I recently donated a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Frederick Douglass to a thrift store without finishing it. I realize that I put a quote above this paragraph that says, “A good book deserves to be finished,” but I feel like I can get off on a technicality: despite winning a Pulitzer, this was decidedly not a good book. I lost interest around perhaps the fifth or sixth chapter, which listed cities Douglass visited with dates, buildings in which he spoke, and…nothing else of real human interest. I realized, when I got frustrated with that particular passage, that the entire book was more or less the same - a list of facts, but no compelling story connecting those facts. There was no context, no drama, no reason, no explanations - just a series of statements that could have been a bullet-list in a PowerPoint presentation, except they were put into sentences in paragraphs on a page that passed for “history.” And many “history” books are just like this: the troops moved here, fought this battle, then went to another place, fought another battle…

And that’s a problem with many history books, especially the ones that tackle massive subjects like a nation’s multi-century or trans-millenia story. When a writer attempts to summarize huge swaths of history in a book - a one-volume history of China, for example, or a history of banking - they often end up creating lists of people, dates, and events without any underlying story to link it all together. Perhaps, in their mind, the subject - Russia, say, or battleships, or petroleum - is the common thread, but taking this for granted doesn’t make for a good read. (I remember, here, a quote from a Dale Carnegie book, where he quotes an editor saying that “Only stories are really readable,” and I realize this is not a story right now, but trust me, there are stories below!) For this reason, I generally avoid history books that attempt to encompass an entire country’s history; I much prefer Robert Caro or Fredrik Logevall’s intense focus on exhaustively-described single topics, because by focusing, historians and biographers can communicate so much more than they could if they tried to take a huge bite out of history.1

Approaching Romania, then, I was nervous about buying an overarching history book, and so I picked up Children of the Night by Paul Kenyon with a huge amount of trepidation. I needn’t have. Kenyon avoids the person-place-date list trap and covers 500 years of Romanian history by following a single, simple thread: the lives of its leaders and the transition of power, from the birth of Vlad the Impaler to the executions of the Ceaușescus, told as stories and relationships. It is not as good as Caro, who has the luxury of spending 160 pages describing the life of a supporting character to give you a better understanding of the main subject without actually mentioning the main subject at all.2 Kenyon has fewer pages, and he focuses on the key salient details of the lives that show how the country was formed and major decisions were made, as well as the characters of the leaders in peacetime and conflict and war, their relationships to each other, their squabbles and losses and triumphs, and weaves it all into what feels like an evenhanded history. One gets a greater understanding of how the country was shaped by both individual and ethnic forces, as well as the relationships and rivalries that existed between Romania’s leaders. Because he writes with a strong storytelling voice, it is naturally easy to remember these relationships: one can see photos of Ana Pauker (an early communist agitator), Gheorghiu-Dej (the first Communist leader of postwar Romania), King Carol II (a mentally unstable monarch who bent over backwards to appease Hitler), General Antonescu (the Romanian WWII leader who also appeased Hitler and then switched sides when it was obvious the Axis was losing, resulting in the deaths of up to 400,000 Jews and the “not death” of others; his defenders say that many were “saved,” ignoring those who were murdered), and Ceaușescu, Deng Xiaoping, and Leonid Breshnev - one can see their photos and immediately understand that they were all intimately connected, woven into a human web of power that existed across decades and centuries and impacted the lives of millions, inside and outside Romania’s borders. It’s not a brilliant book, but, if I was asked to recommend a single book to read on Romania, it would be Kenyon’s.

In contrast, In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond by Robert Kaplan is less about Romania and more about…well, Robert Kaplan. There are three main threads that propel the book forward from the beginning:

1. The story of Kaplan’s visits to Romania back in the 1980s, which devolves into him talking about the good old days of Romania, before all of these kids started coming. It ends up reading as, “When I was there a long time ago, it was better, even with the dictator…”

2. People Kaplan has met, which would come across as crass name-dropping if the people were household names, except that modern readers probably would have never heard of or cared about any of them, so it’s like if your aunt Janet were telling you about getting drinks with someone named Matt Helwagen, expecting you to be extremely impressed.

3. A criticism of aesthetic decisions that the Romanians have made since the fall of communism - particularly of public squares, monuments, and building renovations in Bucharest. Some of this criticism is justified, but much of it leaves the reader with the sense that Robert Kaplan feels that Romania did not pay enough attention to Robert Kaplan’s opinions when these decisions were being made, and Robert Kaplan would have done things differently, and next time Romania should pay more attention to what Robert Kaplan thinks.

Perhaps I don’t know enough about Romania to appreciate it, but I put it down after a few chapters. Unlike the Douglass book, though, I kept it; I may dip in and out of it to read about specific subjects, or reference it. I must say, though, that Kaplan also delivers some absolutely exquisite lines - for example:

And one of my favorites:

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Which brings me to The Passport, by Herta Müller.

A long time ago, when I lived in San Diego, I had a friend, Rick. He had a younger brother, Sean, and they both ended up as US Marines, playboys, and addicts of various substances and activities. They lived seemingly charmed lives - a bit Kennedyesque, protected by a combination of inherited privileges so that their actions had few consequences.

One summer day, when Rick was maybe 28 and Sean was 24, they crossed over to Tijuana to see a bullfight, because bullfights were the kind of things that they watched on weekends. Sitting next to them in the stands was a 42-year-old woman from Arizona who had a son about Sean’s age and a lot of plastic surgery. She and Sean started talking, and drinking, and then, after they walked back across the border, they went back to her hotel, because he lived with his mother to save money while he waited to start boot camp. This was the start of a long distance situationship.

One day a few months later, Rick and his fiance, Siobhán, went to his mother’s house to check in with her. His mother let them in, then said, “I need to show you something,” and brought them to Sean’s room. They walked in and there, on the wall, was a floor-to-ceiling painting of a bald eagle holding a massive American flag in its talons. Lying on the flag was a life-sized image of Sean’s woman friend, naked, her left hand behind her head, her right hand holding a smoldering cigarette that covered her vagina, every detail of her implants rendered on the canvas. They learned from his mother that the woman had paid someone to paint it and then sent it to Sean, who had hung it on his wall.

“I…I just don’t know what to think about all this,” the mother said.

According to Siobhán, who related this story to me, Rick considered the piece carefully and then looked down his nose at his mother. “Some people actually like art,” he said, his voice dripping with condescension, and went to the kitchen for a beer.

In The Bed of Proscrutes, Taleb wrote, “One of the shortest books I’ve ever read had 745 pages. The longest book I’ve ever read was 205 pages.”

I was reminded of both of these when I read the reviews for The Passport and then The Passport, by Herta Müller, itself. It is ostensibly a dark, tragic story of life in an ethnically German town in Romania during communism, and a family that wants a passport to escape, and they are forced to send their daughter to have sex with the official in charge of passports as well as the priest in charge of releasing birth certificates. The value, though, and the relentless “truth” of it is in its descriptions of life in a totalitarian “communist” system; in a style more spare than Hemingway, she outlines the most important details of what it was like to exist day-to-day, with just enough detail to let the reader fill in the rest with their imagination. It is 92 pages short, which made me think of Taleb; while I suspect he meant that the longer book was compelling because it was so well-written, and the shorter book was longer than it needed to be because it was so terrible, in this case Müller writes a short book so extraordinarily well that every sentence needs to be mulled over and considered slowly in order to grasp its full meaning. These 92 pages shouldn’t be read in a single day, much less a week; to really appreciate them, they need to be digested slowly in order to get everything out of them.

As for the reviews, Müller had won the Nobel Prize, but many casual readers seemed to find it…impenetrable, or dull, or annoying, at least based on Amazon reviews. They cite her sentences - “The neighbour’s spotted pigs are lying in the wild carrots, sleeping. The black women come out of the church. The sun-shine is bright.” - as being pretentious, disjointed, and unreadable. The thing is, Müller writes in both prose and poetry; like a piece of art that needs to be considered for three hours,4 it again demands that each sentence be lingered over, be considered, be seen in the context of everything that came before it and everything that comes after; every word must be interrogated (and it’s a shame that I don’t speak German, because I suspect that reading it in its original language would be even more amazing). They aren’t just pigs; they are spotted. The carrots are not cultivated but wild. The women are not of African descent. And the sun-shine - if you can imagine the light coming down on Romanian fields in July or August, you also know about the heat, and the relief that clouds bring, and the way that the sun-shine brings out colors from the leaves that cloud-darked sun-shine would miss; it creates shadows under the trees that, in contrast to the unprotected fields, seem like night; it is, in other words, “bright.”

