Watching Spanish Football in Portugal
It was an odd choice for us to leave Spain where we’d spent the past two and a half months to spend ten days in Portugal just when Spain … Read more
Our Travel Life
Sometimes You Have to Go Home
I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa. According to my grandfather, Council Bluffs was, “the only town that ever hurt Chicago.” I’ve given his pronouncement a lot of thought over the years and I’ve still never quite figured out what it meant.
Maybe it was because Council Bluffs made fun of Chicago on the playground when they were kids. Or maybe it was because someone from CB wrote a letter once to someone in Chicago saying that having broad shoulders and being hog butcher to the world wasn’t really that great. Especially when Carl Sandburg went on to mention that it was also the city of skanky whores and slimy gangsters.
Why I’ll Never Get Invited on a British Airways Junket
When Kris and I got off the British Airways plane from Heathrow in Chicago, I looked at her, and before I could say anything, she offered, “That was probably the worst flight of my life.”
I didn’t reply, “Yeah, I was hoping we’d crash into the sea so it would all be over.” But I thought of it.
On Journalism and Bullfights in Madrid
Madrileños, unlike most denizens of big cities, are genuinely friendly and eager to talk about their city, Spain, and almost anything else you want to discuss. Our first night here, we had a discussion about journalism and its position as a profession in Spanish society over beers and a plate of olives at an outdoor cafe in the Plaza Mayor with a young man named José Angel. José Angel’s girlfriend is a journalist and he’s a carpenter, so he allowed as there was some friction with her parents over his “station” in life. I assured him that their positions would probably be reversed if he came to the United States and he’d be welcome to visit us anytime the in-laws got to be too much.
