 Ten books? Are they kidding? I'd need at least this many! If you were marooned on a desert island, what ten books would you bring along? Besides, obviously, Raft-Building for Dummies, Six Easy Ways to Catch Fish with Your Bare Hands, and How to Send Up a Humongous Smoke Signal Without Setting Fire to the Trees. A surprising number of people — asked this question online — choose Stephen King novels such as The Stand, It, and The Shining. For a start, each of these books is enormous enough to occupy countless hours. “Plus,” as one Reddit reader notes, “you could kill food with it.” A Quora reader picked the Oxford English Dictionary, and while I generally prefer my books with a more compelling plotline, an unabridged dictionary does have its advantages for clobbering prey.  A fearsome hunting tool indeed! This morning I pulled out my favorite dictionary, the battered Español-Inglés Diccionario, faithful companion of many hours of mind-bending labor during my early days in Seville. It wouldn’t be much use in hunting animals for food, but it did help me slay a lot of dragons, such as the two different verbs “to be” (ser and estar) and the slippery subjunctive used to express hypotheticals (“If you were marooned on a desert island…”). My dictionary lives on a shelf alongside Spanish translations of many old favorites, the ones I ran across in Seville bookstores and rejoiced to own again, albeit in slightly different form.  Mine is what Susan Sontag calls “a book-drenched life.” It’s a rare and satisfying pleasure to find others who are equally as smitten with the written word, which is what drew me to Seville’s new English-language book club this winter. The Any Book Book Club was launched a year ago by newly arrived author Angela Atkins. Born in the UK, she came of age in New Zealand, where she married and built a company with her husband. Since then they’ve lived in the UK, New Zealand, California, France, Valencia, and Madrid; currently they’re dividing their time between France and Seville. She’s published several bestselling books, holds writing workshops, and runs the book club, many of whose members are writers and editors.  The Any Book Book Club last Saturday I was curious about Angela’s intensely literary life and invited her out to lunch after book club last Saturday. We ate gorgeous Peruvian arroz chaufa (fried rice) and causa a la limeña (Lima-style potatoes) at one of El Cevichano’s sidewalk tables. (Yes, it’s warm enough to eat outside in Seville right now. Please don’t hate us.) I asked her about the book club’s unusual format: we pick a theme (mysteries, for instance, or Asian authors) and everyone brings a favorite work in that genre. “I love this format,” I told her. “Having slogged through countless book club selections that didn’t work for me at all, it’s a pleasure to talk about a book I truly love. And you go around the circle, so everyone has a chance to speak about the one they brought. Did you dream this up yourself?” “Actually….. I went to a similar one in Valencia and loved the format too.” That made me think of the Oscar Wilde quote, “Talent borrows, genius steals!” — which is also attributed to T. S. Elliot, Pablo Picasso, and others, thus neatly proving its own point.  Bestselling author Angela Atkins at El Cevichano on Saturday “What advice do you give to budding writers?” I asked. “Read, read, read, read, read, read,” she said. “And then write: journal, write short stories, experiment. Be part of a writers group, or meet somebody who you can get some guidance from.” It’s tempting to rush headlong from manuscript to submission or self-publication, but Angela advises patience. As a reminder, she keeps the 1000-page handwritten manuscript of her first novel, composed at age 14, at back of her closet, where she feels it belongs. “The first thing you write is not going to be publishable,” she says. “If you want it to be good, you need to write, and you need to edit, and you need to get feedback. Every successful novelist has written one or two or three novels before the first novel was published — just for fun, just to practice writing.” Not everyone bothers to edit or proofread. In these self-publishing times, it's not uncommon to stumble across works riddled with typos and errors. I find myself muttering furiously and reaching for an editor’s blue pencil, which is, of course, useless on a Kindle. As Stephen King wisely says, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”  “When the books are finally ready to make their way in the world,” I said, “what do you tell fledgling writers about marketing them?” I’m now in the marketing stage with my new book, and it’s always a struggle. “The younger generations are much more comfortable with social media and promoting themselves,” Angela said. “They've been doing it all their life. Gen X and boomers are perhaps less comfortable with it.” This is certainly true for me. I often have the disconcerting feeling that my mother is watching from beyond the grave, giving me her trademark disapproving look to suggest I’m putting myself forward in an unbecoming manner. Sorry, Mom. It’s all part of an author’s life these days.   To launch my new book, I’ve been busy for many weeks drafting media releases, updating mailing lists, designing the cover, tweaking the text, and sorting out formatting. Meanwhile Rich plunged into the Byzantine complexity of Amazon’s marketing algorithms, which have to be propitiated like ancient gods, with strict adherence to esoteric commandments. To our astonishment, before the book was even officially published, your pre-orders made it shoot up to #1 in multiple travel categories. It was an instant bestseller before it was even live — yay! A thousand thanks, everyone! My San Francisco: 20 Extraordinary Walks in America’s Quirkiest City went live on Amazon today. If you are thinking of buying a copy, be sure to do it this week, while the launch price is 99 cents; as of Monday, February 24, the book will cost $5.99. At the moment, My San Francisco is only available on Amazon Kindle, which publishes the majority (72%) of e-books and offers the most efficient way to release a new work. I realize not everyone has a Kindle, so if you’d like to see the book in a different format, such as a paperback or another kind of e-book, please let me know. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll certainly look into other options.  My first travel memoir A big part of the fun of publishing is getting feedback from the reader universe. I'd love to have you share your thoughts in a customer review on Amazon after you read My San Francisco. My first travel book, Dancing in the Fountain, now has more than 500 reviews. Most are extremely kind, although years ago one reader wrote grumpily, “The author talks about herself way too much.” Hey, it’s a memoir. Isn’t that the idea? In the end, as Angela points out, writing is about having fun. We don’t do it for reviews or sales or ranking but because it is who we are. “I write for the same reason I breathe,” said Isaac Asimov. “Because if I didn’t, I would die.” So I’ve finally decided what survival books I’m bringing to that desert island: ten blank notebooks and dozens and dozens of pens.  On a desert island, books come in handy for all sorts of activities. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how to enrich our lives while living or traveling abroad, finding new ways of avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  As the old joke goes, "Sure I let Rex fly the plane. But don't worry, I keep him on the leash every second!" Our pets are, of course, cherished members of the family, and bringing them with us when we move adds a whole extra layer of excitement. I’ll never forget the sensation Rich caused in the security line at Chicago O’Hare Airport when he revealed his tote bag held live goldfish, swimming around in a plastic water bowl. Incredibly, some of our less sensitive friends had suggested we simply flush the little dears down the toilet and buy new ones when we got to Ohio. What kind of fiend would do that?  After the entire O'Hare security staff had chuckled and exclaimed over the unusual carry-on, Rich, the fish, and I were waived through. That was before 9/11; today, of course, those fish would be arrested and probably end their days swimming in Guantanamo Bay. On another occasion, a Dutch friend brought a miniature dachshund puppy from Amsterdam to San Francisco as cabin baggage. Somewhere over the Atlantic she took the puppy out of his cage for a snuggle. When she dozed off, the puppy climbed down off her lap and proceeded to scamper joyfully up and down the aisle, causing pandemonium throughout the plane while my friend slumbered on, oblivious. Then there’s my harrowing dog-lost-at-the-airport tale. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending, and no humans or animals were harmed. Upset, yes. Stunned by the callous indifference and staggering incompetence of a major international airline, you bet. Here’s what happened. It was late November and we were moving to Spain with our dog, Eskimo Pie.  Eskimo Pie in our Ohio garden She was too large for cabin travel and had to go in the cargo hold, so I bought a roomy crate and researched pet-friendly airlines with heated cargo areas. I got her vaccines updated, had a tracking chip injected into her shoulder, and filled out reams of paperwork. When the day came, I watched her crate being loaded onto the plane. So far so good. I stepped off the plane in Madrid and asked the first airline representative I saw where I could go collect her. “A dog? Here?” the woman exclaimed incredulously. Clearly she’d never heard anything so absurd. What next? Asking directions to the nearest flying saucer? She had no idea where I could find Pie. She almost seemed offended that I’d asked. I spent four hours showing Pie's documents and photo around Madrid’s five terminals, and then, having rented a car, half a dozen outlying cargo areas.  