in a second-century text, reads like something from the National Enquirer. She ran away from home to follow St. Paul the Apostle, for which she was condemned to be burned at the stake, but a storm doused the flames. She reunited with Paul, cut off her hair, and began dressing as a man. Some nobleman tried to rape her, so she fought back — and was convicted of assaulting him. Officials threw her into an arena to be eaten by wild beasts, but the lionesses defended her from the other animals. She then leapt into a lake filled with aggressive seals that attempted to devour her but lightning killed the beasts, leaving her unscathed. And those are just the highlights. Today she’s honored around the world as the unofficial patron saint of women’s empowerment. In Spain, where her name happens to be the same as the word for “key” on a keyboard, she’s half-jokingly referred to as the patron saint of computers, too. Fascinated by her colorful history, I intended to learn more about her by visiting her shrine in the Burgos cathedral. Alas! St. Tecla's chapel was closed. (No explanation why.) I realized that travel is a lot like the Internet. It's colorful and exciting but filled with dubious facts, outdated information, outright fabrications, and stuff you just can't get to, like the Bar Paraiso, the Sorolla exhibit, and El Cid's left radial bone. I may still be able to catch up with St. Tecla, however. She's the patron saint of Tarragona, another town on our itinerary; their human towers are part of the celebrations of her feast day, which start with parading her arm through the streets. I can only hope it's the one with which she slugged the nobleman mentioned above. You can look forward to learning more about her adventures, and ours, as the Nutters Tour continues. WHERE ARE WE NOW? THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. Those who say GPS and Google have taken the mystery out of travel have clearly never visited Jaén, Spain. It’s a modern city with an old-fashioned attitude about sharing information: “If you live here you don’t need to ask, and if you don’t live here, you really don’t need to know.” Everything was shrouded in confusion. Take our lodgings, allegedly located at 23001 Bernabé Soriano Street near the cathedral. After a half hour’s laborious climb uphill from the train station, Rich and I arrived at Bernabé Soriano and saw the first street number was 2. Dear Lord, how many miles away was this place? What, me worry? In Spanish cities, every barrio is a village, so we asked the neighbors: the lady running the bakery, the guy at the health food store, the bouncer at an upscale bar, a dog walker named María Teresa, her friend, and her other friend Joaquin la Barba from the gastropub. Everyone tried to help, but we didn’t make real progress until Rich managed to get someone from booking.com on the phone. She found the correct, two-digit address, almost directly across the street from where we stood, and mentioned our landlady’s mother had been waiting out front for nearly two hours to let us in. Throughout all the muddle, everyone — including the landlady’s mother — remained remarkably cheerful, helpful, and kind. I was beginning to warm to this town. I asked our new friends about city’s famous ancient relic, the (alleged) Veil of Veronica, supposedly displayed every Friday in the cathedral at the top of our street. Nobody could provide details, but I wasn’t concerned because of course I could always ask at the tourist office. Imagine my surprise when I went there the next morning only to find the street under construction and the tourist office closed for the duration. “What is it with this town?” Rich said. “Isn’t it great?” I replied. “Everyone’s always complaining that Europe has become hopelessly touristy and there are no more authentic places left. Look at this city. Have you seen a single tourist since we got here? Have you heard anyone speaking English? This is the Spain we knew decades ago. Doing things its own way, not making everything slick and easy for visitors.” “No kidding,” he said. “If we manage to see Veronica’s Veil it’ll be a miracle.” Even without Veronica’s Veil there was plenty to see and do in Jaén. On Friday we arrived early at the cathedral and began asking where to find the nearby Church of the Sagrario in which the Veil apparently made its weekly appearance. We were misdirected to a chapel housing the crypt, the main cathedral entrance, and the former Convent of the Shoeless Carmelites with a famous 16th century statue of Jesus, but eventually we found the right spot. Doors wouldn’t open for another half hour, so we took a short walk. And that’s when I stumbled upon the absolute last thing I expected: a tourist office. And it was open. I went in, collected a map, and asked the woman at the desk about the city’s famous man-eating lizard. “Ah sí, el Legarto de Jaén.” She settled her hip more comfortable on the corner of the desk, leaning in. “This was long ago. There was a spring near the Church of the Magdalene; they said it lived there and came out to eat animals in the district. Some say humans, too.” She shrugged deprecatingly, and we both laughed. Yeah, that was pretty improbable. Not like the rest of the story. “They offered prisoners their freedom if they could kill it. One man volunteered. He threw pieces of bread on the ground to lure the beast downhill to the Church of San Ildefonso, where he had placed a lamb filled with explosives. The lizard ate the lamb and boom! He burst apart.” Problem solved! By now it was almost time for the Veil to appear, so we thanked her and hurried back to Sagrario church. Besides the sacristan, we were the only ones there. Then a woman came in and leaned over to ask me, “Are you here to make a confession?” As the veteran viewer of a thousand cop shows, I knew the only proper response was, “Not without my lawyer.” Instead I mentioned Veronica’s Veil and she nodded and sat down. Half a dozen more people trickled in. Music began to play and a priest emerged, singing, holding aloft a dark image of a man’s face surrounded by gold and emeralds. In