So to those who complain about the sentences, then, I am tempted to reply that “some people actually like art.” Müller is an artist, and, while it won’t be for everyone, particularly people who don’t want to linger over each sentence and imagine its implications and flesh out its critical adjectives, it rewards extraordinarily slow reading. Indeed, two or three readings of this probably wouldn’t be enough to really see everything that goes on. A reader must accept total immersion in her pages and complete submission to her voice; only then does it reveal the full scope of the picture she paints with silence.

The truth: The Passport is one of the greatest works of fiction I have ever encountered because it shows the reader how fiction can serve us and why it is important; it is a brilliant “truth” that the above history books could only dream of communicating. One can know objectively that the Ceaușescus were terrible “dictators,” that the people “starved,” that the country had an “extensive secret police service,” that the hinterlands “suffered,” that there was “corruption”; however, these are all facts, communicated coldly and impersonally in countless history books. It takes fiction, as a medium for accessing other peoples’ thoughts and experiences, to internalize this, to help the reader feel the confusion and stagnation and frustration of life under a crackpot dictator, to help them see what life was like in a forgotten minority village run by minor officials with unchecked power, and Muller does it brilliantly.5

And any list of books set in, or about, Romania must include its most famous fictional resident: Dracula.6

There are a few things that aspiring readers should know about Dracula, the book:

1. Bram Stoker never actually went to Transylvania, much less Romania.

2. While people think of Dracula when they think of Transylvania, only about 15% of the book actually takes place in Romania; the remaining 85% takes place in England.

3. I’d guess that it would be generous to say that 1% of the people who visit Transylvania have actually read Dracula in its entirety.

4. Nevertheless, people think of Transylvania, then associate it with Dracula, and assume it is dark and forboding, that the people are cold and plotting, that the ground seethes with intrigue.

5. Even people who have started to read Dracula could be forgiven for thinking that; after all, in the first section, it is described in a dark and forboding way.

6. However, when Transylvania is described at the very end of the book, the character describing it - a woman who has actually been bitten by Dracula and is in the process of turning into a vampire - actually describes it as beautiful:
   “If Jonathan and I were driving through it alone what a pleasure it would be! To stop and see people, and learn something of their life, and to fill our minds and memories with all the colour and picturesqueness of the whole wild, beautiful country and the quaint people…It is a lovely country; full of beauties of all imagineable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities.”

7. But I’d guess that of the people who start Dracula, very few actually finish it, and that’s a shame, because really, it is a very good Gothic Horror novel, well-told and organized, and if they read that Transylvania was nice, they might have a better opinion of it.

I suspect that Dracula is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to Transylvania. It’s the best because it has made Transylvania a household name; it is something people (at least in the West) grow up with, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Eiffel Tower, both a place and an idea that everyone knows about. It’s also the worst because it is also shorthand for otherworldly evil.

Imagine, though, that you were visiting Transylvania without having ever heard of Dracula. Actually, let’s assume - as much as it would make weep - that Dracula was never written. The name Transylvania itself - I’d focus on “sylvan,” which Google defines as “relating to, characteristic of, or located in the woods or forests. It describes an idyllic, woody, or rustic place, and can also refer to a mythical spirit or deity of the woods.” Then I’d imagine verdant mountainsides covered in dense forests, pastoral fields stretching off into the distance, rushing rivers tumbling between boulders, small cabins visible from far off small towns that go back centuries in valleys that go back eons. I’d imagine a place where traditions are maintained, where the people are initially cold and standoffish but warm to you when you show an honest interest in them and show respect for their pride in their roots, where they have hearty food and edible beer, where the grandmothers are religious, where textiles are homemade, where children know the places to go to pick wild blueberries or catch wild trout and where, in the winter, when snow blankets the land on a Saturday night, the local bars might be packed but the local living rooms are, too, perhaps with wood fires roaring their way up chimneys.

I can’t vouch for all of that, but I can say that, if you can ignore its Dracula reputation, Translvania is absolutely beautiful. The mountains are towering and lush, dark green and omnipresent on the horizon; the fields are full of flowers and foods. One of my great friends at home, Sorin, is from Brașov, and he went out of his way to give us excellent recommendations for where to go and what to see. He said we’d love Brașov, and…he was right. It’s gorgeous, with an old town center that is well-maintained and aesthetically stunning, and outskirts that are prosperous and clean and safe. But the people really made it memorable. At dinner, one of the servers heard that our kids are into collecting bottlecaps; suddenly every server in the restaurant was saving bottlecaps for them and bringing them over, earning small-voiced but enthusiastic “mulțumescs” in return. On the bus into town, an old man shared his snacks with the boys and communicated to Alice that he had grandchildren their ages; on another bus, Nick decided to tell me a long, rambling story, and the two old women next to him - who didn’t seem to actually speak a word of English - were laughing so hard at his oratory that they cried. The people know their unearned reputation, but are…well, like human beings everywhere in the world. Especially in the Saturday flea market, where I went with Daniel, just us two, and hunted for treasures, like a fliptop canning jar that was last used in 1982 ($1) and a 1950s French mountaineering water bottle ($2) and a pack of German playing cards which the boys learned Go Fish with ($1) and an 1800s French glass paperweight ($2 after bargaining them down from $3), and Daniel was fawned over like a grandchild that showed promise and potential. Even in the playgrounds, other children went out of their way to be friendly to the boys in ways that we haven’t experienced anywhere else; one girl ran over and held my hand as if I were her father, to my discomfort and her mother’s embarrassment. If we’d stayed more than two nights, I have no doubt that we would have been invited into homes and made friends for life.

In short: it was because of Dracula that we knew of Transylvania, and it was in spite of Dracula that we came to love it. If you go, read the book - but read the whole thing, and then visit knowing that in the end, evil dies and beauty thrives.

The last book that I’d recommend about Romania is not explicitly about Romania but about oil and power. I first got The Prize because it won a Pulitzer years ago, but…well, I just turned around to look at my “high priority” bookshelf, and I have 30 other Pulitzer-winners on it.7 I started The Prize after my friend Brian said it was one of the best books he had ever read, and recommended that I stick with it, even though he said virtually nobody ever finishes it. Like Laura, I like completing things that virtually nobody actually does, and when it involves a book, I get even more committed.

The Prize took me six months to read. It isn’t that I was reading a lot of other things - maybe two other books a month - but that The Prize is long. VERY long. And detailed. It starts in Pennsylvania and New York, with the discovery of oil bubbling up from the ground, and ends in Kuwait, explaining why Saddaam was such a regional and global problem and making a strong defense as to why nobody who knew anything about Iraq cried when he died. Like Caro, Yergin focuses on one thing, then describes it exhaustively. The reader learns, among other things:

1. That oil is measured in barrels because when it first came out of the ground, it was shipped in old whiskey barrels, and that measurement has stuck;

2. “Tanks” - the armored trucks - are called Tanks because when the British were developing them, they needed a code word to refer to these new weaponized vehicles; “cistern” was also considered, but “Tank” was what won;

3. Oil was a critical factor in both World Wars. Germany and Japan both went to extraordinary lengths to obtain oil, and it was their lack of oil and failure to get more that crippled their efforts. (Yergin notes that kamikaze pilots only made their appearance after Japanese planners realized that it would take half as much oil to send a plane out without returning; it was deemed better to waste young lives than to waste oil. Rommel, too, blamed his losses on a failure to get sufficient fuel for his tanks; the Allies held a critical advantage, and used oil to turn the tide against the Axis.)

4. Relevant here, Romania has been important to European warfare because of its oil fields, attracting attention from Germany in both World Wars.

The sections specifically on Romania here are small, but the overall understanding of how important oil has been to the development of our modern world, as well as the role Romania has played in oil history, are worth reading, and the entire book is an extraordinary history that is well worth reading at least once. Separately, too, in the National Museum of Romanian History, the current gallery layout starts with, strangely, a series of glass cases and displays about America. The gallery emphasizes the role that American independence has played in Romanian thought, how close the countries have been historically, and the love that Romanians have for Americans.8 In one display, they have a copy of the New York Times; the main reason it is displayed is because of a front-page article about King Ferdinand dying and his young son, Mihai, taking the throne because the older prince, Carol, who had priority because of birth, and who would go on to become Carol II and work to appease Hitler, had a history of mental illness and was estranged from his parents and had renounced all rights to the throne at the time. However, what caught my eye was an arguably more important piece: “SOVIET DEALS SPLIT STANDARD OIL GROUP.” I would have smiled at the story of the boy king; I pressed my face against the glass when I saw the article about Standard New York and Vacuum Oil buying communist oil. “I know about that!” I thought, which was much more personally satisfying (and currently relevant) than knowing about a succession fight for the Romanian throne 90 years ago.