Eventually Pie’s crate was discovered on top of a 20-foot stack of wooden pallets. Her nose was pressed against the bars, she had a fierce gleam in her eye, and I could almost hear her thinking, “You’ve a lot of explaining to do.” Pie was an old country dog, and while she loved many things about our urban Seville lifestyle — the perros in the dog park, late night walks through the city, jamón (ham) — she had some trouble adjusting. I turned for help to Spanish veterinarians, and I have to say they were wonderful: clinically savvy, compassionate, and emotionally invested. It was like being in an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. I’ve lost touch with those particular vets, but this week I had a chance to chat with two bright, dedicated young women who recently opened Clínica Veterinaria Pets&Co in Sevilla Este, six miles east of downtown Seville. I knew at once the vet Cristina and her assistant Sara — who have been friends since they were five — were my kind of animal lovers. “We love our dogs. We really do,” said Sara. “We go home thinking, ‘How is Mini? Did it work? Are they feeling better?’” Cristina nodded. “This is something you take home when you leave. You take home your animals. I say to clients, ‘This pet is yours, but a little bit of him or her is mine.’ And when the animals are ill or when we have to do something that we don’t want to think about, I cry a lot.” Despite the occasional sympathetic tears, a cheerful atmosphere prevails, thanks in part to the lively presence of Roxy, Sara’s pug (listed on the website as “the Boss”) and Cristina’s two rescues, Gordo and Margarita. The clinic is sparkling clean, modern, fully equipped, and very innovative. The two species they serve, dogs and cats, each get their own separate entrance, waiting room, and examination area to reduce stress (and avoid possible bloodshed) among the patients. The clinic offers a health plan so pets with chronic or complicated conditions can access services without running up unexpected bills. Both women speak English and French as well as Spanish. Most unusually for a Spanish vet, they offer online consultations via Zoom or WhatsApp.  “Imagine someone is thinking about flying over,” said Sara, “and needs to chat with a vet for peace of mind. ‘What am I going to face there? Which is the vaccination protocol?’ If you have a worry, you can ask Cristina.” Cristina’s best advice? Allow enough time. She’s so right. It can take months to figure out the rules, sort out the paperwork, and schedule vaccines and tests — some of which need to take place a specific number of days before the flight. In many countries, including Spain, pets don’t need to be quarantined so long as they’re vaccinated, microchipped, and documented. Be sure to check US re-entry requirements as well.  Service animals and emotional support animals require special documentation; just saying you want your Best Friend with you onboard won't cut it. Photo: DoD News I can hear you thinking, “Yikes! Where do I find all this info?” Below are handy places to start. This is the most current information available, but I don’t need to tell you that America is in a state of flux, with laws changing in the blink of an eye. Re-check often to make sure there are no last-minute surprises. US State Department Pets & International Travel (what's required to transport pets into and out of America) About the Destination Country’s Policies (pet entry requirements, quarantine rules, and application forms for dozens of nations) Pet Policy Guide for all US Airlines Transporting Animals in the Aircraft (tips from Lufthansa, winner of the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association award) USDA Pet Travel Guidance from the USA to Another Country Traveling with Pets in the EU Navigating a Pet Friendly Journey (best airports, railway rules, and more)  Here a friend tries to teach Pie to read Spanish. I'm not saying she mastered it, but she did move her lips. Is your pet worth all the fuss? Mine sure was. Pie sustained me through the upheavals of the transition, introduced me to countless canine neighbors, and inspired chuckles every day. One of her favorite things was riding up in the elevator; she couldn’t get over the fact we went in one door and exited through another, on a whole different floor. Every single time, she looked up at me with astonished delight, as if to say, “Did you see that? It did it again!” She’s been gone for many years now, and I still miss her. It’s comforting to think that Robert Louis Stevenson might be right when he said, “You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.” If so, I picture Pie spending eternity making joyful noise like this dog, captured on a nanny cam after neighbors complained about the racket. HOT NEWS! My new e-book is now available for pre-order and goes on sale Monday, February 17. For the launch, I have temporarily reduced the price to 99 cents, to make sure it's totally accessible to all my readers, friends, and family. Enjoy!  This book is a love letter to my home city. When I sent out early review copies, the response was enthusiastic. “I loved this book! “Witty, wise, and informative” “An entertaining read and invaluable guide” “Captures both the soul and the stomach of San Francisco.” “You don’t need to visit San Francisco to enjoy this book!” My regular readers will find this goes far beyond the San Francisco stories from last summer’s blog posts. I’ve expanded and updated the practical information and mixed in even more offbeat historical tidbits, outrageous urban legends, and wacky anecdotes. Writing it was tremendous fun, and I hope you'll get the same rib-tickling pleasure from reading it. NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON KINDLE THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how moving, living, and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  “And suddenly you just know… it’s time to start something new and trust in the magic of new beginnings.” — Meister Eckhart, 13th century German mystic The sentiment seems intensely romantic, especially in a flourishing font superimposed over an exotic landscape. Cast your fate to the winds! Live your life, take chances, don’t wait! Leap and the net will appear! Or will it? I hope I don’t have to tell you how much I love living in Seville, but occasionally I've watched aghast as someone arrives in starry-eyed haste only to repent at grumpy leisure. One woman spent a single sun-drenched, wine-soaked weekend here, went home, sold everything, came back, moved into an apartment … and was absolutely miserable.  "I can't complain. But I'm going to anyway." She found everything substandard, from the weather — too hot, too cold , too wet, too dull — to the people around her, who had the nerve to be busy with their own lives when she wanted to go out for tapas — which were never as tasty as she’d remembered. She had nothing to do, no place to go, and nobody eager to listen to her complaints. After a few months she took off for another country, where no doubt she’s learning to grumble in Arabic. In my experience, if you’re contemplating a leap to a new life, you want to look — long and hard — at where you’ll be landing. Before picking a forever home, it's wise to spend a year trying out the lifestyle. As blogger Kirsten Raccuia demonstrates in My Moving Abroad Regrets: How to Learn From My Mistakes, even expats who make a successful transition overseas have lists of “if I could do it overs.” Dancing in the Fountain, the book in which I describe my move to Seville, is brimming with faux pas and ridiculous misunderstandings. The object of the game is to keep the bloopers and regrets to a minimum. Which is why I compiled this checklist in consultation with my brother Mike and his wife, Deb. I’m not saying they’re obsessive compulsive, but they dotted every letter of the alphabet before moving to Seville for a year.  Deb and Mike, shortly after arriving in Seville This checklist uses some examples drawn from transitioning to Spain, but the advice applies wherever you go. THE YEAR-ABROAD PREPARATION CHECKLIST Define your goal or purpose. Is the trip about adventure? Learning a new language? Discovering the seediest dive bars? Finding a quiet place to write the Great American Novel? Choose a suitable destination. Have you been there before? Do you know anyone there? Will it support your goal? If you’ll be traveling, is transit convenient? Might violent conflict break out? No? Are you sure? You might want to check that out with a reliable source. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. I looked up Spain on the US State Department’s travel advisory webpage. It warned, “Exercise increased caution. Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Spain. Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, local government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, major sporting and cultural events, educational institutions, airports, and other public areas.” Yikes! That’s everywhere I go! Was my life hanging by a thread? Before fleeing in panic, I decided to check the UK Travel Advice page for Spain. There was nothing beyond the lifting of the weather advisory after last fall’s flooding. The only thing missing was a yawn emoji. I figured it was safe to stay put.  A safe and peaceful atmosphere prevails during a festival at Seville's Plaza de España. Check out your destination’s entry requirements, visa regulations, and tax laws. Start with their government’s official website, and thank your lucky stars most countries now provide English translations. Consider consulting an immigration lawyer, as Deb and Mike did. “We Googled immigration lawyers in our area and her name came up: Debora Eizips-Dreymann,” Mike told me. “At first we kept saying, ‘Yeah, that’s good advice but we could have figured it out ourselves.’ By the end of the process, we were saying, ‘Wow, absolutely worth it!’” For details, see my post How to Get a Residency Visa Without Losing Your Mind.  Rich in 2015, with a backpack full of documents on his way to Plaza de España's Foreigner's Office where our residency visas are processed. Make sure your passport’s good for at least six months. Allow plenty of time for renewing. Review your finances and work situation. Planning to work online? Organize everything in advance; learn how and why in my post Is Remote Working More Fun Overseas? Hoping to work locally? Check out options on job sites such as GoOverseas. Living on your savings? Be realistic about how long your money will last. Your new home may be cheaper, but it’s not free. Set up an international bank account. I use Wise, a London-based financial technology company specializing in international money transfers. Keep your old account for online bill paying. Opening an account in your new home might involve surprising complications; see my post Five Things I’ve Learned About Moving Abroad. Make arrangements for your home and pets. Don’t sell up until you’re comfortably ensconced in your new life. Find a renter or hire a house/pet sitter.  Deb's niece Allie rented their house and fell in love with their dog, Django. Research medical insurance. Medicare won’t cover you abroad, and you may not qualify for the national health service. Find out the reimbursement policy of your existing insurer. Need more? Sanitas is popular with expats worldwide. Make sure you’re covered! Get medical records, renew prescriptions, discuss vaccines. Research health resources as discussed in my post In a Medical Emergency Abroad, Where Do You Go? Update your Covid vaccine and find out if other vaccines or meds are recommended for your destination. Visit the CDC Traveler’s Health page; get a second opinion from the UK’s National Health Service. “Go see your doctor shortly before you go,” Deb advised. “Make sure your prescriptions won’t expire.”  In Spain, if you have a copy of a valid prescription or the medicine's container, pharmacies can often dispense medications that require a prescription in the US. Arrange mail forwarding. The US Post Office only pauses mail up to 30 days for free but now offers a Premium Forwarding Service for a fee. Adapt your phone or get another. You’ll want an unlocked phone with e-sim cards and an international plan. Register with the US Embassy. The Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) enables consular agents to update you about health and security concerns. Lease before you buy. Study neighborhoods, prices, and tax implications before you even think about committing to any form of real estate. Get set up to watch US TV. I use Express VPN to access entertainment in my own language. Bring a few small things that remind you of home. Don’t ship cars, furniture, or appliances, but photos and mementos will make your new place feel cozier. Once you’re sure, ignore the naysayers. “When setting out on a journey,” said the poet Rumi, “do not seek advice from those who have never left home.” As the gag gifts below suggest, sometimes your plucky decision may inspire jealousy and passive-aggression in others. “So what was your goal in moving to Spain for a year?” I asked my brother. “Our goal was to travel around Europe and see if there was some place that we would ever consider living permanently.” “And did you accomplish that?” I asked, and we all laughed. Because no, of course they didn’t. Five weeks after they arrived in Seville, Covid hit and the world went into lockdown. Which just goes to show that you can never prepare for every possibility. But they made the most of their year abroad anyway, touring Spain and Portugal when lockdown loosened, creating vivid memories of a remarkable moment in world history. And isn’t that really why we move abroad — to plunge into unexpected adventures and to experience, as Anthony Bourdain put it, “the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown”?  The final item on your move abroad checklist: When it's all over, kick back and enjoy yourself, like my friend Joel and his cat, shown here on their deck in a Greek village. WANT TO KNOW MORE? For easy reference, I've compiled a list of the links included in this story. Find those links here. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] FOR FURTHER READING My upcoming book on San Francisco My bestselling travel memoirs & guides Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. 
Jackie Smith, author of TravelnWrite, in a 13th century church on Greece's Mani Peninsula when I visited her in 2019.
There’s a splendid, dizzying moment, known to every expat and many travelers, when you arrive back in your home country and see it with fresh eyes. You become a bedazzled stranger in your own neighborhood, an intrepid explorer in your own backyard. Stepping across your familiar threshold, you feel like Neil Armstrong setting the first human footprint on a dusty spacescape. And sometimes, as my expat amiga Jackie discovered, you find your old life has been waiting around the corner to throw a metaphorical custard pie in your face. In September, Jackie and her husband Joel left their charming stone cottage in a small Greek fishing village to make their annual month-long visit to Washington State. A few glasses of wine with old friends, some quality time with family, a couple of simple home repairs, and they’d be back on a plane to their beloved Ελλάδα. But as I always say, America is something you have to stay in practice for, and you don’t want to lose your touch. Every time I return, I find there are jokes I don’t get, cultural references that go right over my head, and fresh hazards to navigate. In Jackie’s case, the hazard was the self-appointed “Concerned Neighbor” who roamed their gated development with camera and notebook, ready to report any infraction of the ever-changing Homeowners Association (HOA) regulations. 
This is not Jackie's actual Concerned Neighbor but a similar character that fans of the old TV show Bewitched will recognize as the nosy parker Gladys Kravitz, played by Alice Pearce.
Jackie knew exactly how long her garage door could stay open, what shrubs she was allowed to plant, and when outdoor Christmas lights had to be turned off at night. But she had no idea solid-coverage stain — the finish that had always been on her 200-foot cedar fence — had become taboo, or that transparent stain had been decreed mandatory. As the solid stain went on, the Concerned Neighbor rushed to notify the HOA that Something Had To Be Done. There was a tremendous fuss, which Jackie dubbed “the HOA Hell-abaloo.” In the end, the solid stain had to be stripped off and transparent stain applied, taking the job from a three-day project to a three-week nightmare at double the cost. “As we watched the painters starting the second week of our three-day fence-painting project,” Jackie wrote on her entertaining blog, TravelnWrite, “one of my favorite neighbors asked, 'Will you ever live here full time?'” I picture Jackie rolling her eyes and gritting her teeth before replying, “This probably isn't the best time to ask that question.” 
"Any outing for anything other than 'the fence' was considered a mental health break," said Jackie.
Checking in with expat amigos, I’ve learned everyone has a different timetable for visiting their home country. Friends from Europe can hop back for a weekend, and often do. For long-haul Americans, a month is typical, two visits a year is not uncommon (especially for those with grown kids and/or aging parents), and some, like me, spend six months in each location. A few, after a bit of finger counting, calculated their last visit home was in 2016, or possibly 2015. Mad Men and Game of Thrones were both on TV, if that helped… Technology lets us stay in touch in ways that were unimaginable when Rich and I moved to Seville 20 years ago. Back then we had computers but not Wifi; email was sent and retrieved from (how quaint this seems now) internet cafés. Today, of course, we stream all the latest entertainment, absorb as much news as we can stomach, and keep in regular contact with our bankers, creditors, family, and friends (not necessarily in that order). 
Despite the constant flow of data across my screen, I’m still gobsmacked every time I step off the plane and find myself on US soil. “Live abroad, if you can,” advised Tom Freston, who started MTV. “Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.” He’s right. My home state has changed a lot over the years, and so has the way I look at it. 
San Francisco is always under attack. If it's not Godzilla, space aliens, or giant squids from the movie industry, it's naysayers insisting "The city is so over." Don't believe a word of it. Graphic: Etsy
Last spring, as I prepared to return to California after six months in Spain, I was taken aback by the gloomy public perception of San Francisco; everyone seemed to think it was in a horrifying “doom loop” of non-stop crime and hopelessness. Was it really? Or was this just media hype and political hot air? As my regular readers know, I decided to find out. I took 20 day trips into the city, and what I discovered during those long rambles made it clear San Francisco is alive and kicking and still — if you know where to go — remarkably cheap and cheerful. It hasn't lost its quirky charm, freewheeling spirit, or ability to surprise the socks off of you. Far from being on life support, it's rocketing toward the future. Apparently these facts are not generally known. I decided to gather my findings in a book, including all the flourishes and anecdotal material I couldn’t fit into my blog posts, and start spreading the word. My San Francisco will be out next month. Watch this blog for details. 