a ceremony that was brief, lovely, and respectful, the priest placed the image on a table, prayed, and disappeared out a side door so we could all take photos without feeling sacrilegious. Was it the real deal? Very doubtful indeed. For a start, the story is tradition, not gospel; it dates back only to medieval times, when religious relics were big business. A legend began to circulate about Veronica using her veil to wipe the blood and sweat from Jesus’ brow while he carried his cross; his face appeared on the cloth, which now had miraculous powers. Today, there are so many known copies of Veronica’s Veil that the Church has come up with a name for them: vernicles. This one most likely dates back to the 14th century, which was venerable enough for me. As much fun as all this was, yesterday Rich and I left Jaén for the wine-making city of Valdepeñas. We arrived at a charming, old-fashioned railway station that was completely closed up. A sign announced “Sale of tickets is temporarily suspended.” An online search revealed this was moot anyway, as all Monday’s trains to Madrid were fully booked. “This is nuts!” Rich exclaimed. “My point exactly,” I said. He sighed. “Guess we’ll be taking the bus.” The saving grace of this town? Our apartment is directly above the colorful and convivial San Antonio restaurant, epicenter of everyone’s social life around here. Picture the bar scene in Star Wars mixed with My Big Fat Greek Wedding and you’ll have the general idea. We seemed to be the only non-Valdepeñans in the place. Off the tourist track? We can’t even see the beaten path from here. And did I mention this town is famous for its wine? I was diligent in my research. To sum up, the Nutters Tour is off to a roaring start, and I am re-learning the most valuable road lesson of all: embrace the chaos. We have very little control over anything in life, and that goes double when we’re travelers, relying on the friendliness of strangers. “I accept chaos,” said Bob Dylan. “I’m not sure whether it accepts me.” So far, I feel the chaos is doing a great job of embracing me back. For Rich, one of the highlights of Jaén was visiting the Museum of Popular Arts & Culture and leaping into one of the old washtubs, pretending to take a bath. Seconds later a guard thundered down the stairs and read him the riot act. Rich felt like a kid again. "Gosh, Mr. Wilson, I didn't mean nothing by it!" SO EXACTLY WHERE ARE WE? THAT WAS FUN. WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. Just watching the videos makes me weak in the knees. First the strongest men form a base and begin constructing the human tower. Then lithe, sinewy women clamber over them to build the higher levels. And finally, when everyone is in place and you can see their muscles trembling with effort, a little girl begins to ascend. She is the enxaneta, the crowning glory of the human tower, a child of seven to ten years who climbs over the adults to reach the top some forty feet in the air. Her only safety net: the bodies of her teammates below. “OK,” I said to Rich, “mark that down as another activity I am never taking up, right along with bungee jumping, bull fighting, and investing in cryptocurrency.” “You’d have to be nuts,” he agreed. I nodded happily and added Tarragona, home of the human tower since 1712, to my ever-expanding list of possibilities for our forthcoming Nutters Tour. What is a nutter? The term started out as a surname for someone who worked as a scribe (notare, in Latin), a profession not generally known for its screwball antics. Yet somehow, as it evolved into Middle English, the word became associated with eccentrics, risk-takers, and odd ducks. It embraces a broad spectrum of unconventional behavior, from the ancestor who first said, “Hey, maybe the animals we catch would taste better cooked” to folks who think forming a human tower sounds like fun. The history of the human race is rich with colorful, outside-the-box characters. Some — such as Leonardo da Vinci, Madam Curie, Steve Jobs, and Greta Thunberg — are household names, while others have gone unsung, their works long ago forgotten or continuing in quiet, Instagram-free obscurity today. The Nutters Tour is my chance to bring some of those zany nonconformists and their hometowns into the limelight. Spain is particularly blessed with eccentrics of all stripes, and I have been researching them for months — knowing that Rich and I will probably veer off frequently from our already loose itinerary. Possibly right out of the starting gate. We are beginning in the city of Jaén (pronounced Hi-YEN), and a Spanish friend, hearing about this Saturday at lunch, recommended a side trip from Jaén to the nearby historic town of Úbeda. Apparently there’s a common Spanish phrase “andar por los cerros de Úbeda” (literally 'to walk around the hills of Úbeda'), meaning “to go off at a tangent.” Could this be a sign from the Universe? Right now, all I really know for sure is that the Nutters Tour of Spain officially launches on Wednesday, and I’d be counting down the hours if only I had a few spare seconds or brain cells to devote to the task. Time is passing in a blur of laundry, last-minute purchases (why do I never have enough decent socks?), and farewell lunches, dinners, drinks, tapas, and coffees with friends. My apartment's back room is festooned with drying clothes, stacks of stuff I’m planning to bring on the trip, and scattered birdseed. The local songbirds, having ignored Rich’s birdfeeder for five and a half months, chose this week to realize those lumpy objects inside it were actually yummy avian comfort food. They are expressing their joy by flying in through the open window and holding parties all over the room. I’ll be shaking birdseed out of the creases of my clothes from here to Madrid. And speaking of my clothes, I know some of you are curious about what I’m packing, so here’s my list. Experience suggests that I can jam this much into my carry-on suitcase, and I’m pretty sure the layers will keep me comfortable during the variable spring weather and our eventual flight to California for the summer.
