One of the reasons we chose to go to Germany and Prague in the winter was to see the Christmas markets. Spurred on by beautiful images like the one below, as well as articles listing the Top Ten Christmas Markets in Germany, we dug out our cold weather gear (which is otherwise completely unnecessary in Portugal) and hopped on a jet to Berlin.

Turns out photographers are pretty good at turning something that’s merely good-looking into something amazing looking. We never quite saw any scene to match the above, but we were ultimately delighted in the overall experience anyway.

In fact, for me the Christmas markets returned a good portion of some good ol’ fashioned Christmas spirit into my heart. They are delightful places, with cheerful vendors selling things like chocolates made to look like tools, traditional German foods made in huge metal pots and stirred with large wooden paddles, as well as ornaments, clothing, assorted Christmas gifts, and Gluhwein, which is a popular drink staple of the markets.

(It’s a little known fact that Gluhwien was invented by Elmer Müller, an alcoholic sixth grader who snuck wine into school by pouring it into his paste jar. He rather enjoyed the taste, and so dubbed it “Gluhwein.” The name stuck, because, you know, it’s glue. Later on, he went on to invent Elmer’s Glue, but ironically, perhaps because they removed the wine, Elmer’s isn’t particularly edible.)*

Christmas markets are crowded with folks enjoying themselves by wandering through the booths, gazing at the beautiful decorations, skating in an ice rink, letting the kids ride a small train or other rides, shopping for gifts, hobnobbing with their friends in a very festive atmosphere, or helping each other pry their mouths back open after sucking down too much gluhwein.*

Christmas markets were originally a German and Central European tradition, but it’s slowly spreading around the world. Portugal is beginning to see a few of them; but it will probably never make it big in the US because as soon as you have Taco Bell booths or nativity scenes sponsored by Monsanto, all the charm goes out the window.

In our old hometown of Portland, Oregon, there is the Saturday Market, which has largely remained homespun and charming, and since it’s Portland, a little weird. Christmas markets in Germany are like the Saturday Market, except with a much more Christmassy atmosphere and no discernible aroma of marijuana.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to anyone reading this (everyone else can go suck lemons; just don’t tell them I said that), and here are the pictures!

One of the clever ways they allow you to walk around with Christmas mugs instead of messy paper or styrofoam cups is to serve it in one with a one or two euro deposit. You can either keep the mug for that price, or return it for a refund. We kept two of them as souvenirs of Germany. I kept the wife as a souvenir from the states.

The sign above this blacksmith says, “Below is a guy you don’t want to mess with.”* I took that advice and enthusiastically complimented him on his beautiful tattoo.*

 

“Engel” translates to “angel.” I gotta tell ya, the Germans are so efficient they knew ahead of time that my own personal angel would be standing there to have her picture taken. They of course took the sign down as soon as she walked away, its purpose having been served.*

The aforementioned chocolates in the shape of tools. It’s good to know where you can go if you have a chocolate screw that just won’t budge.

The various markets had different rides. This one not only had a Ferris Wheel (which looked waaay to cold to ride in near-freezing weather) but a skating rink as well. We saved both our own health and that of the other skaters by staying off the ice.

You can see the palpable relief on our faces after we both agreed not to go skating.

Christmas pyramids originated in Germany, so it’s no surprise that most of the markets had at least one gigantic one.

Some of the markets are built in or near tourist sites, in this case the Berlin TV tower, which was built by East Germany in the 1960s.

Some people accused me of marrying a trophy wife but I can assure you that despite her good looks, she is anything but. Here she proves it by not being the one who is an ornament.

The decor is top-notch. Very clean, consistent, and festive. They were all very crowded, but it was a good crowded. Everyone very much enjoyed themselves, except the people who had to wear ornaments all day.

We imbibed a variety of drinks such as hot cider, apple cider with rum, gluhwein, mulled wine, and of course beer.

Although I have to confess one of the beers I had was a Budweiser. Just wanted to see if it tasted different. Next time I go to Germany, it’s no ifs, ands, or Buds.

Here Carolyn demonstrates the proper way to eat a German wiener.

Some of the markets had cute performances with dancers or musicians. Or maybe it was performances with cute dancers. Because of the crowds, I couldn’t get close enough to tell.

The malls of course got into the spirit of things with lots of decor, but they can’t compete with the homespun charm of the Christmas markets.

Gigantic Santas and snowmen were popular decorations.

We’re now looking at pictures from the Dresden Christmas markets, I figured we might as well put all the Christmas market pictures together. By the way, you don’t go to these markets to lose weight.

This is as close as I could get to taking a Christmas market picture like they put on the internet. I’ll obviously never be a professional photographer, but you get the idea.

One funny little story from the Dresden market: we actually got recognized by someone from our appearance on House Hunters International. We overheard two men speaking English, and began to engage them in conversation when one of them looked at us and said, “I recognize you two from TV! You were on Househunters or something weren’t you?” Man, we went all the way to Germany to avoid all the paparazzi, and we still get recognized!

Even if you’re not in the market for Christmas decor, the booths are delightful, colorful, and very well stocked.

And the food choices are almost limitless, many of which are especially present-worthy.

Hard to image a scene and atmosphere that is more Christmassy in spirit than these markets!

The Dresdner (Dresden) Striezelmarkt is one of the oldest Christmas markets in the world. Founded as a one-day market in 1434, it celebrated its 584th anniversary in 2018. It now has about 240 booths, and attracts about 3 million visitors. With two Americans living in Portugal added to the tally, it’s now 3,000,002.

The inevitable Christmas Pyramid in Dresden.

This guy was frozen in 1426 in the hopes that more advanced technology would be able to cure what killed him.*

Since this is what he might look like after being defrosted, they decided to keep him frozen. Besides and ironically, curing sword stabs is a medical art that has now been lost to history, so that frozen knight is completely screwed.*

After a hard day of wandering through Christmas markets, it’s time to sit down with a glass of wine. Or just because it was wine-thirty.

The famous Smurf Christmas Tree.*

The sight of her digging into her purse or me into my wallet was a common one since we just had to sample so many of the delights. I think we each gained ten kilometers as a result.* See how much easier metric is?

As you can tell by the presence of a panda, we’re now in Prague. That’s a non sequitur, which is sometimes used to create humor. Hey, we all get a ribbon for trying, don’t we?

We got a frosty reception in our first visit to Prague. Guess we’ll have to try again in the summer.

The Christmas markets we saw in Prague were not quite as delightful or crowded as they were in Germany. Maybe that’s because most of the booths didn’t accept Czechs as payment. Bah dum dum.

Don’t get me wrong, the Christmas markets in Prague were still great. It may just be that the buildings around Prague were so beautiful and amazing they overshadowed the Christmas market decor.

I think this picture demonstrates that.

This guy shook his finger at me after I took this picture. Apparently no pictures allowed. I have no idea why, it’s not like he’s using some sort of secret advanced technology. Joke’s on him though. Not only did I keep the picture, but now it’s all over the internet, being viewed by some 3,214,345 readers! Give or take 3,214,341.

Praha is how the Czechs say Prague. I wish we didn’t change the city names for each language. Shouldn’t every other language pronounce another country’s city names using the original names its own country gives them? In European languages alone, below are all the ways you would say “Lisboa.” What’s wrong with just saying Lisboa? Sheesh!

Albanian: Lisbon
Basque: Lisboako
Belarusian: Лісабон
Bosnian: Lisabon
Bulgarian: Лисабон (pronounced Jhshplongooocaaooh)
Catalan: Lisboa
Croatian: Lisabon
Czech: Lisabon
Danish: Lissabon
Dutch: Lissabon
Estonian: Lissaboni
Finnish: Lissabon
French: Lisbonne
Galician: Lisboa
German: Lissabon
Greek: Λισαβόνα (Lisavóna)
Hungarian: Lisszabon
Icelandic: Lissabon
Irish: lisbon
Italian: Lisbona
Latvian: Lisabona
Lithuanian: Lisabona
Macedonian: Лисабон
Maltese: Lisbona
Norwegian: Lisboa (Thank you Norwegians for keeping it the same!)
Polish: Lizbona
Romanian: Lisabona
Russia: Лиссабон (Lissabon)
Serbian: Лисабон (Lisabon)
Slovak: Lisabon
Slovenian: Lizbona
Spanish: Lisboa
Swedish: lissabon
Ukrainian: Лісабон (Lisabon)
Welsh: lisbon
Yiddish: ליסבאָן (pronounced “Oy vay!”

All I want for Christmas is fewer words in different languages! Since I’m endeavoring to learn Portuguese, I have a selfish reason for that request. Oy vay, there are just too many damn words to memorize.