For these days, then: The Prize is probably the most important book one can read. It takes a huge investment of time, but if you are going to travel, you should read, and to end this as it started:

I was, in short, a singularly terrible guide in one of the greatest tourist destinations on earth.

And now B. is going to come visit Edinburgh, another great tourist destination. I was going to set up a proposed list of things for him and his family to do, and started jotting things down…and then thought heck, why not write a post about it?

The first answer: because what I have to recommend is perhaps boring. Until I wrote this sentence, I never considered adding the castle, or the palace, or St. Giles Cathedral, or The Scotch Malt Whisky Society to this list, because…they aren’t a part of life for me, except for when I am walking to Nick’s preschool and I have to dodge around crowds of people trying to take selfies in these famous and historically significant places. What most people are probably looking for in a city is not what I am interested in telling them about, which makes me a terrible guide for people who want to see big tourist sights.

And second: maybe I shouldn’t tell everyone to know about my favorite things in the city. Maybe I should keep them to myself. Maybe I should gatekeep, sharing my secrets with B. and my cousin Hannah and not with anyone who might come across this post.

But gatekeeping has a few problems:

1. I find the idea of gatekeeping narcissistic; it relies on the fantasy that the gatekeeper has some secret knowledge of a place, and that because the gatekeeper is special, they should be able to keep their “secrets” to themselves, excluding others, or at least feeling proprietary about someone else’s business. Such hoarding works for physical and intellectual property, of course; the very foundation of property is being able to control how something is used and, also, to prevent other people from using it.1 This logic doesn’t apply to knowledge about publicly-available resources, especially businesses, which rely on customers knowing about them (and often spend huge amounts of resources to get attention for themselves).

2. In this day and age, virtually everything is available online; there is no reason to believe that knowing about a bar or restaurant or spa is somehow a unique gift that the aspiring gatekeeper has. If someone thinks they are in a place to gatekeep, they are almost certainly self-delusional.

3. I heartily agree with my best friend ’s argument that businesses want to get customers and sell things, and anything people can do to help with this is good for the business. If someone is trying to prevent a business from getting customers by “gatekeeping,” then what they care about is their own feelings of possession and dominance and control, not about the success of the business, no matter how much they profess otherwise. They may not be killing the golden goose, but they are definitely trying to stop it from eating properly just because they are so self-centered that they don’t want anyone else to look at it.

So I am including a number of small, local, independently-owned and operated businesses on this list, all ones that I love and believe are worthy of support. They may not be completely struggling, but most are also not doing so well that they are moving to bigger premises, quadrupling staff, and buying out competitors. Some actually may be struggling - I don’t have a view into any of their financials. If I was able to support any of these businesses so that that my patronage alone guaranteed that they could pay their fees, fair wages, and ensure a stable and comfortable future for their hard-working owners, then I’d be entitled to gatekeep. Until then…well, I want to support them as much as possible, and I hope you do, too.

Best time to visit

Edinburgh is…in the north. In the summer, you get about 18 hours of sunlight a day; basically, as of this writing, it is never fully dark when I am awake; the 9 p.m. sky is streaked with lavender and navy and the gulls are swooping through the air, catching little flying ants that make them drunk. Lots of people like the summer, of course, but in the winter, it flips: the day is short, and even at noon your shadow can reach 30 feet long and the golden hour lasts all day.

And it is the winter that is magical.

I’m firmly convinced that one of Playfair’s intentions was to design the New Town so that it is beautiful when the sun is down. He drew grey buildings rising out of small sometimes-winding, sometimes-straight streets, and the light pouring out of the windows - of apartments, of pubs, of restaurants, of even the fishmonger - all give the sidewalk pedestrian a view of internal worlds that makes each pane of glass unique and inspiring. Residents paint their walls deep and beautiful colors that reflect a rainbow into the blackness outside; they hang art, they have working fireplaces that give the air a primal incense that says hello to your inner neanderthal and then disappears. It betrays a bold local spirit; while many would say that optimism is anathema to the Scottish soul, I think that even a superficial investigation would reveal a positivity here that shines from every face and window.

So come in the summer if you must, but know that you’re going to see summer, and not necessarily Edinburgh’s glory. If you really want to see the city at its finest, come in December or January - when the nights are long and you can see this city at its most captivating.

Getting Here

If you have direct flights, great.

B. and his family are coming from London. He was thinking of getting a car and then driving up; however, I told him that this is sheer madness. Not only is the driving different over here, but Google Maps says it will take about eight hours (non-stop with two kids…more like 10), cost a lot in gas, and just be a general headache, parking-wise. Flying from London City is an option, but it is not any faster than the train, especially if you check luggage. The train…my GOD it is superior. Talk about civilization! It takes just over four hours, maybe 4.5; you can wander when you like; the scenery is extraordinarily beautiful; if you plan ahead, you can bring drinks and relax with a Gin and Tonic or a beer or a whole bottle of wine and a good book while your kids count sheep and cows and goats and draw and do whatever it is they want to do.

So get the train, and go on the east coast line. In Kings Cross, get meal deals at Waitrose, including chip flavors that they don’t have in the USA like “grilled steak” and “cheddar and onion,” and load up on water and booze. If you need coffee, I really like Hermanos, in the back of the station. If your kids love Harry Potter, get there an hour early to stand in line for the platform 9 3/4. Then, get on the train and relax. Bring cards, books, paper. Eat, drink, and be merry, for soon you shall all arrive.

Where to stay

If you’re staying at our place, walk down and drop your bags off. Fill your bottles up - the water in Scotland is the best in the world, and the tap water here is the equal of anything you can buy in the stores.

One thing about Edinburgh is that because it is so hilly, every window has a unique, interesting, and beautiful view. Wherever you are staying, take a few moments (at least) to stand by the windows and…look. For B., go to the living room windows and gaze across the rooftops and the thousand chimney pots down to the Firth of Forth, a blue sliver between the lands, and Fife beyond it, its green hills rising up; look over to Easter Road Stadium to the right, where on game days streams of people converge and then disperse, filling the streets with shamrock-green and either smiles or frowns, and, from the kitchen, look up to Calton Hill, with Edinburgh’s Folly and Cafe Calton restaurant (which is so out of place and character with everything around it that I often think it should be called Edinburgh’s Shame). In certain weather, a thick fog called a haar will blow in from the water, and pea soup will wrap around the buildings and obscure your view of everything more than ten feet around you, and you can think that Robert Louis Stevenson lived through the same claustrophobic scenes when he was growing up.

Coffee

After you’ve looked out, you will probably want coffee. Go to:

• Little Fitzroy - my favorite coffee shop in Edinburgh. What I like most about them: they ask you what you like, and then make recommendations of beans that they have available. Also, they always seem to be having a great time - it feels like you are walking into a hilarious conversation, and they are about to tell you what is so funny.

• Thomas J Walls Coffee - near lots of the Harry Potter sites (below). Great coffee, good food, extremely welcoming to parents.

• Kuna - they have their own coffee bean roasted by Artisan which is delicious, as well as excellent cakes and pastries and a “no screens” policy which should be more widely implemented. Kedar, the owner, is welcoming and kind. It’s a good place to go if you love good people.

• Lady and the Bear - Amazing people, sunny windows, and an excellent location. They roast their own coffee beans in a roaster that they imported from California, and which is apparently the only one of its kind in Scotland. The owner is a playwright and one gets the sense he is also a bon vivant, the kind that would have thrived in the interwar years in Southern France, getting the most out of every day and every bottle.

• If you’re looking just to buy beans, Mr. Eion is probably the best roaster in the city. They used to only sell beans, not make coffee for customers; it may have changed, but as far as I know, you can only just get beans here. The ones from Myanmar were my favorite back when I could still drink coffee.

Pastries

If you need something just to snack on, Edinburgh is blessed with a lot of great bakeries. Consider:

• The Sicilian Pastry Shop - This is, by far, my favorite bakery in Edinburgh. The sweets are excellent, especially the donuts, but they also have some of the best arancini in Edinburgh, as well as delicious toasted sandwiches. There is usually a line, often short, and they often sell out on Saturdays.

• Mòr - besides having great food, they are locally owned, and one of my friends said that the founders are Polish. I like supporting it as a successful immigrant business, even if it has started to feel like a genuine chain.

• Speaking of Polish pastries, Taste of Poland has unbelievable rolls and donuts.