This book is my small way of pushing back against the rising tide of misinformation that’s flooding our lives. “The older I get,” said beloved TV host Fred Rogers, “the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground.” To me, that’s what this blog and my books are all about. Travel teaches us that at heart, we are more alike than we are different. Sometimes it’s harder to remember that at home than abroad, but it’s no less true. I'm trying to let go of any impulses to do Concerned Neighbor-style finger-pointing and instead do my best to find the common, hallowed ground of understanding. San Francisco poet Maya Angelou once said, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." And sometimes that starts with wiping life's custard pie out of our eyes so we can take a clearer look at the places we call home. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad — with occasional trips back to the Old Country — can enrich our lives and help us avoid the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. TRYING TO POST A COMMENT BUT NOT SEEING IT? For a short while, my efforts to reduce the flood of spam on this blog resulted in making it harder to post comments. I think it's fixed now, but if you have any difficulties, please let me know. [email protected] WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guides Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Julie Lokin in Seville early in 2020, the year he got serious about learning Spanish at age 77. A few days ago Rich bellowed “Karen!” with an urgency I haven’t heard since that time the pine tree in our front yard caught on fire. I raced down the hall to find him holding up a small, irregular piece of cardboard. It was the missing piece from a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, which we’d recently assembled, with colossal mental effort, only to realize we were one short. Yes, we tore the house apart and on Friday, admitting defeat, we’d disassembled the 999 pieces and put them away. And now … ! As the Spanish would say, ¡Estaba feliz como una perdiz! (I was as happy as a partridge.)  Rich was as happy as a whole flock of partridges. To be honest, I am not convinced partridges are happier than any other creatures. But the phrase always makes me think of joyfully settling into a cozy nest, comfortably shaking out my feathers, and basking in the moment. So I’m sticking with it. One of the great things about learning a second language is that sometimes it provides a word or phrase so perfect (a bon mot, as the French put it) that you wonder how you ever lived without it. For instance, to emphasize they’re delivering the unvarnished truth, the Spanish say, “No tengo pelos en la lengua” (I don’t have hairs on my tongue). Another favorite is “quedarse en blanco” (literally to stay in the white, meaning to lose your conversational way as if you were enveloped in dense fog), which for me is so … wait, what was I saying? Learning goofy sayings is just one of the appealing reasons to embrace Spanish. Just look at the numbers: with 600 million people speaking it, you’ll have lots more amigos to chat with as you wander through life.  Even more usefully, studying a foreign language enhances neuroplasticity, the ability of your brain to change and adapt. It boosts memory, focus, cognitive skills, creativity, mood, and perhaps even your ability to keep dementia at bay. “Speaking more than one language appears to help the brain resist the effects of Alzheimer’s disease,” reported Alzheimer News Today.  Experts tell us the ideal age to learn a new language is when we’re ten to eighteen, and as soon as they invent a time machine, I’ll hop back and get started on that. Luckily for all of us, life isn’t about ideals, it’s about possibilities and what we do with them. Take my amigo Julius — he goes by Julie — a lifelong New Yorker who spends a couple of months in Seville every winter. When I zoomed with him Saturday, on his 82nd birthday, I asked him how long he’d been studying Spanish. “Five years, mas o menos” (more or less). “Okay, I did have Spanish in high school, but I also had physics and chemistry; I don't remember a lot of that stuff. So say five years.” That means he got started at age 77, six decades later than the recommended timeframe.  Want to practice your Spanish, at home or abroad? Try selecting Español at the ATM. How has it gone? Julie talked about reaching the first milestone, known here in Seville as “bar Spanish,” which means he can order food and drink with a reasonable degree of certainty that he’ll be understood. “It's one thing to speak to another person,” he told me. “It's another thing to understand what they're saying when they respond. But, you know, it's not like I'm speaking on such a high level that the responses are too difficult. And also, there are a lot of workarounds; if you don't exactly remember how to say something, you find an alternative way to say it. And a lot of the vocabulary is almost the same as English.” In fact there are hundreds of words, such as taxi, radio, and mosquito, common to both languages.  Taxi is one of the most universally recognized words in the world, right up there with "huh?" and "coffee." So Julie has achieved what I consider the second milestone: accumulating your own little collection of workarounds and soundalikes that let you make your way to solid ground even in slippery conversations. Over the past five years, Julie has thrown himself into his studies with enthusiasm. Every week, he Skypes for an hour and a half with Sonia, his language teacher in Seville. They talk about his 40-year career running New Audiences, a concert production company for jazz, blues, and folk music, and about the jazz concerts Julie and his wife, Deborah, have enjoyed in Seville.  Julie (right) with world-famous jazz guitarist John McLaughlin (left) and singer-songwriter Elvis Costello (center) backstage at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2019. Every week, Julie also Skypes with a Valenciano named Dani who wants to learn English. They converse in one language, then the other, an arrangement commonly known as an intercambio (interchange). “He’s a young man, half my age, and very, very funny,” said Julie. “We have a good time together.” Valencia isn’t all that far from Seville, and visits have also been exchanged, giving the men and their wives a chance to become friends. “Two years ago,’” Julie recalled, “when Dani and Elena, his wife, were in Seville, we were out to dinner together, with some other friends. And I actually attempted a joke in Spanish, and everybody laughed. Deborah said the waiter was standing behind me, and he was laughing. So I said, ‘Are they laughing at the joke, or are they laughing at my Spanish?’” I’m guessing they were laughing at your joke, Julie. Humor is one of the most difficult things to pull off in a foreign language, marking that moment as milestone number three.  Julie served as a volunteer EMT with New York's Central Park Medical Unit and with the Fair Harbor Fire Department on Fire Island where he has a summer home. “You are officially a bi-lingual person,” I told him. “What advice do you have for people just starting on this journey?” “You should not be afraid to use whatever little bit of Spanish you've learned,” he said. “People are very kind and accepting… They will respect you more and thank you for making the attempt.” Your brain will thank you, too. Thinking in a second language always gives your cerebrum an invigorating workout, bestowing the same health benefits, such as neuroplasticity and boosted memory, no matter how polished the results may (or may not) be.  See? Doesn't your brain feel a bit more robust already, thanks to these flashcards? Photo: Etsy Of course, no matter how long you study Spanish, you may occasionally quedarse en blanco, feel your mind blanking out in the middle of a sentence. (Yes, it still happens to me, even after 20 years, although far, far less often.) That’s when speaking Spanish starts seeming like working a jigsaw puzzle that’s missing half the pieces. And you find yourself bewildered by the suddenness of the disaster, like a homeowner discovering one of their pine trees is on fire. (Which, if you’re wondering, was caused by an electric cable rubbing against a branch until the insulation wore off.) But then, there are the good days. You reach for a word and it’s there. Somebody gives you directions and you understand them. You crack a joke that leaves a tableful of friends and nearby strangers helpless with laughter. “I’m proud of myself when I’m understood,” said Julie. “And I’m getting better at it.” And that is something to be celebrated, at any age.  Celebrate your triumphs! THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guides Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  A sign-hacking prank by NHS employees in London How is 2025 treating you so far? I ask because my year’s off to an extremely dubious start. Minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve, I opened a can of the traditional 12 lucky grapes that MUST be eaten as the clock chimes ... and found 11 grapes. Hard not to read that as an ominous message from the Universe! Days later I finished the toughest 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle I've ever attempted ... and discovered it was missing the final piece. Oh the horror! And did I mention Rich and I both got Covid? (We’re fine now, thanks for asking.) Obviously there’s no point in lulling myself with false hope that this year’s going to be a cakewalk. The gloves are off, and 2025 and I are going toe to toe.  