 

 

 

 

* An asterisk indicates that I completely made up the statement that precedes it.

Believe it or not, it is possible for me to be serious when I write (although if you scroll through every entry below you’d be hard pressed to believe that), but this portion of our Berlin tour calls for nothing but seriousness.

I looked forward to visiting Berlin mostly to see firsthand how the Germans have commemorated World War II, which was the deadliest military conflict in human history. My anticipation was well-rewarded; Berlin has done a good job making sure residents and visitors alike remember the horrors of that time.

While Berlin probably can’t be described as a beautiful city (lots of plain-Jane Soviet-era buildings still exist in what was east Berlin, after all), it is certainly not an ugly city, and is rich in history and culture. Berlin is also very cosmopolitan: only 71% of Berlin’s residents are ethnic German. The rest is mostly a mix of eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Asians. In addition, Berlin is a trendsetter in music, art, and dance. International artists, entrepreneurs, and young people are flocking there to be part of the scene.

Acceptance and tolerance are now woven into the city’s fabric. You could say it is now the antithesis of a Hitler city, although Berlin was always more liberal than the rest of the country during those times. It was not the hotbed of Nazism, it’s just where the capitol was.

The devastation of World War II was not just the holocaust. The holocaust was simply the most mind-numbing and senseless aspect of it. Estimates of total deaths due to the war reach as high as 85 million people killed, over 50 million of which were civilians. The USSR alone lost over 25 million people. Someone tabulated the cost of the war relative to 2005 dollars, and came up with $11,292,682,078,166.46. That’s over eleven trillion dollars. And 46 cents.

Despite the fact that blaming Jews for anything related to World War I or Germany was totally irrational and ludicrous, millions of Germans were willing to rally behind the policies and/or turn a blind eye to the mass extermination of an entire group of blameless people.

I believe this is central as to why so many folks are very uncomfortable seeing men like Donald Trump in power (as well as some of the world’s other strident right-wing leaders) with his obvious bigotry (don’t even think about denying that even if you support his policies). Bigotry led to the outright murder of six million Jews. I believe most Europeans are far less willing to allow bigotry to take hold again than many Americans, because the results of going down that road stare them in the face nearly every day.

While it seems as if we should be smart enough to learn from disaster, the main message you see when you enter the Holocaust Museum is this:

The wholesale slaughter of six million Jews just because they were Jewish should be enough reason for most politicians to pick their words carefully even today. As our leaders and representatives, they should stay as far away as possible from even hinting that just because someone might look or act different, or believe in a different version of God, or speak another language, or come from another country, they should be treated any differently from anyone else. When a politician chooses to ignore history and fan the flames of racism or sexism, or wields patriotism as a sword with which to keep the hordes of foreigners at bay, or build another goddamn wall, many people become very uncomfortable. For the life of me I don’t understand why American politics are so all-in. You can support some things, but you should hate other things even if it’s from the same party or politician, and denounce it any time you see it. One of those is bigotry.

John McCain did that, and earned the respect of many who would otherwise oppose many of his policies. Where have all the John McCains gone?

The apt and starkly named Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is not a memorial designed to shove the reality of the actual brutal acts in your face. What you will find are the victims’ stories. The museum, which is housed beneath the concrete slabs, emphasizes the lives of those who were so senselessly shipped off to torture and death. These were real people whose only crime was to be born Jewish. Of course the Germans also efficiently disposed of many others, such as Gypsies and homosexuals and the mentally challenged. Or because you were liberal.

Above the museum, 2,711 concrete slabs sit on 4.7 acres of undulating ground. At first glance, this is an unusual and puzzling design. If you read up on it you’ll find all sorts of interpretations as to what it all might mean. I think only ingenious works of art can result in so many people walking away with so many varying interpretations.

In fact, Carolyn came up with her own interpretation after seeing the rain drops trickle down the sides of the slabs. They reminded her of tears. I don’t know if the designers planned that, but she’s right. And there’s no event in human history that deserves more tears than the holocaust.

Inside the museum, which fittingly costs nothing to enter, you are shown story after story of real human beings. It is a great reminder that the holocaust is not just about statistics or unfathomable numbers of people killed. It’s about six million innocent persons, each of whom was just like you and me, with hopes and dreams and loves and heartaches. And their lives were brutally taken from them simply because one man developed an irrational hatred of them because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that the Germans had simply lost World War I on their own.

Unfortunately, the tragedy of the war didn’t end when World War II was over. Europe was a complete mess. Most Jews and many more permanently lost their homes and possessions even when they returned to claim them. Millions of people were scattered about the continent, and the infrastructure was devastated. To make matters worse, the Soviets stayed in almost all of the countries they crossed to get to Germany. So those who lived in East Germany, for instance, went from the horrors of Nazi Germany to the horrors of Soviet rule. The East German security service, known as the Stasi, was just as feared and brutal as the SS. Eventually the Soviets built a wall around West Berlin, and sealed off the countries they controlled.

On of the most famous border crossings in Germany was between East and West Berlin, and is known as “Checkpoint Charlie.” It is now a tourist attraction.

There is also a section of the famous Berlin Wall that has been preserved. I’d heard that it was just a small segment, but I definitely wanted to see it. It turns out it’s bigger than I thought, and we found it a very interesting place to visit.

There is a memorial wall honoring all those who lost their lives trying to cross the wall into West Berlin.

There is the wall itself, which actually was just the last line of defense.

Even if you could climb over that wall, you first had to make it through a no-man’s land patrolled by guards in towers, with mines and dogs and sirens and in some cases guns automatically triggered by motion detectors.

Residents on both sides could see across to the other. But the wall created a chasm between countrymen that could only be healed once the wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Many of the buildings in the area that face West Berlin have large murals painted on them showing what the area looked like during the cold war.

In the end? Those millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent was all completely senseless, borne on the backs of lies and policies with no reality behind them. Sometimes I despair at the state of a species that is so willing to believe lies and to hate so easily, enough so as to allow six million of their fellow human beings to be tormented and slaughtered. It’s exceedingly important that we remember what humanity is capable of, both the good and the bad. This is why I get shivers up and down my spine when I see the frickin’ President of the United States tweet this:

While he has a point about the inequity of military spending (to which many might say, why the hell is the US paying 4.3% of its GDP when that means it spends more on defense than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the UK and Japan combined?).

But the issue I have with the tweet is that Mr. Trump demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of history: There was no such thing as a European military; they were fighting each other. In fact, Europe formed the European Union mostly to ensure something like World War II didn’t happen again. Again, no matter what your politics are you should be horrified that the leader of the most powerful nation in the world is so clueless when it comes to world history.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As a side note, many people don’t know that when Germany fell, many of the upper level Nazis escaped to the Middle East, where they had cultivated allies. Once ensconced, they continued their anti-Jewish efforts, which explains some of the irrational hatred the Arabs have against the Jews. Mr. Adolf Hitler is a gift of evil that keeps on giving even to this day.

In the end, Hitler received his own just reward. I think it is so fitting that the place where he killed himself, the Führerbunker, is now simply a dirt-covered parking lot.

A fitting memorial to the most evil monster in human history.

 

 

I always wondered why it’s called Germany in English. One visit and boom! I found out soon enough.

You learn a lot about a place when you visit, and as a result of this, our first ever visit to Germany, we found out why it was called the “Land of Many Germs” (or Germ-many in the old dialect). It’s because they have so many germs of course! Here’s our proof: after we landed in Berlin and began walking around, we developed colds. That means every single time we’ve gone to Germany, we’ve gotten a cold. What other proof do you need?

By the way, in Portuguese the word for cold is “constipação.” Don’t ask us why. Maybe way back when the official Portuguese Language Translator got confused when he had both a cold and, uh, a case of the clogs.

Since that word got used up, they decided the phrase for “constipation” would be “prisão de ventre,” which literally translates to “prison of the belly.” Go figure. I thought they might’ve just used “cold” to make it even. Although that really might’ve messed up a lot of travelers when they asked for cold medicine.

I think it actually makes a lot more sense to call a cold a “prisão do nariz” (prison of the nose). I’ll try that phrase on the next pharmacist we visit when we have a cold. Why not? They can’t understand us anyway.

But we didn’t let lousy constipaçãos interfere with our sightseeing. So take that you germy Germans!

Berlin is a fascinating city. It impressed and interested me more than I thought it would. Being something of a casual student of World War II, it was interesting to see all the remnants of that war (and the aftermath, especially with the Soviet occupation of most of eastern Europe) still present and commemorated. I really think many Europeans’ worldview is still affected by that horrific time, as it should be.