• Söderberg Bakery - another local chain with excellent cardamom buns and good coffee.

• Krema Bakehouse - excellent, but they only do take-out. It always has a particular…yeasty smell, like no matter what they are cooking, things are fermenting somewhere.

Restaurants

Edinburgh apparently has more restaurants per capita than any other city in the UK outside of London. Many are excellent. The ones I prefer (to go to with kids):

Breakfast:

• Taste of Italy - I have gone here like 10 times, and they have never once gotten my order correct - they screw something up literally every time. However, the Italians here say that they has better food than Valvona and Crolla, they have excellent pizza, and they are extremely nice - the manager always smiles and ciaos us when we see her in the street, which is surprisingly often. Also, even though they never get my order right, it is still pretty damn good.

• Gregg’s - apparently a good portion of the UK lives within four minutes of a Gregg’s. It is also the most popular bacon roll in the country. It’s a British institution, and well worth one visit. The kids like bacon rolls with ketchup; I like mine with sausage and egg and brown sauce.

• Cafe Calton - for the best view in the city, and apparently really good food. If you are looking for views, go to the John Lewis top floor cafe for the second-best view, good cake, and a child-friendly environment (but they don’t serve breakfast, unless your breakfast is Victoria Sponge or Red Velvet).

• Society Bar and Kitchen - we haven’t been here in a while, but they were excellent when we went before, mostly because it was way healthier than most breakfast spots.

Lunch:

You have a million choices. With kids, though, Bonnie and Wild or Edinburgh Street Food are across the street from each other, and both are winners. Because they are sort of food halls, there will be something for everyone to eat; they are higher-quality than most fast food places, and are just a step up from food trucks (which many of these vendors used to be). At ESF, the Peruvian is my favorite, with dessert from Soft Core; at Bonnie and Wild, El Perro Negro has what are now Edinburgh’s best burgers, but they overcharge for ketchup. The fish and chips at Creel Caught are extraordinary.

Sear’s Pizza - Nick once said that “This is absolutely the best pepperoni pizza I have ever had in my entire life.” He’s four, and I trust his judgment. The people are also absurdly friendly. One of the staff seems to be named Hova - I keep wanting to ask if she is aware that it is one of Shawn Carter’s aliases, but I’m sure she knows, although she may not be old enough to have heard of Jay-Z, which scares me.

Bread Meats Bread - excellent sandwiches, and they have a California burger that is a reasonably good imitation of In-N-Out.

Dinner

The Hungry Wolf - I’m biased, as my friend David owns it and my other friend Manuel is sous-chef, and I just reviewed it for a big international men’s magazine (hitting newsstands soon!!!). However, this place is amazing. Know in advance that it’s small, and usually completely booked; it is hard to get a table. But if you can go early (like 4 p.m., when they open), get the dumplings (which take ages to make and usually sell out; Dave is particularly proud of himself whenever a Chinese student takes his or her mother here and the mother likes the dumplings) and a cheese boat (which the kids will enjoy). Everything is good here. Dave is also hilarious, if…physically intimidating. Dude’s a black belt in Judo, a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and he looks like a product of the Soviet weightlifting program in the 1970s - I’ve actually saw him rolling in Jiu-Jitsu and, when his partner tried to break his arm, he just lifted the person off of the mat, stood up, and shook them off like a cold before laughing in his Georgian way, which was more like a grunt. Anyway, he’s also one of the warmest, most generous and thoughtful people you could ever meet. Manuel, the sous-chef, has trained in some of the best kitchens in Edinburgh and is an inspiration to watch; after you order the cheese boat, watch him cut the butter for it, as it is really an awe-inspiring activity.

L’Alba de Oro - this was apparently Anthony Bourdain’s favorite fish-and-chips shop. Just before writing this section, I was on a bus that passed it; three elderly Scottish people in the seats in front of me pointed it out to each other, then started talking about how much they love it. Also, get the haggis; it’s delicious.

Three notes about L’Alba:

1. “Supper” is used in Scotland in place of “and chips.” It doesn’t save any syllables; it is just a Scottish saying. Instead of saying “fish and chips, please” just say “fish supper, please,” or “haggis supper, please.”

2. “Sauce” is specifically an Edinburgh thing; it’s made of brown sauce and vinegar. I like it, but many Scots - especially from Glasgow - use it as yet another reason to look down on Edinburgh as a den of iniquity.

3. Americans often frown when I recommend haggis, but don’t think twice about eating hot dogs. Friends: hot dogs are made of all the parts of an animal that aren’t used for normal meat, including pig assholes and stomachs and lungs and tendons, then “mechanically separated,” then emulsified into a pink paste and stuffed into the casings we grew up with. Add in chemical preservatives and factory-farmed ingredients and you have a hot dog. They are truly disgusting. Eat haggis instead.

Broughton Street - this seems to be the hot spot for new Michelin recommendations; check out Vinette and Lucky Yu. I’d also recommend The Olive Branch, which was the first place we ate in Edinburgh and is always busy.

Playgrounds

And the kids will be full of energy.

Get some fruit at Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Then, I suggest heading to Prince’s Street Gardens to let them run around. Yes, the playground at Saughton Park is superior overall, but it’s a hassle to get to from the middle of the city; Prince’s Street is central, large, relatively clean, has a great view of the castle, and you can wander around the grassy bits or get a quick bite to eat if you need more food. It is also closer to overhanging trees if it starts to rain, and there are a lot of things to play with, so even when it is busy your kids should be able to find something to jump on. While there, check out the Ross Fountain, wander the paths, and gawk at the castle about to fall on you from above. Oh, and tell them that they are playing in what used to be a loch.

There are good playgrounds on The Meadows, but they aren’t taken care of as well, and incorporate slippery materials that don’t seem to have been tested in weather as wet as Scotland’s. Both of my children have had really bad falls on somewhat routine activities there. Also, the Meadows really shine in spring, with sunny weather and warmth and students lying out on blankets while the cherry trees drop blossoms, turning the ground white. Summer is nice, too, but somehow not as satisfying. Oh - and there is also a playground on the west side of the Meadows that just got redone; I haven’t been there yet, but it looks good.

Groceries

One of the things that many of my non-British friends complain about is how difficult it is to get good fruit and vegetables in the UK. Compared to many other places…well, it’s absolutely true. The big stores have driven all of the other fruit and veg sellers out of business; the places that exist now tend to have inferior produce, or have niche tropical fruits that nobody else has at extortionate prices, and they still aren’t very good. I’m trying to figure out why this is, because so much other food here - meats, pastries, cheeses - are exceptional. Why are the Brits being screwed out of tasty, healthy produce? Is this all about Brexit?

Sigh.

But if what they do have is good, it is absolutely excellent.

For sausages, go to Crombies. It’s now called The Broughton Market, but you should call it Crombies, because that’s what it was called for years before it went through a rebranding, and I don’t know anyone who actually calls it The Broughton Market. In fact, if you say “The Broughton Market,” most people will probably not know what you mean. Anyways, they are arguably the best butchers in town, and have a good selection of delicious food. Years ago, they cooked the best burgers in Edinburgh for lunch, but now they don’t make hot food anymore, so I’d recommend the Scotch Pies. Julie, the till manager, is one of the most wonderfully kind people in Edinburgh; sometimes we stop by just to see her, and if you get a Scotch Pie, she will suggest heating it up, then putting it between two slices of buttered toast, and her face scrunches up as she mimes eating it, and my kids love it and roar with laughter and yours probably will too. (George Bower Butchers is also excellent, and they have a great salt room in the back with meat hanging off of hooks; Findlays of Portobello may be worth a trip just for their burgers.)

Something Fishy - excellent fishmonger and supremely friendly guy, kindness incarnate. The kids love looking in his window, talking about how fish don’t have eyelids, speculating about the names of fish they think look funny, saying that they want salmon, then, once we are inside, deciding that actually they want fish cakes. He also has excellent oysters for a fraction of what they cost in restaurants and can do special orders for you.

Rosevear - great tea. They give you a discount if you bring your own container.

George Mewes Cheese - extraordinary. I don’t know what else to say. Tourist flock to Valvona & Crolla because they have a royal warrant; many people also like Mellis because they do have great cheese. I’d say, though, that the people who really know cheese go down to George Mewes. They flood the floor every night to get the humidity just right, and their selection is perfect. Well worth a trip.

Rajah’s Supermarket - the place to go for spices. It looks like a small shop tucked away on a side street, but then they have a little hallway that leads to a huge room full of everything you could ever want. Spice-wise, anyway. They also have hallal butchers who are always working - it’s surprising how much meat they seem to go through. And they have charity donation boxes near the checkout that raise money for Palestinian kids.