The zeitgeist of our times, from a poster for a concert by Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams So I’m in survival mode, taking stock of my resources. As I roll with the punches, I'm comforted to know that if the going gets tough, Seville’s first class medical system is standing by to patch me up for the next round. The fact Spain has an extremely modern, efficient healthcare system seems to stun my American visitors. That's because we’re raised on the myth that any medical services outside US borders must be hideously, dangerously substandard. Well, hold onto your hats, folks. In the most recent rankings, Spain’s health index score was 43 places higher than that of the USA (#26 vs. #69). Moreover, Spain is becoming a world leader in medical research; it just surpassed Germany for the top spot in clinical trials. “From face transplants to robot surgeons,” reported Olive Press, “Spain has achieved many medical discoveries and innovations in the last year.” I fervently hope I won’t need a face transplant or robotic surgery in 2025. But still, it’s great to know Spanish doctors are on the cutting edge of modern science.  Meet Da Vinci, the robot performing surgery (under human control) in Seville's Hospital Quirónsalud Sagrado Corazón. “OK, fine,” I can hear certain friends muttering to themselves about now. “The care may be great but how do I access it? Where do I go? How do I manage when I don’t speak a word of Spanish?” I’m so glad you asked. To dig deep into this question, I sat down this week with María Moreno Verd of the International Department at Seville’s premier private facility, the Hospital Quirónsalud Sagrado Corazón, now part of the German company Fresenius-Helios, Europe’s largest healthcare system. The facility was honored for emergency care and surgery in the 2024 Best Spanish Hospital Awards.  María Moreno Verd takes care of international patients, serving as translator, coordinator, and support person. María is a professional medical translator who is thoroughly familiar with every aspect of the health system. Her first job, she says, is to calm the fears of patients. “You get anxious when the situation is new, when you are outside your comfort zone. People feel better when I approach them in their language, and I tell them that I am going to be with them all the time. I am there to listen, translate, and explain everything.” The first thing she explained to me was the best way to access the hospital system, which is via G24, their 24/7 call center in Madrid. The number is 901123456; I’ll wait a moment while you jot that down for future reference. G24 translators, fluent in 11 languages, will send your information to María, who makes the appointment or organizes the ER visit and arranges to be present when you arrive. G24 works with you on a Guarantee of Payment letter, based on your insurance; without it, you have to pay up front, and by European standards, care at Sagrado Corazón is not inexpensive.  "This patient has a rare form of health insurance." Last February one of my visitors required medical assistance to remove half a hearing aid that got stuck in his ear. (And yes, the poor guy will never hear the end of that little misadventure!) He was so flustered that he walked out of his rental apartment without grabbing his wallet, arriving at Sagrado Corazón with no ID, no cash, no credit card, no insurance card, nothing. Luckily he did think to bring me along. I didn’t know about G24 back then, so we were ER walk-ins. While I paid the 400€ ($413) deposit, a relative back at the rental apartment found my friend’s ID and texted us a photo of it. Paperwork done, we waited nearly an hour. The actual procedure took ten seconds, and the doctor, nurse, my friend, and I all cheered mightily when the deed was done. The staff refunded 70€ ($72); they’d rounded up, just in case. My friend was reimbursed by his insurer when he got home.  It's no coincidence that the English language does not contain the phrase "As much fun as filling out a health care insurance form." You can never prepare for every medical emergency, but when traveling abroad — or staying home, for that matter — it’s a savvy move to keep everything on this checklist easily accessible on your phone. Prescriptions, which in Spain may be available over the counter. Medical records of major health issues, such as recent surgeries and chronic conditions. Pictures help, in case of a language barrier. If your records are on a health portal, make sure you know the password. Verification of your travel and regular health insurance. Travel insurance is a very good idea, and remember, Medicare doesn’t cover you outside the US. The local emergency phone number. In Europe it’s 112 for everything, like our 911. For more far-flung trips, we have the Emergency Call app. The name/location of top hospital(s). A public ambulance will take you to the closest facility; G24 can dispatch a private ambulance that will take you to Sagrado Corazón. The name/location of a reliable clinic. I have insurance with Sanitas and often take visitors to their clinic for minor stuff. Even without membership, it’s much less expensive, around 60€ ($62) for a walk-in exam or prescription renewal. If something’s beyond them, they’ll send you to Sagrado Corazón. Bonus tip: Get receipts! Usually these will be in Spanish, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll need them for reimbursement later.  This is not a photo of my brother's bike accident in Seville in 2020, but it does capture the spirit of the moment. From a video by Devin Graham “Be sure to tell your readers how nice everyone is at the hospitals in Seville,” my sister-in-law said, when I mentioned I was writing this post. Deb should know; in 2020 my brother tumbled headlong off his bicycle and wound up in the public Hospital Universitario Virgen Macarena. Mike had a CT scan, X-rays, and extensive first aid. Total cost: 199€ ($205). Although Virgen Macarena doesn’t normally provide translators, they found someone to assist. “I cannot express how ginormous this place was,” Deb said. “And yet everyone was incredibly helpful. They seemed to really care about us. We were real to them.” When the last test results confirmed Mike was OK, everyone around them burst into applause.  Being surrrounded by people who care makes all the difference. I suspect it boosted Mike’s ability to bounce back from his scrapes and bumps — no small consideration for a man of 70. A meta-analysis conducted by the National Institutes of Health showed that “Higher levels of psychological stress experienced by hospital inpatients are associated with poorer patient outcomes.” To feel good is to heal better. It pays to be prepared — especially in 2025, which is bound to include plenty of shocks and wallops. But we don’t have to take them lying down. When my New Year’s grapes numbered 11, Rich sprinted to the kitchen, found another can, tore off the top, and returned with the extra grape just in time for midnight. Whatever good luck I have this year, I owe to him. Now, if he could just find that missing puzzle piece…  Long-time readers will recall we had another missing puzzle piece case back in 2021, one with a happier ending. Click here for details. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Here in Seville, the holiday lights are major extravaganzas, like this light show in the gardens of the Alcázar palace. What holiday songs do you find teeth-grindingly irritating? Is there one that makes you want to clap your hands over your ears and run screaming out of the department store? The public-spirited editors of USA Today compiled a list of the worst of the worst, the top ten most horrible yuletide carols of all time. I was pleased to see one I particularly dislike, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, earned the #2 spot on the grounds of sniggering cruelty. I’d never heard of #8, the heartwarming Don't Shoot Me Santa by the Killers. “If ever a Christmas song deserved a ‘what drugs were they on when they recorded this?’ reaction, this is it,” said USA Today, quoting the immortal lines “Don’t shoot me, Santa Claus, I’ve been a clean living boy, I promise you” to which jolly old man replies, “The party’s over, kid, because I’ve got a bullet in my gun.” Egads, when did Santa become such a badass?  Have you been a good kid this year? Well, have you, punk? Image: AI generated If that doesn’t unleash your inner Scrooge, there's always the #1 all-time worst holiday tune, which is (drum roll, please) The Chipmunk Song (Please Christmas Don’t Be Late). Back in the 1950s composer and singer Ross Badasarian (stage name Dave Seville) was down to his last $200 when he purchased a tape recorder that could vary recording and playback speeds. He released the Chipmunk Song on November 17, 1958; by New Year’s Day it was at the top of the charts and has been a bestseller ever since.  Mike, Melissa, Steve, Karen We kids thought it was the funniest thing we'd ever heard, and serenaded our parents with it day and night every holiday season. It's a wonder any of us lived to adulthood. Trying to remember how annoying this song sounds? Just listen. A few days ago I heard The Chipmunk Song (an instrumental version, gracias a Díos!) playing over the loudspeaker in a Seville department store and thought, not for the first time, that globalization has a lot to answer for. Nowadays you rarely hear the Spanish carols, known villancicos, but I was lucky enough to catch one that same day in a small, backstreet boutique. It was Los Peces en El Río (The Fish in the River) in which the fish “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” (drink and drink and return to drink some more” in celebration of the occasion, while nearby the Virgin is washing out the Child’s diapers. It sounds a lot better in Spanish. And then there are all the songs about being home for the holidays; there’s no place like it, according Perry Como and Bing Crosby, while even Elvis grew sentimental about going back “if only in my dreams…” Right now at least half the expats I know are packing up to return to their home countries for family gatherings.  