On Wednesday Rich and I will make the short rail journey to Jaén, world capital of olive oil, home to the (late unlamented) man-eating lizard and to the cathedral that houses the holy relic of Veronica’s Veil (likely a copy). As is so often the case with official Spanish websites, Jaén’s is a bit scanty, but the town's tourist office is no doubt standing by to help. I checked their website to see when they were open; this is what I found, word for word. - From 9:00 AM to 7:30 PM - From 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM From 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM - From 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM Sundays before public holidays: 10:00-15:00 and 17:00-19:00 Clear as mud. But of course, that’s the whole fun of exploring Spain. I’m from California, where every roadside attraction offers the fullest possible information online, bending over backward to avoid bad Yelp reviews. Spain doesn’t pay much attention to Yelp, or the needs of tourists. In fact, they make you work for every small nugget of information, adding a sense of triumph to each discovery. After Jaén and/or Úbeda, we'll likely head north by train to Valdepeñas, famous for its oddball wine combining white and red grapes, and for its strong women, including Juana Galán who rallied the town and held off Napoleon’s troops, allegedly smiting them with her cast-iron skillet. After that we’ll keep heading north by easy stages, stopping wherever we discover offbeat points of interest. One thing that may affect our route is the crowds. As you may have heard, post-pandemic pent-up demand has the tourist industry booming, and cash-strapped nations throughout Europe are going all out with creative ways to entice visitors. Seville is mobbed right now. And Rich and I won't have an easy time securing lodging in many of the cities on our tentative route. We're prepared to “andar por los cerros de Úbeda” and take whatever detours make sense and seem likely keep us — and our readers — entertained. I intend to post every week, but of course, that’s subject to the whims of wifi, Spanish train schedules, and the Universe’s quirky sense of humor. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this delightfully goofy ad in which the Mona Lisa — and other familiar masterpieces — suddenly gain the capacity for speech. It's all created by Artificial Intellgence (robots) in service to Denmark’s visitor’s bureau. Enjoy! I thought you should know: No AI or ChatBots were used in creating this post. So what are your spring & summer travel plans? Here are tips and ideas you may find useful. Have specific travel questions? Type any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find info instantly. Don't miss out on a single loony story from the Nutters Tour!
If you haven't already subscribed, send me an email now. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com “We knew we were very, very different,” said my friend Lonnie, when we got to talking about his childhood in the Bronx. This is what I love about my amigos. Every one of them has a backstory that makes you sit up and think, “Wait, what?” “Different?” I asked. “In what way?” Lonnie explained everyone in his family and his close-knit neighborhood spoke Ladino, a form of Medieval Castilian. They cooked traditional Mediterranean food, listened to European music, and were keenly aware of their 15th century Spanish roots. Having grown up in a nation of immigrants, I’m used to displaced families; by the time they get to my home state of California, most have only the haziest memories of the old ways. Not Lonnie’s folks. “My grandmother made buñuelos, balls of fried dough, which are very common in Spain,” Lonnie recalled. “She got that from 500 years of ancestors passing that recipe along. That’s the food I grew up with, the food I loved. Bourekas and empanadas, pastries stuffed with spinach and feta cheese. Now I make some of these dishes myself.” Like most American kids, young Lonnie listened with half an ear when older relatives talked about the past. He knew the family had been run out of Spain by the Spanish inquisitors for the crime of being Jewish, and that they’d made their way to the Greek city of Salonica (also known as Thessaloniki). As he grew older, Lonnie became more interested in his heritage. In 2012, when he learned Spain had launched a program to grant citizenship to the descendants of those expelled Sephardic Jews, he decided to go for it, to bring the family history full circle. How hard is it to prove you’re a descendant of people who lived in Spain in the 15th century? Ask Lonnie and he’ll roll his eyes. But Lonnie is a stubborn man. The same grit and determination that kept his family going during exile — and kept his grandmothers’ grandmothers teaching younger generations to make buñuelos — kept Lonnie at his keyboard and haunting government offices. The paperwork requirements were staggering. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, immigration papers, an FBI background check, New York State criminal background check, dozens more documents, all officially translated, notarized, and stamped. If you’ve never dealt with Spanish bureaucracy, let me tell you it’s like trying to swim through a giant vat of paella: messy, confusing, and full of sudden, inexplicable obstacles. As author Laurence J. Peter put it, “Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time the quo has lost its status.” Someone in Spain’s public relations department thought it would be a brilliant move to welcome Sephardic Jews home. The paper pushers, on the other hand, embodied business guru Robert Townsend’s comment, “It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.” Lonnie soldiered on. There were plenty of setbacks, such as learning the Spanish government expected him to renounce his US citizenship; luckily that provision was soon dropped. There were also wild pieces of good fortune, such as hearing from a distant European cousin who was compiling a family genealogy, saw Lonnie’s mother’s death notice in 2015, and reached out to him. ‘’I get this call from this cousin saying, ‘Come to Europe,’” Lonnie told me. “I go to Salonica and I am resubmerged in this Spanish Greek family of mine, this Sephardic family. And found relatives I never knew existed. These are my mother’s first cousins. They said they were searching for my grandmother and her children for decades and even came to New York from Europe as late as the 1980s to find her, but never did. And my mother went to Greece to find her father’s grave.” He shook his head. “They never found each other.” Lonnie’s connection to Salonica wasn’t surprising. The Ottoman Turks running the city in the early 16th century could hardly believe their luck when thousands of skilled professionals and craftspeople, fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, began pouring into town. Granting these new residents the status of dhimmis, protected persons, made the city so popular that Jews came from all over and by 1519 formed 58% of the city’s population. People began calling Salonica “Mother of Israel.” “My mother's mother, Margarete Algava, who I was closest to,” Lonnie recalled, “talked about living in Greece and how there was this terrible fire in Salonika in 1917. That’s what drove her to the US; it destroyed much of the city and her home.” The blaze was centered in the prosperous downtown businesses and houses; half the city’s Jews relocated after the fire, most heading to America or Turkey. Twenty years later nearly all of those who stayed were sent to Auschwitz. “There was a Greek club in New York where my grandmother would go with her family and sit and listen to music,” Lonnie said. “My cousin Michelle was a band leader. He came from Salonica. He was a Holocaust survivor. He played in a men’s band in Auschwitz. His two sisters were in the women’s band. That’s how they survived Auschwitz; they played music. He described to me one time when he was changing a light bulb in Auschwitz. It had broken, so they were going to cart him off and execute him. And Josef Mengele said, ‘No, no, no, he plays music.’ So my cousin survived.” Wow, that’s the only positive story I’ve ever heard about Mengele, better known as the Angel of Death. Somehow I didn’t have him pegged a music lover. Connecting with long-lost relatives was exciting; the endless paperwork not so much. Lonnie had to get the approval of the Federation of Sephardic Jews in Madrid and pass a rigorous, day-long Spanish exam. “It was nerve-wracking. Written comprehension, oral comprehension — a radio announcer, that was hard — writing, and conversation. Then a history exam with questions like ‘What’s the longest river in Spain?’” Passing meant he could formally apply for citizenship on a special website. Never dealt with an official Spanish government website? See my earlier remarks about their bureaucracy. In February of 2020 Lonnie came to Spain for what he thought would be the final filing and an interview. “I figured I’d have something in a few weeks.” He laughed. “ And then Covid hit. And then it was just impossible. There was no information.” For years Lonnie stopped by the Spanish Embassy, emailed requests for information, worked with a lawyer. Nothing. “So a couple of weeks ago,” he told me on Sunday, “I went back to the website. I felt, ‘I haven’t checked it in months. Why not?’ And it said “Consedido.” Granted. “How did you feel?” “It was moving. I said to the consular agent, 'Thank you. I’m really pleased. It’s been ten years since the first time I talked to you, three years since I filed all my papers, and five hundred years since my family could return to Spain.'” Lonnie smiled a little sadly. “My mother, I so wish she was alive, because she would have been over the moon.” Countdown to the Nutters Tour As I scramble to prep for departure on our much-awaited Nutters Tour of Spain, I'm not going to have time to write a post next week. I'll try to post the following week, just before we leave on the 15th, but I can't guarantee I'll manage it. I do promise I'll be posting from the road, reporting on each nutty person and place along the way. Watch this space for updates! Planning your spring & summer trips? Here's stuff you'll want to know! WANT MORE? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com Curious? Enter any destination or topic in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
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