So we set out to see all the sights Berlin has to offer. Being the savvy travelers we are, we usually travel by Commemorative Plate. I know a lot of people use Fodor, or Rick Steves, or Google. But we like to use the Commemorative Plate Travel System (CPTS). It’s a fail-safe way to see everything you need to see.

So here we see the Commemorative Plate telling us that the most important places to visit are the Berlin Dome (“Dom”), The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-kirch, the Siegessaule, The Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, the Mauerfall, the Alexanderplatz, and the ketchup.

Whoops. He he. We used the plate for some french fries, you can ignore the ketchup.

First and foremost, we had to figure out transportation. Since it is Germany, we expected to see Mercedeses and BMWs barreling about like jet cars in a Star Wars city. There were some of those, but there were also a fair amount of Japanese cars as well, which surprised me just a little. Unfortunately, we tried to rent a car from a place called “My Last Name is Hitler But I Promise I’m Not Related to That Bastard Rent-a-car Company.” And all they had left was something Hitler might have driven when he was a starving artist. Or maybe that’s Mr. Bean’s old car.

Since I wanted to drive while my entire body occupied the car at the same time, we opted to mostly use Uber. Which isn’t completely legal in Germany because the Germans don’t put up with the abusive shenanigans Uber has engaged in to get their foot in every country. The app basically just hails a cab for you. But that came in handy actually, so despite Uber’s corporate nonsense, that’s usually the way we traveled. That, and a lot of walking. My calf muscles pretty much had a cow by the end of our two-week visit to Berlin, Dresden, and Prague.

By the way, I also have to say that most of the cars we rode in had very impressive dashboards. I often felt like we were actually in a jet car in a Star Wars city. I halfway expected to hear R2D2’s distinctive whistles and chirps, or Princess Leia offering directions in 3D.

Well, hell. I’ve got almost two pages done and you still haven’t seen any of the Berlin sites! Sorry. I definitely don’t have prisão de ventre of the fingers. I can only hope my readers have at least five or fifty, minutes to spare, depending on how much you skim. But beware! Skimmers miss my best jokes! Which isn’t saying much, because they’re all bad. But hey, it’s free, so quit your “jammern,” (that’s “whining” in German).

Okay, now I realize it’s going to take a few entries just to get through Berlin. So consider this Part One. And I’ll try not to ramble so much. Full disclosure: I still will.

Let’s start with the Brandenburg Gate, which is one of the most iconic buildings in all of Germany. Truth be told, perhaps because of its iconicity, as well as the impressiveness of so many of the other iconic buildings we’ve seen so far around Europe, I expected a little more out of the Brandenburg Gate. It was smaller than I imagined, and simply not all that impressive. Which is probably what a lot people thought about Hitler after meeting him for the first time.

The Brandenburg Gate was built in the 18th century, by order of Prussian king Frederick William II, and was built to represent peace.

Unfortunately, after World War II, it looked like this:

So much for representing peace. But, it was restored and still stands, so maybe peace does endure even in the face of calamity.

As we walked around the area, we happened upon a Soviet World War II Memorial. I’m sure the Soviets viewed themselves as liberators, even while they raped up to 2 million German women. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. The Soviets then remained in all of those countries until the Soviet Union collapsed. War sure is glorious, isn’t it?

At least we got some memorials and monuments.

Our hotel bordered the Tiergarten, which is a bit like Central Park is in New York, except without all the muggings. Like so much of Europe, Berlin felt safer than any large city in the states. We had no qualms about wandering through the Tiergarten or anywhere else, day or night. A street vendor was selling some qualms for ten euros, but we prefer to travel without them.

World War II and its aftermath devastated the Tiergarten: only 700 trees survived out of over 200,000 that once lined the parkway. The rest of the trees were chopped down for firewood or to make room for crops badly needed for a starving populace. Over time, West Germany brought the park back to life.

In the middle of the 520-acre Tiergarten is the Victory Column (Siegessäule), which was designed in 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War. It was inaugurated in 1873. The Nazis moved it to its present site, which probably saved it from destruction. After climbing 282 steps via a spiral staircase –huff-puff– one is treated to some outstanding views of Berlin:

 

And so, we have knocked off two of the sightseeing options from our CPTS (Commemorative Plate Travel System in case you forgot) thus far: The Brandenburger Tor (gate) and the Siegessaule (Victory Column). I’d say that’s pretty good work for one day, don’t you? It’s time for a beer!

Aside from dropping off your kids with an ex who just sued you for everything you’ve got, there are few destinations that cause more angst than going to the dentist or DMV.

We decided to do the latter two in the same week (neither of us have the first problem). figuring, if you’re gonna get tortured, you might as well get it all over with at the same time.

So we began with the dentist.

Most services here are best obtained by asking a local friend where they go. Businesses don’t do so much with websites here, and as far as I know they have no “paginas amarelas” (yellow pages), or any other colored pages for that matter.

 

Fortunately, we received the identical recommendation from two local friends, and so made our appointments.

Now, our experience with the private health care system in Portugal has been nothing short of amazing, plus very illuminating. Carolyn has received better care and more thorough diagnoses than she ever received in the United States, and at a cost that’s less than the insurance premiums we were paying. All without any insurance or government assistance at all.

We’re used to never knowing what anything will cost aside from our insurance co-pay (until we see the three page bill listing a $1,000 charge for a $1 bag of saline), which has resulted in medical costs skyrocketing to absurdity in the US. For example, the average cost in the U.S. for an MRI scan is $1,119, compared to $181 in Spain. Plus I think the system in the U.S. also uses the MRI to scan your wallet.

So it was of little surprise, although still unexpected, when we spotted a real live Dental Services Price List proudly mounted on the wall. That’s about $70 for a filling, which seems plenty fair to me.

On top of that, our new dentist is a young woman (which seems like it should be more common than not- I’d rather smaller hands stuffed themselves in my mouth instead of Doctor Shrek prying it open large enough to insert a basketball), and is an excellent dentist at that. Like our other medical experiences, we are absolutely delighted with the service we received.

So having turned that trepidation into delight, we set our sights on the Portuguese equivalent of the DMV, which is called the IMT. We had put off getting our licenses, even considering never exchanging them, mostly because we have a residence card which serves the same purpose as a driver’s license in the states, and otherwise the dearth of traffic cops means we have never had to show our current license. Plus, you know, our history of wanting to avoid the DMV whenever possible.

But we decided that we better get with the program because the law in fact says we must, but also because someone told us if we got in an accident we might not be covered because we didn’t have a lawful license as it were. I don’t think that’s true (more on that later), but regardless, it seemed like we might as well remain law-abiding wanna-be citizens.

In fact, I had already tried to get one many months prior, but came up empty-handed. The reason for this is that I did a Google search on what I’d need to get the licenses exchanged before I went in. The first website Google provided dutifully listed four documents I’d need. So I rounded them up and drove out to the IMT.

I left in the morning with expectations to be back sometime after dinner, since the IMT is essentially the same as the DMV, and the wait times at a DMV fall somewhere between an hour and “Oh my God I didn’t realize he was dead… no wonder the waiting room smells so bad!”

It turns out even the Portuguese equivalent of the DMV is generally less torturous than the American version. After only about 20 minutes (and no encounters with corpses), my number was called, and I plopped in front of a nice woman who spoke no English whatsoever. Now, this was a number of months ago, which means I had at least four less Portuguese words in my vocabulary, so we struggled a bit. Eventually she called over a gentleman who spoke English well, and we sorted it out.

It turns out the website Google used to answer my question had it all wrong. I didn’t need two of the documents at all, and as to the third she had no idea what it even was. At least I got one right though!

One of things she told me I needed was an apostille of my driver’s license in order to certify its authenticity. An apostille is sort of like a notary, except it’s recognized internationally. (I have to explain that because even my word processor program thinks “apostille” is wrong every time I type it, so it’s not even an American English word I guess. Plus the little red lines showing up all over my editable copy of this is driving me a little crazy. I hayte misspeling things.)

So I bagged the whole project for a while, although we did get the apostille done while we were in the states.

Months later, I was looking through what is otherwise a very helpful Facebook group, where it stated that we needed to have an apostille of our driving records, not our licenses. When I read that, I despaired a bit, and figured the hell with all of it. That’s something of a pain in the butt to get, especially when you’re overseas. So I thought I’d just keep driving with a US license until it becomes a problem. But then I remembered that the IMT lady had told me I just needed it of the license. I remembered it clearly because we had a conversation around the fact that it was simply a fraud prevention issue. Since I already had that in hand, I decided to ignore the new advice and try it again.