Traveling at the holidays is not for the faint of heart. But Rich and I are staying put. We love spending the holidays here in Seville. The city is madly festive, with extravagant light shows on the Guadalquivir River, in the gardens of the Alcazár palace, and against the back wall of the Ayuntamiento (City Hall). Overhead lights shimmer and dazzle, cafés and shops are open until all hours, and although it is extremely cold by Seville standards (9 C, or 49 F), heaters are everywhere, enabling people to “beben y beben y vuelven a beber” in relative comfort. I got to wondering how expat friends in other countries were faring, so I asked two American couples living in Montpellier, France, about the celebrations taking place in their home-away-from-home. “Paul just got an email from his brother, who lives near Seattle, WA, bemoaning the intense commercialization of Christmas in the US,” said Paula; she and Paul settled in Montpellier five years ago. “Here in France we find Christmas celebrations very low-key, in comparison. Now, in mid-December, there are still stores that are just beginning to decorate for Christmas.” I know, right? Can’t imagine that in the US — or in Seville, for that matter. I started seeing Papa Noel peering from shop windows in October. “A few years ago we went to Annecy, France around Christmastime,” added Paul, “and really enjoyed their small but heartfelt Christmas market.” “Black Friday sales are getting increasingly popular,” Paul said. “We always find that a bit strange. Here in France Thanksgiving is not a thing; as we like to say, the French call it jeudi (Thursday!). But still, the day after our Thanksgiving celebration, stores hold Black Friday sales, even though no one here knows why! (The French always love a proper sale.)” And who doesn’t? We see this in Seville as well: many shops post signs for Black Friday, which sometimes gets extended for weeks. Note how this pharmacy’s display is thoughtfully paired with digestive medication for those whose tummies are already suffering from an excess of jollity.  "Discover our promotions inside," says the placard, using the word "dentro" that also applies to your insides. Well said, farmacia. Well said. Of course, in France food is the centerpiece of any celebration. My friends Maer and Mark go to Montpellier’s markets to eat something called “aligot, which is a regional specialty of mashed potatoes, tons of cream, butter and tomme cheese, served with a sausage,” explained Maer. “You don’t need to eat it more than once a year. Also, vin chaud (hot wine)!” Thus fortified, they brave the cold and wander about looking at the lights. “Christmas Eve is the big deal here,” she added. “French families will do a late dinner called le réveillon, classically with seafood. There’ll be a bûche de Noël, which is a rolled chocolate cake, dressed up to look like a log (bûche means log) and attend midnight mass. I have to wait to get my favorite dessert, galette de trois rois (Three Kings cake) which is puff pastry filled with almond paste. It’s for Three Kings Day [January 6], but it’s so popular that now you start seeing them at the end of December.” Here in Seville, the pastry shops have been displaying our version of Three Kings Day cake, known as roscón, for weeks already. It’s bland, soft pastry filled with whipped cream; I asked Maer how it compared with the French edition. “The galette de rois is a thousand times better tasting than your rascón,” she said. “But yours is more visually entertaining, like a bunch of kids got to design their best cake ever. Sprinkles! Gummies! More sprinkles!”  Seville's roscón de reyes In these shortest, darkest, chilliest days of the year, we need all the sprinkles and twinkle lights we can get. It’s all about creating a sense of what the Danes call hygge (hoo-ga), a sense of warmth, safety, and comfort, a kind of emotional coziness of the soul that is sometimes defined as “cocoa by candlelight.” Now that I know about hygge, I realize that whenever I gather with friends, hygge is in the room. And with all due respect to Bing, Perry, and Elvis, that means wherever we are this time of year, we're home for the holidays. OK, it's possible there is something more annoying than the Chipmunk Song. SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE I think we can all agree it's been a hell of a year. I'm taking a few weeks off to rest up for 2025. Whatever you may be celebrating this time of year, enjoy! See you in January. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  For medicinal purposes, Rich and I ordered the dark chocolate cake at Vineria San Telmo Friday night. “Chocolate is the first luxury,” says actress Mariska Hargitay. “It has so many things wrapped up in it: deliciousness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.” And now you can add another: reducing your chances of getting diabetes. Yes, you read that right. A massive 30-year study showed that regular consumption of dark chocolate lowers your risk of diabetes considerably. When he heard this, Rich exclaimed, “There is a God and She loves me!” He and I are both card-carrying members of die-hard chocoholic families, but like so many sensible people, we’ve grown a trifle concerned about the ridiculous amount of white sugar in the modern diet. For instance, I learned recently the baguettes used for Subway sandwiches have such a high sugar content that Ireland’s Supreme Court has reclassified them as cake.  The "flour" in Subway bread is 10% sugar. The good news? The British Medical Journal reports that after tracking 192,000 participants for three decades, researchers determined that dark chocolate (and only dark, not the milk or white varieties) contains so much cocoa, with its health-boosting flavonoids, that it actually helps break down sugar and protect insulin-producing cells. A mere five ounces a week (in layperson’s terms, that’s slightly under one and a half Lindt bars) reduced participants’ chances of getting Type 2 diabetes by 21%. And it doesn't have to stop there. “For every ounce of dark chocolate that a person consumed per week,” reported the Washington Post, “their risk of developing diabetes fell by three percent.” Eat more dark chocolate to stay healthy? I’m all in!  “This calls for a celebration,” I told Rich. “Let's go to Juan’s for some dark chocolate cake.” Our amigo Juan runs one of Seville’s most popular eateries, Vineria San Telmo, located at the northern tip of the lovely park Jardines de Murillo (Gardens of Murillo). His cozy restaurant has been a regular haunt of ours for twenty years. And in addition to excellent cuisine and an extensive wine list, it offers the finest cakes and pies in Seville, prepared by Juan’s wife, Reyes, at her Pastelería Gollerias. I always tell newcomers, “There are Reyes’ desserts, and then there are everybody else’s. Don’t settle.” I once asked Reyes to tell me her secret. “I cut the sugar in half,” she said. That lets the flavor emerge, which is why her cakes and pies are such standouts here in Seville, where bland, sugary desserts are the norm.  Irresistable desserts from Pastelería Gollerias As it happened, a few days earlier Rich and I had spent the morning talking with Juan as part of our Amigos Project research. I was curious to know how he’d arrived in Seville as a 20-something expat, launched this beloved restaurant, kept it going for two decades, and still found time for adventures such as motorcycle rides through Eastern Europe and hauling medical supplies to Ukraine. Born in Argentina, Juan is a citizen of the world; on one side he’s Spanish and Italian, the other Russian. At 21 he moved to New York and then Washington, DC to work for Marriott. “That was my real university,” he said. Later an airline catering job took him to New York, Washington, Paris, London, and Madrid. Eventually he left to backpack around Europe, fetching up in Seville in 1996 at the age of 27. After holding various odd jobs, he decided to open Vineria San Telmo in 2004.  Juan in front of Vineria San Telmo He attributes much of his success to choosing the right staff, many of whom have been with him a decade or more. “Your attitude is more important than your aptitude,” said Juan. “I can teach you how to put out a cup of coffee, but your attitude comes from within yourself.” The red tape wasn’t as difficult to navigate as he’d expected. “It’s not that crazy and not that complicated. Once you turn in your papers, you can open up. It took four years to get my license, but I was open the whole time.” Inspectors visited, saw he was following the filed plans and local regulations, and left him in peace. Today Juan’s menu includes classic Spanish dishes such as salmorejo (cold tomato-based soup), and pluma (the fattiest, yummiest cut of pork), along with squid-ink seafood pasta and other original dishes. He was experimental back in the days when Seville served nothing but traditional fare, and it won him loyal customers among locals, expats, and international visitors. Juan has resisted all suggestions that he expand into additional locations. “My day-to-day life is much more important than having a few more thousands of euros in my bank account,” he told us. “We have our needs completely covered, my wife and I. We don’t need more.” Having a manageable work life makes it possible for Juan to take off from time to time on travel adventures, including long, unstructured solo trips on his motorcycle. In the summer of 2016, when our itineraries brought us all to the Baltics, Rich and I met up with Reyes and Juan for a lively lunch in Riga, Latvia.  