Ice Cream

Alandas - this is an excellent option for ice cream, especially if you are near Heriot’s. Daniel likes it because he likes mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Joelatto - while Daniel prefers Alanda’s for the mint chocolate, he admits that Joelatto is actually better overall, and I agree.

Freezer - but we make our own ice cream. In the freezer there are glass one-litre jars of vanilla, strawberry, coffee, and green tea, made with no unpronounceable ingredients or preservatives. There are vintage scoops in the drawer next to the freezer. Help yourself.

Harry Potter stuff

I’m sure there are better guides for Harry Potter stuff out there. A few things for your kids:

Elephant House Cafe - my friend Andrew’s dad owns it, and he is amazing, so I think they must be amazing. I haven’t been in since the renovation; it appears a bit kitschy now from outside, but in my opinion, it’s absolutely their right to cash in.

Greyfriar’s Kirkyard - there are apps to show you where the Harry Potter characters’ names came from. Go early to avoid the crowds.

George Heriot’s - the school that apparently inspired Hogwarts. You can get an OK view through the gate at the back of Greyfriar’s Kirkyard; the front is better, though. They have a huge Polish security guard who looks really scary but is extremely nice. You can’t get in, though.

Victoria Street - apparently the inspiration for Diagon Alley. Stop at Mellis for excellent scotch eggs and good cheese; they also have a good own-brand cider and nice tote bags. Walker Slater apparently supplied Downton Alley with tweed. Oink has good pulled pork sandwiches.

Shopping for essentials

If you are coming from London, check out the deoderant at Taylor’s of Bond Street, and you can probably find good toothpaste at Kent or, perhaps, Fortnum. For essentials in Edinburgh, though, I’d suggest:

1. Lindsay and Gilmour. This was Darwin’s pharmacy when he was a student here, and is still locally-owned. I just like knowing my ibuprofen comes from Darwin’s pharmacy, really. They also carry old British toothpaste, which…I suspect is good? I should probably buy some.

   

2. TK MAXX. It is the same as TJ MAXX, just British. They have toothpaste and deoderant. You can also get a tote bag here that might turn heads in the US for being strange.

3. Pound shops - Poundland, for example, or Poundsaver. Why shop at the UK equivalents of dollar stores that sell cheap, mass-produced stuff? Well…this is where lots of people shop in the UK, and these shops offer a window into the lives of normal Brits.

Tote Bags

Tote bags have emerged as one of the defining ways to express both individuality and conformity - people can show their interests, the activities they participate in, or aspirational identities through tote bags easily and, sometimes, cheaply. They are personal advertising spaces to tell people what the owner wants to value. If you really want to look like a local, a standard Trader Joe’s tote bag should be carried around at all times. The white/navy blue one is standard; if you can bring one in different colors, then you look somewhat unique, and you will sort of stand out from everyone else with almost the exact same thing.

Locals in Edinburgh also put a high value on Real Foods and Topping tote bags as tribal markers - either earth-conscious or intelligentsia, take your pick. Many coffee shops, book stores, and plant stores have tote bags which offer more hyper-insider displays of identity - Typewronger and Rare Birds, for example. (B. - I already got you a Real Foods bag, which also has the book To Rise Again at a Decent Hour inside it, hanging on the bed post.)

Thrift Stores/Charity Shops

There are three thrift stores that I strongly suggest:

Bethany Christian Trust - I’d argue that this is the best thrift store in Edinburgh. The second would be the Bethany Christian Trust in Leith. Third: Bethany Christian Trust in Stockbridge.

Just look for Bethany Christian Trust.

Car Boot/Flea Markets

Ocean Terminal - we go here every Sunday. In the winter, you need a flashlight; the aisles are pitch-black in the middle. It almost feels like an illicit market, with shadowy figures trying to buy and sell things you can’t see or identify, and then someone comes by and a table is illuminated as if by a faceless god. But it is summer, so you can see. If you go up the ramp to enter it, then immediately turn right and go to the end of the aisle, George is always on the corner on the left; he’s friends with Daniel and Nick, and he often has a good selection. He buys abandoned storage containers down in some other city - Newcastle, maybe - and brings up a van full of things from it every week; he will have ballgowns one week and antiques the next. There is a shorter, older guy who sometimes sells stuff out of a white van on the aisle closest to the ocean; you will recognize him by his white button-up shirt, tweed waistcoat and tweed cap. He has tons of crap, but there is almost always something amazing there that nobody else has recognized as extraordinary - people will be fighting over a used hose or a grill still crusty with burgers from 2007 and will ignore the Le Creuset casserole that he wants £10 for. There’s a skinny, extremely alert man that always sells a random assortment of things on the same aisle; his last name is actually Scotland, so we always make a point to say hello to Mr. Scotland. There are some extremely nice Polish women in the middle who sell toys; they almost always give Daniel and Nick things. Otherwise, you are looking for needles in haystacks, but you can find golden needles here.

Edinburgh Car Boot/Corn Exchange - I haven’t been here in a few years, as it is a bit out of the way, but it was excellent when I went. This is definitely a summertime one, though, as it is out in the open.

Book stores

Topping is one of the most popular bookstores in the city. It is beautiful, and they have free tea and coffee.

But I make it a point to never pay more than £2 for a book. It’s as much about being cheap as it is about not adding to the 4,000 books that I already have. Topping, for all its beauty, charges full price for every book; there are no discounts for anyone or anything. They make it work. It’s worth seeing. I just don’t buy anything there.

Tills is a wonderful used bookstore near the Meadows, and is worth a visit if you are in the area.

The British Heart at the bottom of Leith Walk mostly charges £1 per book, and they have a decent selection. The British Heart near Usher Hall is also good.

Rare Birds also gets a mention as an excellent bookshop worth supporting.

Adult activities

I am boring; given a free evening, I would go to a BJJ class at Rick’s. Let me know if you want me to introduce you to some people to train with. Otherwise…well, I have no idea what adults do at night. Most of what I know about is

Kids activities

Besides Harry Potter:

• Running around the grass fields near the palace.

• Running around the Meadows - I include this because my kids decided to do this today, and they looked like they were having the most amazing time of their little lives.

• The National Museum of Scotland - this is a winner with the kids, especially as their tastes change from dinosaurs to smilodons to ancient Egypt. It’s also a beautiful building with a grand cafe.

• The Zoo. It isn’t the San Diego Zoo, but it’s still a great way to spend time with the kids. Also, their playgrounds can be busy, but are very good.

Drinks

We have young kids - it’s hard to get out for drinks. But if your mother-in-law is willing to take care of the little ones in the evening, check out:

Kay’s Bar - as local as it gets, and very small. You’ll be lucky to get a seat, but if you do, it’s the kind of place - especially on a cold January evening, when you really should be visiting and you want somewhere warm and boozy - where you could quite easily spend four hours talking with a friend.

Barony Bar - Very welcoming, bigger than Kay’s, good food. Again, a place that is perfect in the dead of winter, and much easier to find.

Panda & Sons - recently voted the best bar in the world. The drinks are excellent, but it is hard to talk to people here - the 90s hip hop is very loud.

Lucky Liquor Co. - I was on a work call with a designer when we got to talking about weekend plans. I’d just bought The Twelve Bottle Bar, and he suddenly got very excited. He was friends with some people who had read the book, and then they started playing around with it. Then they decided that they were going to start a bar based on the premise that they could make cocktails out of very few ingredients and still satisfy everyone; they were going to continually experiment and not offer the standard fare. The bar: The Lucky Liquor Co.
I’m not sure if this is actually the origin story - the website is silent on it - but I love this place simply because Sam did, and a good story makes a huge difference.

Bramble Bar - I think that, given a vote, Edinburgh residents would vote this as a better bar than Panda. But the 90s hip hop is still very loud.

Books to read

First, I recommended The Infidel and the Professor, which I think gives a good grounding to a particularly important historical age here. I’m sure there are other non-fiction books that are good, too, but many of the ones that I have read are very academic and not very…well, the authors didn’t put a lot of thought into general readability.

For fiction, Trainspotting is actually really good for training your brain to interpret certain accents, working around the vowels and consonants and teaching you what to listen for. A lot of people like Alexander McCall Smith, and it’s fun to see elements of the Harry Potter books in the streets.