After braving the Door For Midgets and bringing Carolyn with me this time so we could experience the torture together, we sat before two separate ladies, side-by-side. We’ve learned that they don’t like you to take only one ticket even if you want to be helped as a couple. Everyone gets a ticket (no idea what they do with conjoined twins). But at least we were side by side.

 

There are four things you do need, just not the ones Google told me I needed. One of the requirements is a doctor’s exam, the results of which are placed in a computer system that can be accessed by the IMT. (After seeing little old ladies’ heads barely visible above the steering wheel driving 40 miles an hour on American freeways, it seems to me this is actually a very good idea.) And we had already gotten that done.

They also required an apostille on… wait for it… our U.S. driver’s license, not our record. I heaved a sigh of relief at that one.

Otherwise, all you need is your actual U.S. driver’s license (which they take away if you’re successful at bringing the right paperwork), our “NIF,” which is a fiscal number every resident needs to have (especially to buy things like cars and houses), and our residence card. Oh, and 30 euros.

But, Portugal being Portugal, it wasn’t quite as easy as all that. Because, the apostille was from the state of Washington, which is where we’re registered as residents in the U.S. But they’d never seen one from Washington before. The state had photocopied the license and attached the page into one three-page document that was stapled together with a piece of cardboard on the corner that essentially said: “Do not remove or this whole thing is frickin’ invalid! Plus we’ll come confiscate your mattress too, because we know you must have torn that notice off as well!”

But because it was a photocopy and a foreign document they’d never seen before, the ladies in the IMT were inclined to refuse it, telling us to go to the American consulate where they should be able to, somehow, do their own verification on… well… the same pieces of paper. One of the ladies spoke no English so we typed to her through Google Translate. We kept telling her there is nothing better or more accurate than what we already gave her, and that we doubted the consulate would have any more way of telling that it was an accurate document than they could.

The other lady helping us did speak English, and after paging through the three pages over and over, finally got up and disappeared behind a door. She eventually returned about twenty minutes later (while our spirited typing discussion was getting us nowhere with Bureaucrat Number One), and said that she thought they could accept them, but if the powers-that-be determined we needed something else, they’d be in touch.

Both ladies were very pleasant and friendly. It’s simply clear that if they don’t have exactly what they expect, all bets are off, and you’re beholden to that particular bureaucrat. We’ve seen this happen over and over here. The result is that if you don’t get the answer you want from one, you go to another. If the English-speaking gal hadn’t been there to help, chances are we would have had to have contacted the American consulate, and who knows what would have happened after that. My guess is we would have come back to the IMT with nothing more than we had the last time, hoping for another employee.

But we got our licenses.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be shocked if we receive a letter in the mail telling us we still need to go to the consulate. If that happens, oh well, we’re just glad we’re retired!

As to not having our insurance covered because I have a US license, I seriously doubt that opinion as well. We were talking to a Portuguese resident who told me that car insurance here insures the car. So if you’re driving someone else’s car, you better hope they have insurance, and you’re sure as hell not covered in a rental. Which may be one of the reasons why the auto insurance company never bothered to wonder what our driving records were, I guess. Maybe they figure it’s always the car’s fault? In any case, the insurance was significantly less expensive than in the U.S., even though I could’ve wrecked 365 cars in the last year in the U.S. and it wouldn’t have mattered. In fact, with the low cost of all insurances and just about everything else here, I’ve begun thinking that American insurance companies are the main organizations to blame for the high cost of living in the US. And maybe for Trump as well.

As for Portugal, if someone here ever tells you they’re an expert on some government policy and you absolutely have to do X, Y, and Z, they’re either delusional or full of dodo caca. You can’t possibly be an expert, because you never have any idea what’s going to go down once you start down the bureaucratic road with the Portuguese. On the plus side, almost everyone we interact with in the government is friendly, well-meaning, and polite.

I just need to work on my Obi-Wan Kenobi mind control skills a little more: “You don’t need to see his identification… these aren’t the Americans you’re looking for!”

I felt a sudden urge to revisit my affection for this land we now call home, especially now that you might say the “honeymoon phase” is over. We’ll have been here two years come January, which is long enough to either fall more in love or start noticing more of the warts.

(As an aside, I’m delighted to report that our own personal honeymoon phase is continuing: despite living together 24/7 and almost 365, Carolyn and I are more in love than ever, and I’m so happy to be sharing this experience with her. My wife is always my number one priority, so this opportunity to live in a new country and “show her the world” makes me feel as if my life is really worth living. We’re having a ball, and are so happy we took this risk and made the sacrifices it has taken to be here.)

But back to Portugal:

The more we learn about these people and this country’s culture, the more I fall in love with them. The other day, we had something of a history lesson from a well-educated Portuguese professor, who pointed out the following:

1. Christopher Columbus first approached the Portuguese royalty to fund his voyage to find India. Portugal turned him down, because they knew damn well that India was in the other direction. So he approached the Spanish instead, who were not as well-informed as the Portuguese. It worked out for Columbus, but only because the Spanish were not as adept at the whole sailing thing. I guess it is sometimes better to be lucky than smart.

2. Portugal did in fact figure out how to get back and forth to India (which brought them tea, which they introduced to the English, and we all know what happened from there). Eventually a Portuguese princess married an English king and as part of her dowry they gave the English the city of Bombay, which ultimately helped England gain a foothold for conquering India and beyond. So you could say that Portugal had a lot to do with the discovery of America and starting England’s rise to world dominance. Hell, let’s throw in an iconic part of America’s history: tossing tea into Boston harbor. That would never have happened without Portugal. It might have been toasters instead, and Boston Toaster Party just doesn’t have the same resonance as Boston Tea Party.

3. Portugal was never that interested in conquering lands, they simply wanted to open up trade, especially since the Spanish were blocking their trade routes over land. Gotta love a people who didn’t set out to kill and dominate the natives just to be macho. Perhaps they’ve always been ahead of their time. In fact, they even had a law whereby if you had sexual relations with a native, you had to marry her. So none of that raping and pillaging stuff. Indeed, they were able to leave Portuguese surnames all over the world without killing people to do it. In fact it was because of lovin’ em!

4. Portugal takes a lot of pride in the fact that Spain, despite their larger size, was never able to conquer Portugal. At one point they did have a Spanish monarch in Portugal, but that was due to marriage, and it only happened because their young Portuguese king went off to war and was never heard from again. The Spanish king was next in line for the throne, and so he sat upon it. The Portuguese waited about 80 years before they finally decided their guy was never coming back and so overthrew the Spanish king. That’s a lot of patience!

5. When Portugal overthrew their dictator in the 1970’s, it was without bloodshed. They simply exiled the bad actors to Brazil (I wonder if that has anything to do with the mess Brazil is now in?). Apparently, it takes a lot for them to get fed up, but when they do get fed up, they don’t go shooting off their mouths… or guns, they just make it happen.

I think these historical facts are important and relevant even today, especially in light of America’s current political dramas. For instance, in Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now, he states that Portugal is one of only three Western nations that haven’t recently been poisoned by “populist” political movements (the other two are Canada and Spain).

Personally, I think much of this is due to the same cultural attitude as demonstrated in the way they handled their missing king hundreds of years ago. I really don’t think any strident right wing politics can make much of a mark in Portugal. They seem to be uninterested in outside political influences, and they definitely don’t scream at each other for whatever political differences they may have with each other. It’s so strange to look at everything going on in the United States from the outside while living in a country that is 100 times more peaceful and calm. The Portuguese have always been this way, apparently, and there ain’t anyone shouting political slogans from a rooftop who’s going to change it.

They also have a sort of a negative “Eeyore-ish” approach to life, embracing the melancholic fado as their national music and having a word in their vocabulary, saudade, which is considered more or less untranslatable, but refers to melancholic longing or yearning. Personally, I think this serves to keep them grounded and humble. Since I believe humility is the cornerstone to good human behavior, I would blame the lack of humility as one of the key reasons politics is tearing America apart.

I’m also of the opinion that while the Portuguese are considered poor in comparison with other EU countries, they are an example of why “just enough money” is really more than enough money. Everyone dresses well, albeit casually. There are plenty of cars on the road, and if you don’t have one, there’s plenty of mass transit. There are few homeless. Their basic needs of health care and education through college are covered. Most people are on the same stratus financially. Because their culture doesn’t revolve around money, they’re not stepping on each other’s heads competing for it. You also can watch an entire American TV show without one commercial interrupting it, largely for the same reason. They take their time eating, and talking, and just being with each other. In other words, they have their priorities straight.