Reyes and Juan took a professional interest in the delicious food we shared in Riga, Latvia, in July, 2016. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Juan set off on a different kind of road trip. He and Ukrainian friends Isabel and Vladmir rented a van, filled it with medical supplies, and drove to the Poland-Ukraine border. That’s when they discovered their rental van couldn’t be driven outside the EU. “So I picked up the medicines and walked across the border with them,” he said.  Ukrainians fleeing across the border into Poland in March 2022. Photo: Reuters After multiple trips the van was empty, and the trio went and collected a Ukrainian family of six. They'd crossed the border into Poland and were now attempting to reach the island of Mallorca off Spain’s east coast, so Juan and his amigos gave them a lift. “They were scared at the beginning,” Juan recalled. “But after an hour in the van, we were like friends. I’m still in touch; I spoke with them a week ago.” “What’s your next big adventure?” Rich asked him. “I don’t know. I just go. I think that's the best thing of Europe. Right now it’s midday; in ten hours, the three of us could go through fifteen countries. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's amazing. The fact that you can jump onto your motorcycle and head to Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic — just like that.”  Map: Worldatlas I can only hope that wherever his wanderlust takes him next, Juan will be packing plenty of dark chocolate. In addition to fighting hunger and diabetes, dark chocolate lowers cholesterol and protects the memory. And it’s a powerful, feel-good mood enhancer. In fact, researchers have discovered that thanks to a compound called anandamide, chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. I've heard the researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are. So there you have it, folks. Eat more dark chocolate! Doctor's orders!  THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  Lee Kramm has lived abroad and worked remotely for 11 years. Commuting to an office five days a week; I still shudder when I remember how many hours of my youth were spent crammed into subway trains and buses, navigating crowded transit hubs, and hurtling along freeways, pedal to the metal in the 8:40 Grand Prix, trying to comb my hair and put on lipstick using the rear-view mirror. Looking back, I'm amazed that I — and the drivers around me — survived long enough to reach the office every morning.  Just wondering how many commuters have crashed trying to read this sign. Like most Americans, I usually spent nearly an hour a day in transit. That's 232 hours a year — the equivalent of nearly six 40-hour work weeks. Do I miss it? Are you kidding? I’ve worked from home for decades now, and I still feel the thrill of playing hooky. Cooking breakfast, I listen gleefully to traffic reports so I can revel in the fact that snarled off-ramps and blocked bridges won’t slow down my morning commute from kitchen table to home office. Thanks to the pandemic (a phrase you don’t often hear from me!) millions discovered the convenience of working at home, and today around 32.6 million Americans (22% of the workforce) are still doing their jobs remotely at least part of the time. Not all of them are working from the USA.  We all have different reasons for moving abroad. According to Reddit, “There are 17.3 million American digital nomads or people that travel freely while working remotely.” My math isn’t great, but doesn’t that add up to around 11% of the US workforce? No wonder I've had so many enquiries about this lately — like the visitor who recently asked, “How do people manage their jobs remotely? Think I could do it?” To answer him properly, I sat down this week with Lee Kramm, an American amigo who has spent the last eleven years working remotely in Seville and, more recently, in the Algarve region of Portugal. I asked him to share his family's story.  Lee with his wife, Emily “I'm trained in engineering and medicine,” Lee explained, “I worked in the FDA for five years, serving as a medical officer for the regulation of ophthalmic medical devices and drugs.” His job was to determine what scientific evidence needed to be gathered to ensure that a clinical trial provided definitive proof. He liked the work, but neither he nor his wife, Emily, felt at home in Washington, DC. “You go on long walks through the neighborhood and you talk about moving. It's more like a fantasy at that point,” he recalled. “We were fed up with living in DC. Emily had lived in Barcelona, studying. She told me if we could ever find a way to move to Spain with the children to learn the language, it’d be a great opportunity. But how to make it happen? What are the logistics of it all?”  First, Lee left his government job and spent a year in the US setting up a private consulting practice. Instead of evaluating clinical trials presented to the FDA, he now advises companies how to design clinical trials for new products they want approved. He joined a consulting group with an international reputation and soon had plenty of clients. “Then Sandy Hook happened,” he said. As you probably remember, that was the deadliest elementary school shooting in American history; 26 people were killed including 20 first graders — little kids about the same age as Lee’s two children. That’s when Lee and Emily, then in their mid-thirties, got more serious about living in Europe. The following summer they moved to Seville and enrolled their kids, aged seven and eight, in a local public elementary school. “A lot of expat families we know send their kids to bilingual schools as a soft landing,” said Emily. “And we just threw our kids in, as hard as you can do it. But they learned Spanish down in their souls, and they'll always have it.”  The Kramm kids walking to school in downtown Seville, 2013 Family life is very different in Spain. “One of the things people enjoy here,” Lee said, “is not to have a whole life that’s centered around driving among different activities, like sports. That change is like a breath of fresh air. And kids don’t have to think about things like wearing clear backpacks for weapons checks or training to hide under their desks [from a shooter]. You transition to a more sane way of living.” I asked Lee about his work-life balance. “I'm disciplined about getting my work done. What I'm not disciplined about is taking personal time. My clients are all over the world, in different time zones. So my work bleeds into Sundays, into night, into early mornings. I enjoy what I do, but I need to segregate my work life better. But that's one of the beauties of working for yourself, right? It's all within my control.”  As for Emily, she started a nonprofit called Diálogos para Construir (Constructive Dialogues or “DPC”). “I founded it with some Spanish aid workers, heroes with capes. We provide legal aid, housing, educational, and basic needs support for refugees and migrants who are already here.” She mostly works with African and Middle Eastern youths who reach 18 and are no longer eligible for state services. To help fund the nonprofit, she and some friends launched Uprooted Theater, Seville’s first English language live theater. It’s been a huge hit in the community and a personal delight for me.  Cabaret night at Uprooted Theater This nonprofit and the people they support will benefit enormously from last month’s Spanish legislation reforms that will provide them with work visas and encourage them to assimilate into society. “Spain needs young workers,” Lee explained. “And these young men want to work. Spain said, ‘We’re going to look at this as a practical matter. We are going to fulfill the labor needs of Spain and the production demands from Northern Europe; we cannot segregate refugees and migrants away from the work.’ This is big news. And it’s good news.”  As a future expat, how might you find work? Lee has used Upwork to hire freelancers for various tasks and projects; some consultants say it is useful for finding jobs online. Other sites Lee hasn’t tried offer similar services. What about navigating the transition? Lee recommends Jackie “the Fixer” Baxa’s Family Move Abroad. Got teens approaching college age? More and more Americans are opting to get quality, affordable degrees in the UK and the EU; the consulting group Beyond the States can help you research options. Spain began offering Digital Nomad Visas in 2023 — just one of the reason it’s often ranked among the top countries for remote workers. Beyond that, Lee pointed out, “You pay less for housing, health insurance, basic needs, and you don't need two cars…” In fact, you may not need a car at all. Rich and I have lived in Seville for nearly 20 years without a vehicle, walking everywhere, enjoying the city’s exuberant nuttiness every single day. Where I come from, you don’t find entertainment like that on a city bus or crowded freeway!  