Assorted tips

Don’t bring an umbrella. When we first moved here, and Alice was working in Glasgow, one of her colleagues asked her, “Have you encountered the Edinburgh Wind yet?” Alice thought that this was a gastrointestinal issue, but no - Edinburgh has an absurdly strong wind that whips across the city from every direction at once. This is especially true in storms, when the rain can be horizontal and umbrellas are either clutched tight as a windshield or are completely inverted.

We started off trying to use umbrellas here, but it rapidly became clear that if it wasn’t raining, they were just extra weight; if it was raining, they were all but useless. The majority of locals just don’t bother with them; most umbrellas you see will be provided by hotels. Pack a rain jacket instead, and you’ll be a lot happier.

Remember: Scotland has its own money, and it’s treated suspiciously everywhere else. Scotland’s banks print the money here. You can still use Bank of England money, but if you take Scottish bank money to England, even though it is legal tender, many people treat it suspiciously, and some won’t accept it at all. My suspicion is that if you try to exchange it outside of the UK, people will think it is counterfeit. Outside of flea markets, virtually everyone uses cards anyway; if you need cash, get the minimum amount necessary, and use cards instead.

Also, keep the money in your wallet. Lots of people stuff bills into their pockets and, when they pull out a phone or wallet, the bill goes flying in the wind, ready to be picked up by observant locals. I once helped a guy retrieve £400 that had fallen out of his pocket on Leith Walk; I had to chase him down, as he had earbuds in and couldn’t hear me shouting to him. We don’t find bills on the street all the time, but regularly enough that it’s clear that it’s better to keep them in your wallet than have them fly around.

“Zebra” crosswalks always mean that vehicles have to yield to pedestrians, but in Edinburgh, cyclists never obey the law. Cars are waaaaay more respectful of pedestrians than bicycles are; whenever you cross a bike path, even when there is a clear zebra crossing and signs telling cyclists to yield and a guy screaming at cyclists that it is a pedestrian crossing, cyclists just blow through them, and often shout profanities at pedestrians crossing where they are supposed to cross. This especially applies to e-bikes and Deliveroo/Uber Eats cyclists.

Edinburgh is a village. If you go to BJJ early in your visit, I can basically guarantee you that you will run into at least one of the people you train with in the next 2-3 days.

Edinburgh is also a three-dimensional city. If you are using Google Maps to go anywhere, sometimes directions don’t make sense - it might look as if it is telling you to go way out of your way just to cross a street.

The thing is, Edinburgh is extremely hilly, and sometimes what looks like an intersection on a map is actually two streets, one of which is on a bridge four stories above the other. Just follow the map - it is right.

Call me if you need anything. This applies to anyone reading this.

I tried to footnote this, and they got allllll screwed up by the Substack editor; they lost all links to the sentences I was footnoting. Twice. So below are footnotes. Hopefully they make sense.

So we had seven unplanned hours in the Amsterdam airport.

If we gave our kids screens, then they’d have gotten on the late flight saying, “We spent six hours playing (insert games that kids play here), which is what we do every day anyway, and we ate pizza.”

But we don’t give them screens. Instead, when they got on the plane after seven hours, they could say that:

• They drew stencils, then colored them in.

• They read - Daniel loves Calvin and Hobbes, and Nick loves pretty much anything being read to him (this time it was Shel Silverstein poems and A Child’s Christmas in Wales, both of which I find incredibly good now).

• They watched a giant clock made of people standing in line.

• They watched airplanes.

• They watched people walking by.

• They watched a digger sifting through rubble for metal scraps, which prompted a discussion of electromagnetism.

• We rode on every moving sidewalk we could find, and Daniel learned about the joys of walking in the wrong direction.

• They played with toys in the duty-free toy store.

• They asked about “duty free,” which was just the opening I was looking for to give them their introductory lessons in taxation (thanks, Professor Gabinet).

• They reclined on the loungers that Amsterdam has set up for people who are waiting for flights.1

• I played “judge” with Daniel, where I explained the facts of cases I remembered from law school to him, he asked questions, and then he worked through what he thought the judgment should be (he somehow got the McDonald’s coffee case exactly right, using logic that I didn’t prompt him on, which scared me) (also, this is a “game” he keeps asking me to play, which scares me even more).

• And yes, we ate really good pizza and extraordinary sandwiches, and hard-boiled eggs, and salade niçoise,2 and a bag of gala apples.

With more time and better planning, this could have been a truly extraordinary day out as a family, all without shoving screens in front of their faces to keep them busy.

Birthing children is the second easiest part of having kids (assembling the components is, I think we can all agree, easier and more fun). Raising them is the hard part. Yes, it requires planning ahead (Alice is a genius at this). It’s also not always easy to tell them that if they are bored, it’s up to them to figure out what to do.

But packing a screen for the kids and then having them zone out (while the adults also zone out on their own screens) teaches children a few things that does them real harm:

1. It teaches them that it is good for them to ignore the world around them and just focus on pixels.

2. It teaches them that it is good for parents to ignore the world around them - including their own children - and just focus on pixels.

3. It teaches them that the short-term dopamine boosts that they get from technology are preferable to the long-term ability to focus, think, interact, and learn about the world.

4. Also, the evidence indicating screens are linked to ADHD, developmental delays for babies, and “reduced physical activity, poorer sleep, attention difficulties, and challenges in emotional and social functioning” is simply becoming overwhelming.

The devil on my shoulder keeps telling me that screens are good for other peoples’ children. If more kids end up using technology and are thus unable to focus, read books, understand people, or engage in the real world, then my kids will have less competition, now and in the future. Daniel and Nick will be able to ask the hard questions, do the hard work, and reap disproportionate rewards; other parents are destroying their own childrens’ futures, and all we have to do is stay out of their way. This is the “every person for themselves” view. But the angel on my shoulder weeps, ululates, rends its gown; it wants all the kids to have the best shot in life as possible, to be able to excel without their parents’ bad decisions destroying their futures, and it hates seeing children being short-changed by parents who use a short-term solution with long-term damage.3 All of our kids are facing a tough future; it doesn’t do any good to give them brains that aren’t up to the task, or peers (and potential leaders) who can’t think. I also don’t want my own kids surrounded by others who…well, aren’t smart.

I don’t want them dragged down.

And that angel almost always wins, because really, life is a team sport, and a team is only as strong as its weakest player, and I don’t want my kids on a team of players who were made weak because their parents failed them.

For parents who want kids who are easy to travel with, a bit of advance planning to help avoid handing screens over to keep them entertained will make a trip - even if it has seven unexpected hours added on to it - so much easier, and it will make their lives so much better as well.

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So what to pack instead of screens?

• Paper. Draw on it. Fold origami. Play tic-tac-toe. Cut it into pieces for flash cards (below). Make airplanes, and draw designs on their sides to match the planes you see. This is easily the most versatile thing to pack to keep kids entertained.

• Colored pencils - better than pens or crayons, because you know how much you have left (unlike pens, which run out or dry up when your kid doesn’t put the cap on properly, and you don’t know if you are packing something that is totally useless) and they can be sharpened for better detail work (unlike crayons).

• Pencil sharpener - I list this separately because, for kids, sharpening pencils can be fun. Nick especially loves this - give him a pile of dull pencils and a sharpener and he is good for an hour, talking to himself and learning how things work.

• Stencils - plastic stencils are flat, so they are easier to pack; they teach motor skills; and, when finished, they allow for coloring in. You can make your own coloring books with them. Daniel likes writing comic books, and in Amsterdam he folded paper to make one, then used stencil letters to do the title; I can imagine him using stencils to do characters, too, although he prefers to draw them by hand now.

• Books, preferably text-dense. When a book is picture-dense, they take up too much space relative to how long they can be read. Text-dense books (with some pictures, of course - I’m not a sadist) offer a better return. I prefer ancient myths and fables, as well as Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, rather than modern books, both to give them a basic understanding of stories and historical references and because most modern kids books are inane drivel designed to entertain with poor characters and dubious lessons rather than instruct, inform, and improve. Plus, ancient myths and legends are pretty amazing, for kids and adults alike.

  E_III_R

  no, you are not an author and you can't "do anything"

  We had a visit from a children's “author” today at school…

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  a month ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · E_III_R

• Flash cards for words - kids have a natural desire to learn; figuring out new languages is fun for them. I do the practical ones, and then let the kids make up others; in Romanian, they should now know how to say numbers, “thank you,” “hello,” “goodbye,” “carrots for one,” “she looks like a chicken in a hospital,” and “emergency.”