If I were still Catholic, I would view all of this as confirmation that Mother Mary did in fact appear to three Portuguese children in Fatima. If history, attitude, and culture were the defining traits of “God’s people,” I’d pick the Portuguese too.

Actually, I guess I already have.

Burning Man. If you haven’t been there, trust me, you have no idea what it’s like. Pictures can’t do it justice. Mere words fail to enlighten. Trying to explain to anyone who has never been there why anyone would subject themselves to desert heat for over a week with no flush toilets, running water, or <gasp> internet can be an exercise in futility.

Suffice it to say, it’s more or less extreme camping in the most inhospitable place in the lower 48 states. Playa dust covers the water-starved hardpan and gets into every conceivable crevice you have in your body. It surely coats the inside of your lungs just as it coats everything you brought, including your food.

When the wind whips up, within seconds it goes from clear-as-a-bell to not being able to see your hand in front of your face. You better have a mask of some sort and goggles, or you’re going to choke to death or go blind.

And yet tons of people attend year after year after year.

But I’m not going to talk about all that. I’m going to talk about why Burning Man is a seminal cultural event that deserves serious consideration as one of the most important cultural events of our time.

What? Me being serious? Just what did Burning Man do to me anyway?

Before we get to all that, I must regale you with a short story about our overnight pit stop on the way to the Burn. Our stay was at a 100-year-old hotel in a tiny California town. We wandered in just before 9:00 PM, which is when the kitchen closed, but we got our food orders in just in time. After that it was all bar bill. We racked up a $700-plus tab, closed the place down, and staggered to our respective rooms for the first time, luggage in hand.

And boy I had to pee.

When you’re sixty years old and you gotta go, especially with your share of a $700 tab in your gut, you gotta go. And sometimes that means you gotta go RIGHT NOW.

So when the key to the hotel door didn’t immediately open the damn hotel door, panic began to set in. I was jumping up and down with my legs pressed together trying like hell to get the stupid key to work. I was mere seconds from one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a grown man, except for maybe getting beaten up by a female midget.

In desperation, I looked to my left and spotted a door just a few feet away. I leapt at it with a hope and a prayer, one hand shoving open the door, and the other holding, well, you know. The door opened like the gates of heaven, complete with angels singing, right onto a fire escape.

Since it was the middle of the night there were no cars on the lonely highway, otherwise someone might have been treated to the sight of a man with an oddly satisfied look on his face, teetering on the fire escape, quenching a non-existent fire with a good five minutes of dousing.

Thus relieved, in more ways than one (trust me, if I’d had peed my pants you wouldn’t be reading about it here, but that was honestly my only other option), I plopped gratefully into bed. At about 8:00 AM I heard a soft knock on my door. I opened it to find one of our crew standing there, a young man nicknamed Funkhauser, or Funky for short. He asked if he could use my shower. Of course, but why? Because he hadn’t been able to remember his room number and so slept all night on the couch in the lobby.

Thus the 100 year-old hotel in a sleepy little California town received the indelible imprint of some Burners. Fortunately, both misdeeds went largely unnoticed, and so we’re certain the hotel still loves Burners. mostly because we paid for a lot of booze.

With that out of the way, for me, Burning Man consists of two parts. The first part is all about creativity. People make art for the playa; they make art out of cars and drive them around; they make art out of their camps; and they certainly decorate their own bodies in every conceivable artistic (and otherwise) fashion possible.

What the art and music of Burning Man shows me is that the creatives among us have a yearning to create just for creativity’s sake. Modern societies, in general, give sparse attention to the creative spirit. Especially in the United States, success is largely defined by money. Putting the word “starving” ahead of artist is mostly redundant.

But they continue to create. They crave artistic creation. Burning Man gives them an outlet to do so, even though there is no financial recompense or recognition. There is only the art. They share it after sometimes spending years just to create it. Just because they want to, or maybe have to.

By holding it in such an inhospitable place with a guarantee of no reward save the love of sharing, Burning Man proves that the human creative spirit is an amazing, unassailable thing.

Historically, societies are mostly remembered for their arts and sciences (unless they were particularly fond of blowing things up). History won’t judge the US based on how many McDonalds there were or what the top 1% of the populace sold to get rich. It’s the arts and sciences that prove the mettle of any great society. Burning Man shouts to the world that the creatives should be unleashed, because when they are, they come up with remarkable, amazing, and beautiful things, things that mere mortals could never even conceive of… all displayed in a place as barren as the Black Rock Desert. By the way, I never saw any black rocks. Just miles and miles of dusty playa. Unless the wind kicked up, in which case I could see nothing.

But I could always see the creativity, and it impresses the hell out of me. Why can’t we get more of this awesome stuff in the real world? Why don’t we hold the artists and the scientists aloft, encouraging the quest for knowledge and beauty with the same fervor with which we spend money on guns and financial gain?

The second part of Burning Man is the people. Those who attend do so for any one of a variety of reasons. Most love the camaraderie, at least as far as those I talked to. They love the freedom. They love to experience art and music like no other place on the planet. Sure, some like to party. But even those people are doing so because it’s a place that encourages freedom and creativity, and some people find that a little inebriation (okay, sometimes a lot of inebriation) helps them experience the art and music on a level they cannot while sober.

But the main thing is the camaraderie and fellowship. I spoke to a dozen people all of whom uttered a variation of the phrase, “This is what church should be like.” I couldn’t agree more. Here is a place with complete acceptance regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, height, age, or anything else. It’s a place where you get a thousand hugs, are given food and gifts without expectation, and meet strangers who become lifelong friends after chatting for just five minutes. It’s a place where you’re supposed to ask permission to hug, but no one does, because pretty much everyone welcomes them.

Of course, there are always exceptions, which is why we have to remember to ask permission if there’s the slightest hesitancy. During our camp’s “gift to the Playa,” consisting of a wienie roast with booze, Twister, and a large Jenga game, my job was to cool down those in line with a little spritz from a spray bottle. I generally asked permission, but one time as I was spraying over the heads of some willing recipients, some drops apparently landed on the skin of a young woman in line. She promptly uttered a sharp, “fuck off!”

It took me a number of seconds just to digest this. Was she joking? Did I accidentally douse her newly placed temporary tattoo? Did she have Tourette’s? I had actually only misted lightly next to her; I swear only a couple of drops must have hit her skin. But it was very jarring to be admonished so harshly in a place where love between almost everyone was the dominant theme. After digesting her rude reprimand, and seeing the sympathetic eyes of everyone else in line, I simply apologized and moved on.

In hindsight, I wished I would’ve taken the bitch down by throwing her on her back and pouring the water all over her spluttering face. Just kiddin’. Well, mostly.

After that, I made people sign a waiver before they got a spritz. Just kiddin’ again. The spritzees outnumbered the “no thankers” by about 100 to 1. But there’s always that one.

As a result of there always being “that one person,” societies create no end of rules to keep everyone as comfortable as possible. Which is why a society based on Burning Man would have a hard time lasting more than a week. Someone will steal something. Another will get hurt by someone else’s negligence. There will be disagreements. Tempers will flare. Some woman will be thrown on her back and have water poured all over her foul-mouthed face. And so we end up with the structure of society with all its rules and regulations.

But for just a week, in what is almost the worst place in the world in which to be, Burning Man demonstrates that people can come together and enjoy and love each other in harmony, and without reservation. Burning Man shows the world that a society can thrive with no money at all (well, except for ice and some drinks at Center Camp), while encouraging all who attend to give freely, without expectation.

One of the basic tenets of Burning Man is Radical Self-Reliance. This means despite all the largesse of free food, drinks, and hugs. you’re expected to make it all work for your own damn self. This ain’t no left-wing Socialist do-gooder free ride.

Nowadays some on the right enjoy denigrating those on the left with the term “snowflakes.” Let me tell you, while the 70,000 strong surely contains a large portion of said “snowflakes,” they prove they can out-tough anyone. Snowflakes wouldn’t last a split second in that desert. But these people survive and thrive.

Actually, the demographics of Burning Man skew toward the better educated with higher incomes than the average American. These aren’t hippies; they’re largely successful professionals. There was even a camp populated solely by doctors.

So while this kind of society wouldn’t make it in the real world for long, Burning Man shows us that even if just for a week, a completely different kind of society can work.

I think of it as if a scientist was able to create life in a laboratory. Even if that life lived for just a second, it would be proclaimed an amazing scientific feat. The scientific community would take that discovery and build on it, working on ways to make that short-lived organism survive longer. Only the small-minded would pooh-pooh the whole thing and say, “Pshaw, it was only for a second. So what? Big deal.”