SPAM ALERT! Lately I've been flooded with spam comments, sometimes 200 or more per blog post. Each has to be removed individually. I'm experimenting with ways to block them, which may result in some delays in posting legitimate comments. Don't worry — your words will appear! In the unlikely event they don't, write me at [email protected]. THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it.  To artist Bettine Flesseman, it all sounded like a grand adventure. “Grab your toothbrush,” said Rich. “We’re getting out of town.” Reeling from weeks of harrowing headlines, Rich and I realized we needed some serious attitude adjustment to pull together the tattered shreds of our mental equilibrium. It didn’t take us long to choose the geographic solution favored by so many great minds from Marco Polo to the fraternity brothers in Animal House: road trip! Rich and I each threw a scant handful of toiletries and a change of undergarments into a single, shared backpack and left our Seville apartment on foot early the next morning. Rich had made some mysterious arrangements — he loves the element of surprise — so I had no idea where we were headed until we arrived at the train station and I heard him ask for tickets to Jerez de la Frontera. Just an hour south of Seville, Jerez — or as the Moors called it, Sharīsh — gave the world the fortified wine we know as sherry. (Thanks, Jerez; nice work!) Bodegas are dotted about the landscape, and the streets are redolent of rich, damp fermentation, the scent wafting out of open windows and tasting room doors.  Sipping sherry at the Taberna Jerez The food was extraordinary. At Bar Juanito Rich and I sampled sherry, artichokes poached in fino (dry sherry), and bluefin tuna fresh from the nearby Atlantic. During the day we explored ancient monuments and little backstreets. In the evening we joined what seemed to be all 212,879 of the city's residents crowding the downtown plazas, celebrating the simple pleasure of being together on a warm Friday evening with the holidays just ahead. I returned home to Seville the next day feeling a renewed lightness of being thanks to thirty hours free from news headlines and from the burden of extraneous possessions. “Less is more,” architect Mies Van Der Rohe famously said in 1886. But how much less stuff can we have and still live full, rich, reasonably comfortable lives? My Dutch friend Bettine Flesseman tested those limits to the max when she and her husband, Eric, impulsively moved to rural Portugal in 1969. “Our friends in Holland said we were crazy,” she told me. Those friends might have had a point.  In the mid-twentieth century, Portugal still did things the old-fashioned way. Photo: Clarence W. Sorensen Collection, University of Wisconsin Bettine and Eric were in their mid-twenties with babies one and two years old. Fed up with their native Holland’s predictability, the couple had decided to emigrate to Canada. But first, they took a two-week vacation in a country they’d never visited: Portugal. They fell in love with the people, climate, and countryside. Before the two weeks were up, they’d bought five acres of land with a roofless cottage for the equivalent of $18,000. They had absolutely no idea what they were going to do with it.  Bettine and Eric's cottage, known as Caliço, was missing a roof and only accessible by donkey track. Painting: Bettine Flesseman I’ve watched people make similar moves in Spain, and I can tell you, it nearly always ends in tears. Amazingly it didn’t this time. The intrepid couple returned in May with their babies and a rented caravan holding basic bedding, kitchenware, and tools. Before they could drive up to Caliço, as the cottage was called, they had to widen the only access: a kilometer-long donkey track. Cars were an exotic rarity there at the time; everyone was illiterate, so they couldn’t pass the test to get a driver’s license. The only three cars in the district belonged to Bettine’s family, the taxi driver, and the doctor. The only others who could read and write were the couple running the tiny village shop. They handled correspondence for the villagers, kept accounts on an abacus, and didn’t bother to stock toilet paper, sanitary napkins, disposable diapers, or toothpaste — because who needed that fancy, costly stuff? “Nobody brushed their teeth,” said Bettine. “When children got married, a standard wedding present from their parents was a denture.” As for more basic functions, she added, “The Portuguese had no bathrooms but did whatever they had to do behind a certain tree or bush and cleaned up with grass or leaves. The hot sun took care of drying the stuff and the wind took care of the rest.” Yikes! Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it? But 200 years ago, that’s how 85% of human beings lived; by 1980 it was 40% and today it’s just 9%. Whenever I feel gloomy about the state of the world, I look up these statistics on the website Gapminder. Right now, 85% of the world population has access to food, water, basic toilets, electricity, schooling (for girls too), and health care. It may not always feel like it, but humanity is making progress. Yes, we are!  Not all girls and women (shown here in blue) get equal opportunity, but overall we're making progress toward closing the gender gap. Source: Statistic 2024 Bettine and Eric didn’t adopt the local lifestyle completely. They traveled to nearby cities for toothpaste and other modern essentials, painting supplies for Bettine's fledgling career as an artist, and conveniences such as a chemical toilet and a bucket-style shower. The children made their own games and toys and played with the family menagerie: cats, a dog known as Mosca (“fly”) because he couldn’t resist chasing flies, chickens, rabbits, and a donkey that appeared docile until the bellyful of wine the seller had given him wore off and his surly nature emerged. “Kloris the Rooster always sat on my shoulder,” recalled Bettine, “and helped me to stop smoking. He hated the smoke and snatched the cigarette out of my mouth. He won the battle...”  Evidently Kloris had taken up the challenge of this 1970 poster from the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Portugal's progress took a giant leap forward in 1974 when the Carnation Revolution brought the socialists into power. “Before that,” Bettine told me, “it was really a very right-wing dictatorship. And as you know, with dictators, they are not very interested in schooling." In 1964, the dictatorship had opened schools providing education through fourth grade, but the sketchy literacy acquired there was soon forgotten. "The girls all became seamstresses and the boys bricklayers or fishermen." After the revolution, kids stayed in school until the age of 18; years later university educations became available. Portugal’s literacy rate is now 96.78%. (By comparison, America’s literacy is 79%; worldwide it’s 86%). Overall, the lifestyle has improved so much that Portugal ranked in the top ten on InterNation’s Quality of Life Index 2024.  From left, Bettine, her daughters Meinke (an artist with a gallery in Portimão), Pauline (who runs the Earth Shop and Café in Praia do Carvoeiro), and Meinke's daughter Sancha (a carpenter and welder) in 2024. “After the revolution,” Bettine added, “the people got the right to have a holiday. What sort of holiday does one plan when one has no money? A camping holiday of course!” This was a stroke of good luck for Bettine and Eric, who had decided to turn their property into a holiday campsite, which they ran successfully for nine years before moving on to other adventures. I asked Bettine if she had advice for readers who might be considering a move to Portugal today. “Well, I wouldn't wait too long to come here, because it's become very popular. And especially with the situation in the United States, lots of Americans are looking around. It's still one of the cheapest countries in Europe, but when there's so much demand, prices are going up. So if people are interested to come, they should not wait too long.” WANT TO KNOW MORE? Bettine is kindly offering my readers a free download of her memoir The Path to Caliço (in pdf format) about moving to Portugal in 1969. It's a delight and a real eye-opener! CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD OF BETTINE'S MEMOIR  This shrine in downtown Jerez invites you to leave tokens of appreciation for miracles received or to ask for divine intervention. Got any concerns you'd like to take up with the Almighty right now? THE AMIGOS PROJECT This post is part of my ongoing exploration of how living and traveling abroad can enrich our lives and help us find fellowship, avoiding the isolation that's become a global epidemic. See all my Amigos Project posts here. DON'T MISS OUT! If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so I can let you know when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] SUBSCRIBED BUT NOT GETTING POSTS? Check your spam folder. Internet security is in a frenzy these days. If you still can't find it, please let me know. WANT MORE? My best selling travel memoirs & guide books Best of Cheap & Cheerful San Francisco Cozy Places to Eat in Seville GOING SOMEWHERE? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. |
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I'm an American travel writer dividing my time between California and Seville, Spain. I travel the world seeking intriguing people, quirky places, and outrageously delicious food so I can have the fun of writing about them here.
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