  

• Games - cards are particularly good here. I kind of want to teach them to play dice games, but I don’t know any that are fun without a financial interest. But maybe gambling is something they should learn young - does craps teach valuable lessons in probability?4 (Sunny and Tom, your thoughts here would be most appreciated…)

Yes, these things do take up more space than a phone or tablet. But they also offer more interactions, better physical skills, and fewer mental downsides than screens do, and I think that’s worth it for our children.

That is, if your kids are on the same team as my kids. Otherwise, I hear that if you give them a Samsung Galaxy and an iPhone at the same time, plus some headphones, then both of their hands and eyes and ears are occupied, and it’s a big win for you.

I’d expected the slumping, the leaking, the heaving, because we’d just had a really intense 90 minutes of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. But not the talking. Yes, Pavel was Russian, and had been working in Budapest when Russia invaded; he’d stayed to avoid being volunteered for the army. Yes, Tibor was from Ukraine, and had been here for decades; he had even less of a reason to return now. Even with their anti-militant credentials, I hadn’t expected them to voluntarily associate with each other outside of class, to want to connect with each other beyond what was strictly necessary. It didn’t make sense.

Rather, it wouldn’t make sense on the street. By the logic of Jiu-Jitsu, though, it absolutely did.

At 6:15, I’d be up and dressed. I’d grab my bag and a banana and then slip out the front door, trying to make the click of the electronic lock as quiet as possible in the stonewalled stairway which had echoed footprints since the Ministry of Internal Affairs had informants everywhere. I’d get out in the street, cool at this time of the morning, and look around. There would usually be an older man, overweight in his pyjamas, sitting on the bench on the corner, his tiny dog on a leash, smelling other dogs’ piss; the man would look up at me groggily, seeming to not register that there was another living person on the sidewalk. It would be easy to cross the street; cars rarely passed now, and any busses that came would get me down to the club.

I’d get the first one that passed, sitting in the back. Usually there would be some older women, one or two, on their way to cleaning jobs, or a man, very drunk, doomscrolling videos to look at girls. We would pass all of the closed businesses, shutters down, and speed along the silent streets. I’d push the button for Király utca/Erzsébet körút, then hop off and walk along the silent streets, dodging the puddles of alcoholic urine, floating through clouds of bakery exhaust, and looking out for cats and rats, all of us surprising each other.

The club was on a long, beautiful block. Footsteps would echo off of the buildings; sometimes, footsteps or voices would float down from around the corner or behind cars. These footsteps and voices would invariably belong to young people - men and women - in shorts, tee-shirts, flip flops, carrying bags and water bottles, and just before 7 a.m. every pedestrian on Eötvös street will be in this uniform, leaving a trail of freshly-applied mass-market deoderant. If you saw someone, you’d look them in the eye; if you didn’t recognize them, you’d upnod and say “sup?” in English, because everyone in the class speaks at least some English and is familiar with the vernacular. If you recognized them, you’d give each other broad smiles, then go in for a hug, right arm high and head to the left, holding for a beat just beyond normal, then breaking apart and moving toward the entrance as one. If you saw others, they would join the group, and you would pick people up almost like that playground game of Amoeba.

When visiting a club, the default is to be overly formal. If it’s your first time, you take off your shoes at the door, then bow to everyone, shake hands, bow to any instructors, and show respect to all. Nobody tells you to do this; it’s just that you never know who can kill you, and, as a visitor, it is always better to defer at every opportunity. There is no posturing, no “I’m going to be king here” bravado; visiting black belts, if anything, show more respect than visiting white belts, who are less knowledgeable and more casual. In turn, this magically makes everyone like you; they will help you find the changing rooms, ask you where you are from, offer to partner up with you and show you around.

The morning classes were always sparse. In a room that could easily accommodate 50, you have five. You line up and bow, then warm up - running around the room, then the bear crawls, shrimps, gorilla walking, all sorts of activities named after animals that are designed to help you hurt other people, and all to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” which, when asked, everyone will tell you, is the “traditional” music to play during violence. Then, the instructor gives you a move to train; he shows it, then you practice with your partner, then he shows it again, then you practice more. Then, you spar - sometimes with everyone in the class in turn. At the end, everyone dressed, then went out into the day, ready for whatever came.

That is what happened. But that ignores everything that happens below the surface in jiu-jitsu.

The fear starts as soon as you wake up, and the self-doubt. Every time, the constant drumbeat of: “Why am I going to class? This must be the stupidest thing anyone could ever do.” Part of it is the absolute unknown: you have no idea who will show up, what the class will be like, who your partner will be. Will it be…dangerous? And the answer to that is: of course. That’s the nature of what you are doing, what you specifically signed up for.

Which is stupid.

Rapidly, you think about what else you could be doing. You could stay in bed. You could be there when the kids wake up, and hug them, cuddling their tiny bodies. You could make breakfast. You could go out and get a baguette, or some soft cheese; you could make spinach and eggs and put it on toast for them, and make tea and coffee, and have time to spare for meditation, reading, writing. You could go into the golden hour and take photos. You could research where you are going today. You could run, or go to the gym, both of which are not likely to involve people trying to hurt you.

When you eat your banana, you hope you won’t throw it up later and, if you do, what it will taste like. When you drink water, you hope you won’t throw it up and, if you do, how much it will affect the consistency.

Your senses are heightened to everything happening around you which, later, will seem absurd, the opposite of what you need, because you will be so focused, but now the birds that are awake are louder. The water bottle is colder when you fill it. The lock clicks like a gunshot, and you grimace, hoping it doesn’t wake the kids. In the stairwell, you pause and listen, just for a moment, waiting for any would-be assailant to give himself away with a slight scuff of a soft-soled sneaker against the marble floor, or the rustle of cloth rubbing cloth. You’d even take a few steps, acting as if you didn’t know they were there, and then stop, tricking them into making a move. Then, when you’d start moving again, you’d hear something and stop, but of course it was only your own shirt brushing your shorts, and you’d shake your head and keep going.

In the street, the dog would look up at you, alert, its small black nose sniffing the air to see who you were. The man would see his dog looking up and then follow its gaze; you’d make eye contact, and note the fat cheeks drooping, his mouth just slightly opened, making him look dim-witted, and you’d make a note to yourself to never let your face get like that.

If he came after you, you could take him; you’re sure of that.

You’d look two times in each direction on the street, even though there were no cars at this time. On the bus, you’d sit with your back against a window or, ideally, in the very back of the bus, facing the doors so that nobody could get behind you. When the bus sighed around a corner, you’d think: if it broke down, and everyone had to get out, then that would be a good reason to go home. You’d scan your body; did your stomach hurt? Even a little bit? Maybe you should go home. Did you pack your mouth guard? Perhaps you should go home and check? You could actually check your bag, of course, but that would remove the doubt. The stop would arrive, and if you missed it, you might miss the class, and you’d need to go home to not embarrass yourself, except you were the only one who pushed the button and stood up, holding the bar, and there was no turning back now.

On the quiet street, you’d be in fight-or-flight mode again, your senses attuned to any irregularities. There was a couple, coming out of the hotel around the corner, their laughter bouncing off of the buildings; you stared at them and the man’s laugh caught in his throat as he thought that there was something just a bit off about your eyes. A wisp of cigarette smoke drifted down from an open window with the sound of a television, and then the clank of a pan on a stovetop and the crack of an egg, and you knew somehow that the egg was brown, and the pan was aluminum, and the Hungarian voice was delivering the forecast. You listened for the rasp of flip flops on the sidewalks, or the way duffle bags metronomed against hips, or the thousand other ways that a person could make themself known; it was rare for someone to appear before you knew that they were coming. When they did, though, your eyes would meet. In real life you don’t often make eye contact directly with strangers, but ahead of a class, it’s as if nothing else matters. You’re both primed to assess threats, because you know for a fact that they are coming; looking at another person’s eyes tells you far more about them than their hands, or their legs, or their torso ever could. Someone who wasn’t going to class would be looking at their phone, or at the buildings, and may pretend to not even notice you; someone going to class would have avoided all distractions, their hands would be empty, and they would stare at you intently, right in the eye, and so you knew that they were friendly.

And, with that established, you were safer. That’s why you greeted each other so enthusiastically - because seconds before, you were alone, and now you were part of a protective tribe.