But the scientist proved it could be done. We don’t stop there, we take that success and figure out how to make it last longer. Just so with Burning Man. Surely, this is but a moment in time, but every year Burning Man proves that a society built on love, trust, no money or advertising, radical self-reliance, and the embracing of creativity in just about every form, can in fact work. And with a lot more work, and by learning from this experience, it gives me, at least, some hope that societies can do a lot better than they currently are.

And then they burn it all and it all goes away as if it never existed (Leave No Trace). Because that’s all of our futures anyway. In a hundred years, no one will even know you were alive. So make the most of what you have. Burn in the desert. Explore the world. Create something. Live.

Burning Man is a metaphor for your life: you suffer, you love, you experience new things, and then you disappear forever.

I go to be reminded of all that.

 

Even if you’re a little, shall we say, slow, Morocco is happy to have you visit.

You don’t need to wear a turban, or a burqa, or bow toward Mecca five times a day (although it was a little cool to hear the broadcast waft about the city when it was time for the Muslim residents to do so).

Tangier is a very metropolitan –indeed, almost European– city, having been conquered and occupied by Rome, the Byzantine Empire, Portugal, England, and Spain, as well as a couple of drunk Dutchmen for about six days. It’s a sister city to Pasadena, of all places, which is ironic because not many little old ladies drive around brand new, shiny red Super Stock Dodges in Tangier like they do all over Pasadena.

We were glad the clothing requirements were lax for women because we were afraid Carolyn might have to wear the latest in Islamic clothes or headgear, like the infamous tank-top as shown to the right, which has become quite popular in some parts of Afghanistan.

There’s so much misinformation and misdirected hate aimed toward Muslims (at least in the states; I haven’t found that to be true for Europeans), that we were glad to see for ourselves that, lo and behold, they’re just people. The places that have most of the terrorists are in backward states largely populated by a disaffected, undereducated, and over-propagandized populace; kind of like Mississippi or Alabama.

Morocco is a peaceful place where mosques, churches, and even synagogues coexist side by side. We saw women dressed in dresses, scarves, burqas, shorts, and bikinis. Okay, maybe not bikinis, in the city anyway. We saw some beaches from afar, but I couldn’t tell whether the women were wearing full body armor or not.

Morocco has a rocky coast, and so got it’s name from the Romans after they sent an exploration party across the channel:

“Giuseppe! What did you see there?”

“Oy, nothing except more rock-o!” he replied. And so the name stuck.

This is the approach to Tangier. We took a one-day tour provided by the oddly named Bland’s Travel. But I guess if you’re going to Africa for the first time, you probably don’t want to be in a tour named “The Bullet Dodgers” or “Most of You Make It Out Alive Tours,” so we settled for Bland.

This is the scene that greets you when you walk off the ferry. That tower is part of the mosque next to it. There are a few vendors here and there, but none that bother you much. They saved the bothering for later in the tour.

A closer look at the city once we landed. It’s not all that different from cities in Spain and Portugal, actually. They even have electricity and everything!

Our tour guide was a jolly ol’ Englishman. My wife was played by Carolyn on this leg of the journey.

Their main language is written in an alphabet we wouldn’t have even tried learning had we moved to a country that used it. Their secondary language is French; Carolyn doesn’t remember much from high school, except she does know how to say, “Ooh la la! Those boys are really cute!” I tried using it and almost got arrested. If you think Christians hate homosexuality, you should try America’s ally Saudi Arabia, where it’s punishable by death. Sheesh. Even in Morocco, it’s actually illegal, but you “only” may have to serve three years in prison with a bunch of other, uh, men. Psst. Don’t tell the authorities, but they’d probably be a lot more miserable in a woman’s prison. Just sayin’.

The tour took us to the other side of the city, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. We didn’t see any color changes, lines, or wave differences, so it’s hard to tell exactly where they meet, but we’ll take their word for it.

The tour also included a delicious lunch in –get this– an authentic Moroccan restaurant. I can’t remember if I’ve ever had genuine Moroccan food before, but it truly was delicious, and I’d certainly have it again.

They have enormous palaces around the area, some of them owned by Saudi royalty. Guards are in place to keep the riffraff out as well as arrest any woman who isn’t behaving properly. Oh, wait, that’s America’s ally Saudi Arabia who does that.

A local tour guide joined the tour, giving us all the inside scoops about Tangier and Morocco. This is at the entrance to a pretty spiffy cave, called the Cave of Hercules. Here he demonstrates just how strong Hercules must have been to separate the continents.

The cave features an entrance that looks either like a woman screaming or the outline of Africa. Pictures of this are quite famous, especially now that another photo of it is in this blog.

One of the downsides of that particular tourist agency is they really go cheap on the transportation. It took us hours just to go a couple of blocks downtown, what with all the cars honking at us and stuff.

One of the upsides is that I got to ride right next to Anne Hathaway.

Mounting and dismounting is kinda hairy. You have to hold on tight, because you go almost perpendicular at one point. Here Carolyn is holding on for dear life. She made it, thankfully. And the camel’s fine, thanks for asking.

She’d walk a camel for a mile.

Actually, she wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to either. That’s a very bumpy ride on an ornery animal. I think maybe walking a mile for a Camel might be better for your health than walking a camel for a mile.

In case you ever wondered what it looks like from atop a camel.

After the camel ride, I thought I had become Moroccan so I had to buy one of these thawbs. Yes, that’s what some call it, a thawb. It made me look fat so I kind of thobbed about it, which made me realize where the name came from.

Sans thawb, back to lookin’ like just another dumb ol’ tourist.

Examples of Tangerine architecture. Interestingly, none of them were orange, plus we couldn’t tell if there were any seeds inside.

The entrance to the local WalMart.

The Tangerine Walmart. They seem to take great pride in laying out their goods in an organized, beautiful way. It may be all out in the open, but it sure is neater than any Walmart I’ve ever seen!

That didn’t make Carolyn like it any more than she did. All that meat laying about isn’t so appealing to many western sensibilities, especially when your potential food is grinning at you.

A couple of the pictures above were taken in the fish market. Despite all the fish, it really didn’t smell as bad as you’d expect. Open and airy, but they keep it clean!

This guy was a hoot. As you walk through the areas with shops, various peddlers cling to you like spiders on Carolyn’s back. “Get it off! Get it off!” They’re very persistent, and seem to receive “No, not interested,” as “Of course I’m interested, I’m just playing hard to get! Wear me down for another half hour and I just may buy something!”

I had a running dialog with this guy, who asked me for the tenth time what my price would be for the shirt he was selling. I finally said “free.” Unfortunately, that began the negotiations. He followed us all the way down to our bus. He was good-humored and a funny guy, he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. Despite losing the sale, he responded with a big thumbs up when I brought my iPhone up for a shot. I almost bought something out of pity because he obviously has to wear a tablecloth to make ends meet.

So that’s it for this particular road trip. On the drive home, we encountered some of the record-setting temperatures Spain and Portugal were going through. I glanced down and noticed it was not only 43.5 degrees centigrade (110.3 fahrenheit), but that Lucifer was really enjoying it. When it peaked at 45 (113 fahrenheit, or in scientific terms, “Holy shit it’s hot!”), we were Knock Knock Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. If I’d have been more ambitious, I would have pulled over and called up “Highway to Hell” on my iPod, but one can only do so much for one’s art. Besides, I now figure my iPod is sending me messages regularly and I just hadn’t realized it until now, so I’ll be living my life as an iPodian from now on.

“Honey, it’s playing ‘Why Don’t We Do it in the Road’ again!”

Anyway, bucket list: Been to Africa. Check.

On our journeys, we actually relish experiencing the unexpected (unless it’s the bad kind, like a flat tire, a plane crash, or an empty minibar in your hotel room). We like going off the beaten track once in a while, because you never know who or what you might run into.

So when we found ourselves with an opportunity to meet the Rock, well, we of course had to make the most of that opportunity. We were delighted to have almost a full day together.

But before we get into our adventures with the Rock, while we were driving from Grenada toward the coast of Spain, we decided to take a detour into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Some of our American friends might wonder why we drove all the way to California and didn’t bother visiting them, but they might be surprised to find out the original Sierra Nevadas are in Spain. Just like the original Matterhorn is in Switzerland, not Disneyland.

Sierra Nevada means “mountain range covered in snow” in Spanish, which means the Spanish think just about every mountain range in the world is called the Sierra Nevada. The actual version contains the highest point of continental Spain, and the third highest in Europe, just ahead of the Matterhorn in Disneyland Paris.

When Carolyn first pointed out that there was snow on them thar hills while looking up at them from Grenada, I scoffed, thinking there was no way in this 100 degree weather in late July that snow could still be on the peaks. But as we took the drive up the mountains and got closer to them, I could see she was right. To which I say, “tens razão Carolyn,” which means “you’re right” in Portuguese; otherwise translated as, “I bow to your incredible wisdom, oh wise one, please forgive me for scoffing… so, um, can we still have some nookie tonight?”

Our ultimate destination was a village called Capileira, so-named because you need a lot of extra capillaries to live at that altitude. It is the highest and most northerly of the three villages in the gorge of the Poqueira river. Cars are not permitted to continue across the mountains, so Capileira is the highest village that public traffic can reach, unless you’re driving a tank, in which case you can pretty much go wherever you want.

On the twisty-turny drive up we spotted this little cave with a small building built inside.

So of course I had to inspect it. It was just some sort of abandoned one-room hovel. I guess a mountain man or some such built his little castle and then either died or left it when the road was put through. Love to know the story about it! Probably just a cave troll, though, who are now mostly extinct.

There was also this small castle on a small hill. We love castles, but this one was pretty small and not something you could visit. Probably built for elves, who are now mostly extinct.

The road up was full of twists and turns, some with minimal protection right next to a steep cliff. The good news about that is they don’t have a problem with drunk drivers there. Whoever tries it the first time generally has taken their last drive.

The village is built right into the side of a cliff. They used to play baseball up there, but after the 430th time the ball went bouncing down the hill, ending up about ten kilometers away, they switched to backgammon.

Cool, clear, free, unfiltered water ushers forth from faucets scattered about the town. It honestly was possibly the tastiest and most refreshing water we’ve ever drunk. It was as fresh and delicious as water gets. Of course, we had the shits real bad a few days later, but hey, we got a photo op out of it beforehand! Just kiddin’ about the shits. It made us poop flavored yogurt for a couple of days, actually.

It’s a charming little town with quaint shops and gorgeous views of the countryside. The items in the shops were even reasonably priced; we don’t buy much on our travels but we did buy some things there. Like Imodium. Just kiddin’.

The views were definitely breathtaking, especially if you walked anywhere because there was nothing that wasn’t on an incline.

After a thoroughly pleasant visit, and gratitude that we’d veered off the beaten track and seen a place not many American tourists ever visit, we mushed on to the Spanish coast… and the Rock!

Most Americans have heard of the Rock of Gibraltar (aka the Rock), and– what? You thought we meant the Rock, as in Dwayne Johnson, the guy who gives every professional wrestler hope that they can go from pretending to wrestle to pretending to act? I never said that. As you should already know, he wasn’t even in Spain at the time!

Anyway, it’s a famous rock that stands guard over the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. I think Dwayne needs to make a movie there.

On the other side of the channel, in Morocco, stands the other “Pillar of Hercules.” In ancient times, the two points marked the limit to the known world. Legend has it that it’s where the earth actually ended; that there was nothing whatsoever beyond. That’s why they sent Columbus past there, hoping he’d just fall off the end of the earth. Instead, he discovered Indians running around America, and so invented McDonalds in the hopes of eradicating them all because they were a bit more tan.

Accceso might have looked prohibido, but we went up to the top anyway.

Oops, maybe it was prohibido.

The Rock of Gibraltar is also famous for being home to a couple of hundred monkeys, who make a living looking cute and asking for handouts. The Barbary Macaque population in Gibraltar is the only wild monkey population in the European continent.

Here mom shows her baby how to deal with the tourists and beg for handouts.

Sometimes they don’t wait for handouts. This clever fella jumped on the back of this tourist, unzipped his backpack, and stole a plastic container full of food. Guess he was tired of the free fruit and vegetables. The man did get his container back, empty.

Sometimes its hard to tell which children belong to which family, so occasionally little kids are left to fend for themselves while the imposters who replace them puzzle their parents as to why they need so many haircuts.

After seeing the long line for the gondola ride up the mountain, we opted to take a van tour instead. The bonuses were ongoing and educational commentary from the driver, several stops along the way for views and sights, and…

…having a monkey sit in our laps. This little fella clambered up onto the van while it was moving, and proceeded to sit in both my and Carolyn’s lap. I didn’t want to take a picture of it because I was afraid he’d steal my iPhone and scamper away, subsequently racking up thousands of dollars of long-distance calls to his cousins in Africa.

Some of them are just begging for affection. This one looks more likely to rip my face off.

This baby was getting all the affection and grooming his little heart desired. His mama gets a free all-you-can-eat buffet of lice.

Inside the rock is a labyrinth of caves. This particular section was lit up with all sorts of colored lights. They even hold concerts inside there… I’d love to hear a concert with those unique acoustics. Obviously, they can only play rock.

They also have something called The Great Siege Tunne. I’m still not sure what a Tunne is, however.

They also had a bunch of tunnels, some of which were extended and modified during World War II.

Here I’m directing fire at all the terrorists flooding in from Morocco. I wonder if Trump would have wanted to build a wall across the Mediterranean if he was the President of Spain?

The Rock is heavily touristed, and so the vans pile up. Well, line up anyway. You wouldn’t want to be in a pile-up on the Rock. Most of the road up had only a flimsy guardrail protecting you from a ten thousand meter drop. The entire drive up, I was crossing my fingers that our driver never sneezed or had a sudden seizure.

But we made it safely, and enjoyed the amazing views from atop the famous promontory.

Amazed yet?

But wait, there’s more! For the same low price you also get to walk out onto a clear glass floor balcony, where you can stand and look down a very long way, with the pane of glass being the only thing between you and certain death.

I actually ventured out a little ways onto the glass, but there was this teeny tiny little thing that prevented me from going all the way:

Right next to it, there was a section of the balcony roped off with flimsy tape… because there were big cracks in the glass! How would you like to be the guy standing there when that happened?

So yeah, um, no. I ventured out far enough to check it off my bucket list, but I weigh too much to trust a piece of glass that’s identical to one that’s already cracked.

Speaking of death, for the life of us we couldn’t figure out what this was from our perch atop the rock. Closer inspection revealed it to be a cemetery, I think full of all the dead tourists who tried the glass floor thing.

By the way, that runway is one of the most dangerous runways in the world. On top of that, and possibly contributing to the danger, a highway runs right through it. The pilots conduct an ongoing sweepstakes to see how many cars they can take out while they land.

The Moors got their name from the fact that they made buildings moor-better.

Surrounding the Rock is the town of Gibraltar, which is still owned by the British. Accordingly, prices were in pounds, although they happily accepted Euros, especially since even the English can’t figure out what a pound is worth, or how much it weighs.

The town holds about 30,000 English refugees, who may get stranded there permanently when Brexit takes place and all flights to Europe from England are eliminated. At least I think that’s what is going to happen.

Carolyn snores, er- rests, on the drive home. That was a lot of hilly walking!

And so the sun sets on another adventure; more sights seen, more history learned, and a monkey in our car who refuses to get out.

The main reasons for our move to Portugal include, in no particular order, the desire to use it as a home base to explore Europe, to get away from our kids (just kiddin’), a burning desire to learn another language (Again, just kiddin’. It’s as difficult as I feared it would be.) because life is short and when we’re on our deathbed we want to feel as if we’d done as many things and gone on as many adventures as possible (not kiddin’), and, last but not least, to be able to retire early. Indeed, there is no way we could have retired in the US when we did, mostly due to its exorbitant health care costs (definitely not kiddin’).

In fact, just in case our positive view of European health care has been tainted by Portugal, we were excited to be exposed to another country’s health care (just kiddin’) after Carolyn popped something in her hip (Uh oh, a precursor to breaking a hip! We better get all this sightseeing done before our bodies give out!). She had to be taken to a hospital in Spain because she couldn’t walk on it. Turns out hips are pretty important for walking.

Anyway, she was seen immediately, they took X-rays (and even gave us the film as a souvenir), and announced that she had only three weeks to live. Oops. Wrong X-ray. Actually, she’ll be fine, but the whole visit, including the souvenir X-rays, was just north of 200 euros. In the U.S. the total billing would have probably been, oh, about one million.

I’m sorry, but anyone who still believes the propaganda that we need more freedom for the insurance companies to line their pockets with cash in order to provide proper health care, well, tell you what. Move to Europe, get sick, and see how they do it. You might just change your mind.

In any case, this particular road trip validated all of our thinking because we were able to hop in the car (This is before the hip problem. Hopping for Carolyn will be a bit problematic for another week or two.) and drive all over Spain and even into Morocco. We also were able to confirm that health care costs here will allow us to stay retired no matter where we go in the EU, and we even knew a little more Spanish because the Portuguese and Spanish languages are very similar.

I just had to get used to saying “Grathias” because in Spain they pronounce the “ç” like a “th.” For a while, I was saying “grathiath” because I thought it was only because everyone had lisps. Speaking of which, what numbskull decided the word for “lisp” should be “lisp?” Talk about adding insult to injury!

So we had four main stops on this particular road trip. First up was Grenada, Spain, the home of The Alhambra and (gre) nada else. And no, I’m not talking about Al’s ham bra you’ve heard so much about.

The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Spain. It was originally constructed as a fortress in AD 889 on the remains of Roman fortifications, and then was largely ignored until its ruins were renovated and rebuilt in the mid-13th century by the Nasrid emir Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar (Nasal for short) of the Emirate of Granada, who built its current palace and walls.

The Alhambra was the last holdout of the Moors in Europe until it was conquered by the Christians in 1492. Ironically, the whole thing started out as a big celebration because Christopher Columbus, who no one liked, had just sailed off the end of the earth, and they were ecstatic to be rid of him. The party turned into something of a riot, and the next thing that happened, moor or less, is that the Moors hightailed it back to Africa. But honestly that was mostly because they missed their camels and they were tired of the Spanish anyway.

My many rabid readers (okay, there’s only one, and it’s you! Wait! Don’t leave! I mean rabid in a good way!) may recall that I visited Grenada and the Alhambra with my two good friends Cale and John Lee back in January. I knew Carolyn would really appreciate it, so this, for me, is round two for Alhambra. I wanted Carolyn to see it, but I also wanted to see if anything had changed in the last six months. You know, just in case.

So without further ado, here are the pictures of that portion of our trip (if I had invented Twitter, it would’ve been limited to 144,144,144,144 characters), but yay! Here come the pictures!

The sun rises over the hills of Spain. Once in a while we accidentally take a shot that’s actually kinda pretty, so I thought we’d start out with that. It goes downhill from here.

I mean, immediately downhill.

Because first up is this shower shot from our hotel room. But it might help you understand why I’m so stupid. I keep hitting my head on all these low things. That bar went right across the middle of the shower.

And to complete the bathroom portion of this blog, below is an actual shot of our sink after we’d moved in. Notice anything unusual? Remember that I’m traveling with a woman. Unbelievably, she leaves no trace in the bathroom ever: no make-up, no curlers, no piles of bottles and gadgets whose use is a complete mystery to men. She’s awesome to room with, especially for a woman. Ha!

I guess they moved Elvas’s body to Spain after he died. Okay, I know it’s “Elvis,” but the Spanish have never been known for their spelling prowess. Otherwise they’d be called Spainish.

Grenada gets pretty hot. They erect shades in the summer to keep the sun off the tourists. On the other hand, these could be someone’s sheets being hung out to dry, I dunno.

Since I’d already been to Grenada and Alhambra, Carolyn took most of the photos. Sometimes I’d get tired of being in them, so I’d hide.

Grenada is a nice town with a vibrant touristy area. But the main reason to visit is the Alhambra.

So first up from said attraction is a short slideshow presentation of some roses from its many gardens. A rose by any other color is still a rose you know.

Now on to the rest of the Alhambra, presented in a mosaic, because there’s no way I can come up with interesting things to say with that many pictures. Not that I ever do, but hey; write your own blog if you’re gonna keep complaining. You might be rabid, after all.

So that’s The Alhambra after I edited out the 142 pictures with me in it. It’s a beautiful palace, with lush gardens and amazing architecture. Definitely worth a visit if you’re headed out Granada way!

For some reason, signs like this are like crack to an addict, as if cajoling me, “Go on! Go on! There must be something cool beyond this sign!” On the other hand, maybe they just don’t like El Paso, Texas.

After our tour of Alhambra, we took a walk up a big hill in Granada in very hot weather. That’s the Alhambra behind us. That’s us about ready to die in front of it.

As you can see Carolyn had become a bit overheated during the walk. Ninety-plus weather and a 40 (or was it 80?) degree uphill slope will do that to ya. The Sangria was just what the doctor ordered. Really. The Spanish medical system is that awesome. Anyway, we were treated to some of the best Sangria we’ve ever had, plus there was no deductible!

For you youngsters, “roger, wilco, and out!” is an old military term. But Wilco, our friend from Holland, elected to bring his partner Astrid instead of his other partner Out, so we have to make due with what we have, at least as far as headlines are concerned.

In any case, we were honored to receive a visit from these two royals from Holland. At least they said they were royals. We had to believe them because we don’t speak Dutch, so there was no way to confirm it.

Speaking of which, the combination of The Netherlands, Holland, and Dutch confuses me. Three completely different words. How do people living in Holland become known as Dutch? It’s like saying, “I’m from America, so I’m an Oopa Loompa.” They tried to answer my question as best they could, but in the end, they just threw me in the pool.

Here we celebrate their successful landing in Lisbon. We’ll only tell you how dangerous Lisbon’s airport is if we don’t want you to visit.

Here we serenade Wilco by belting out an aria from our favorite opera. He’s smiling now, but after a few more verses, he was ready to jump off the wall.

This is the scene from the aforementioned wall. The Sesimbra Castle dominates the skyline over Sesimbra, and affords impressive views, capture-able even by lousy photographers like me. And of course, we still like castles.

If that doesn’t look like the wave of a royal, I don’t know what does. His Secret Service agent is offering protection.

Carolyn’s gonna hate this picture.

The Dutch, at least insofar as one couple represents all of Dutchendom, seem to enjoy kissing a lot. I took to carrying around a spray bottle and would douse them anytime they got too carried away. The Portuguese are a shy people, which is why you don’t see a lot of Dutch people in Portugal.

Lunch by the sea with Sangria. Or is it Astrid? I’m bad with names.

Astrid enjoys a morning swim with her coffee. She was the only one brave enough to jump into the chilly water. Or maybe she warmed the water up by pouring her coffee in; the pool did seem a little darker when she got out.

There they go kissing again in front of the Cabo Espechel lighthouse.

One thing no one warned us about in regards to the Dutch is that shortly after their arrival, the city rushed in and began laying sewer pipe. I think the septic tank guy called them begging them to do this after getting tired of being called back to the house four times in one day just to empty the tank. This may be why they call all their territories The Netherlands: the Dutch do some weird things with their nether regions.

Wilco demonstrates his masterful pool cleaning skills. He is a very handy (and energetic) guy to have around. If Astrid ever dumps him, we’re gonna have him come live with us. Actually, we’ll take ’em both anytime!

This is the Pantheon (Panteo) right by our apartment in Alfama. Wilco pretends to be Rocky here, but he actually only ran up the last step.

Wilco is an aspiring model and Astrid is an aspiring photographer. Since it was a warm day, I was just a perspiring tourist.

Kissing again. And with the tongues now! Oh for heaven’s sake! Get a room!

Finally, a shot where they’re not kissing. Good God! Anyway, this is at Sao George Castle, which is one of the main attractions of Lisbon. In the background is the 25 de Abril bridge, which used the same blueprints as the Golden Gate Bridge. The Portuguese like to name things after dates, but they kind of messed up because there’s only 366 of those, which is why they decided to keep the country relatively small.

Still at Sao George Castle. While the castle dates back many centuries, it was in the late 14th century that the castle was dedicated to Saint George. You thought the “sao” (pronounced “sow”) was a pig, didn’t you?

Here Wilco demonstrates how to pickpocket a purse. We can’t show the next picture because there was too much blood. Don’t try and steal from Astrid, that’s all we’re sayin’.

I just had to take a shot of this electric car being charged by an extension cord dangling from the third floor.

We were in the middle of Lisbon (actually Commerce Square) before the World Cup match between Portugal and Iran was to be played. The mood was festive!

All in all, we had a wonderful visit with this delightful couple. In fact, I think Astrid and Wilco should write a book entitled, “How to Be a Perfect House Guest.” They were charming, interesting, funny, unobtrusive, helpful, easygoing, and Wilco sweeps a mean pool. Plus they offered to pay good money for each positive adjective.

We were very happy to have shown them around Lisbon as well as just chill out by the pool. They both work very hard, so this wasn’t just a visit to sightsee, they enjoyed the relaxing aspect of just sitting on our patio, soaking up the sun, and enjoying the company.

We also went to the nearby beach for an afternoon. The ladies insisted that I not take any pictures of them in bathing suits, but being the scoundrel that I am, I made sure we posed for a friendly passerby who took our shot. I’m sorry, ladies, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.