You’d slap hands and hug, then walk to the front door together. One of you would enter the code - it was given to you freely the second time you went, access to the entire building, because that’s how you trust each other - and then walk down the high hallway, through the courtyard, around the corner, and in the door. No matter how much detergent or tea tree oil or bleach they use on the mats, there is always the stale smell of sweat and pheromones and hormones and bodies piled on each other at every gym, and it is comforting, in its own way, because it is familiar, and you’re a part of it everywhere. Perhaps ancient Athenians would have smelled this in their stadia, or the Heian wrestlers in their dojos; they’d not only recognize it but smile, knowing that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

You get your gi on, angling your body not directly at the wall but also not directly at anyone else, and then go back to the mats, and now there’s a period of waiting. You stretch, but your stretches are interrupted by hand-shaking, because it is the custom in this club to shake hands with everyone you see when you enter, friends and strangers alike, which you think is a great policy. When everyone is down, the black belt calls everyone to line up; you bow in, and then start running.

Your brain settles down now. You can run, and shrimp, and bear crawl with the best of them; then, you get your training partner. Eventually, you start training regularly with another blue belt, Pavel, or a white belt, Serhii - both of them extraordinarily, preternaturally kind people, gentle, humble, except they are also killers. They are focused, too, dedicated to getting better, training not out of ego or pride but because they are drawn to the sport for its beauty, for the confidence that they get from it, for its camaraderie, and they also know it can be useful if necessary.

Which might, you hope, describe you as well, on your best days.

As you train, and you are suddenly in positions of controlled danger, there is nothing else in the world except the cubic metre that you and your partner occupy. Everything outside of that space is hazy, fuzzy, as if the focus on your eyes had blurred everything around you. It often strikes you as funny that, before class, when danger was abstract, every sense was on overdrive, and now, in real danger, your ears, nose, and tongue don’t seem to work. But here, too, there are fears, perhaps abstract, but also very, very real. What if, for example, you farted during class? It would be bad enough to do a silent-but-deadly fart; then, your partner, sometimes an inch from your ass, would smell it and, even if they were not disgusted, you’d be mortified. But if it was loud, and everyone heard it? If they looked over, and said something in Hungarian, or laughed, and you…well, you’d have to own it, you’d have to accept full and gracious responsibility, and that would be the only way you’d be able to move on from the shame. You’ve never been in an orgy, but you can imagine the same fear pervading everyone there, too: first, performance anxiety; second, farting.

And the other smells.

Most people don’t fart in class. Most people shower regularly, and have no problems with personal body odor. Most people also wash their gis regularly, and use various techniques to make sure that they smell clean, knowing that they will be pressed up against their friends and they don’t want to make other people uncomfortable. This is the same way around the world. But others don’t shower as often, or have smelly gis, or don’t wash their gis between sessions, so the sweat and bacteria and grime build up between the fibres, causing them to give off a stench not as bad as death, or human waste, but not far off, and this is pressed into your face for at best a few minutes, at worst an hour. One of your friends at home has a mental list of people she won’t train with because they don’t take care of their gis and they smell so bad, but because of the extreme politeness in the club, nobody will address it with them. When you get a partner like this, you just put up with it; the real and constant fear, though, is that you are that partner, the one that everyone clocks as an undesireable, and that when people fail to meet your gaze when you raise your hand to get a sparring partner, it’s not because you are so good that they are fearful of being embarrassed; it’s because you smell bad, but nobody else will tell you.

But by the time you start sparring, it’s too late to worry about this; you’re already going, so you may as well continue. You roll first with Pavel or Serhii, which is always lovely; they are graceful, focused on technique, eager to fail if it means that they try something new and learn, and every time either of you tap, there’s a thirty-second window where you talk about what happened, what worked and what didn’t, and then you go again. There’s the young kid, 14 years old but already taller and heavier than you, who knows nothing and is hard not to beat; you try to let him practice, but he is so new that he just flails. You always try to roll with him because it is an opportunity to encourage him; you can tell he is shy, unsure of himself, but that he is here because he sees its value, and you want him to be part of the community. There’s the Italian, who looks like an Armani model and has the voice of Marlon Brando’s Vito, who is strong but uses his strength to try technique; he is always exhausted after you roll, which means you are doing well. There are the two white belts, either friends or brothers, who always train together quietly and often get frustrated; you’ll roll with them, but you don’t hold back, because either they are going to quit because of ego or their egos are going to get ground down in kimuras and strangles and they will end up better for it, and defeating them is the best thing you can do to help them grow.

Even if you tap a hundred times, you love this. Especially if you tap a hundred times.

One sense hasn’t left you: hearing. Your hearing is attuned to the electronic beep of the timer on the wall that announces the end of a round and, when class is over, everyone collapses. You have kids to feed, so you go around the room, shaking hands, thanking people, telling them things that they did particularly well, and then you change and bow out of the room and walk back outside. Now, your shoulders are back, you breathe in the morning air, and you can hear the birds and the cars and the voices all around you but now they are not claustrophobic or threatening but friendly and warm.

This is why you go, this feeling right here - of overcoming your fears, of being part of a tribe, of becoming better.

There are ten lessons from Jiu-Jitsu that I think are relevant to life (and perhaps to Substack posting, now that I think of it):

1. You never advance as fast as you want to, but the important thing is to keep advancing.

In BJJ, improvement is slow. You’ll look at the people in your club who are far ahead of you - the lead instructor, of course, but also the advanced students who are doing really well - and you’ll wonder: why am I not at that level? You’ll go to classes, train hard, eat right, and then…lose. Over and over again. You’ll feel like you aren’t winning. And you’ll look around again and see everyone else seeming to have a good time, to be getting better, and you’ll feel stagnant. You’ll wonder why you aren’t being promoted when you think you should be, and whether your coach things that you…well, suck.

As in life. We have the tendency to look at anyone who is prominent and think: overnight success. Natural talent. Why can’t I do that? But we forget the experiences of Sam Walton, who founded Walmart after decades in retail; he said that Walmart was an overnight success that took 20 years to get right. We forget the training regimens of Mohammed Ali and the work habits of Thomas Edison, who put themselves through hell to get to the highest levels of their fields - and the daily work and training regimens of thousands of others who almost made it but didn’t, who were almost as good but missed a shot, were late to an pitch, made a discovery a month too late, who had the idea too early, and ended up in relative obscurity, but who were still in the arena.

BJJ is not about advancing quickly. It’s about advancing. It’s about constantly making progress, grinding through the opposition, both internal and external. Just being in the game, showing up, practising, is what counts.

Just like a successful life.

2. You’ll always compare yourself to those who are ahead and those who are behind. Just be honest and humble about it.

In a class, you’ll constantly be comparing yourself to everyone. It’s natural. I doubt that it ever ends. My coach, Rick Young, has been a world champion several times over, yet he constantly tells us stories of times he lost, or when he goes down to London to train with his coach and feels the brutal pressure of younger and older competitors who are better than he is right now. It’s humility, yes, but also fact: he’s one of the best in the world, but he knows that there are an unknown number of others who are better than he is, and he is confident enough in himself to admit that.

And when you’re advancing, it’s great to say that you aren’t comparing yourself to others, but it isn’t true. Admit when you are, though; recognize that you’re doing it. Accept it. Choose to acknowledge those who are better and those who aren’t as good. Respect them both.

And that’s how we should view our peers - not as threats, but as facts.

3. Keep showing up.

Woody Allen famously said that “80% of success is showing up.”

When I Googled this, it became apparent that most people interpret it as more or less like the old saying “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” They think it means that you just need to show up the first time - to the interview, the audition, the tryout. Starting is the most difficult and the most important thing.

And it’s true: most people never get started. They never sit down at a keyboard to type, they never submit their application, they never say “hello,” they never learn to tie their white belt.

But I think Serge Faldin got it right: it isn’t enough to show up the first time. You need to show up repeatedly, to make showing up a habit. I think that Woody meant that 80% of success is showing up the first time and then coming back for more.

There’s a saying in BJJ that a black belt is just a white belt who didn’t quit. I suspect that there’s a lot of truth to that. Most white belts quit; most blue belts quit; most purple belts quit. I know brown belts, on the cusp of getting their black belts, who quit.

But black belts kept going. They kept showing up.

And in life, I suspect that if we were to look at successful people, we’d see that they kept showing up. Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals shows exactly that: the best and most productive in the world at multiple fields show up every day, rain or shine, regardless of the day of the week, to work at their craft and, at the end of decades of work, of vacations where they woke up at 5 a.m. just to work for three hours before the family got up, of late nights over keyboards or petri dishes or canvasses, their big regret is that they didn’t do more. It’s grit, it’s grind, and, in many cases, it’s glorious.

4. Recognize when you aren’t doing things correctly, and then…change course.

I was working for a startup a few years ago as a senior product manager. We had some funding. We had a founder who had a clear vision of what they wanted to do. We had lots of sales calls and people who were potentially interested in what we had to offer, and some people with requests or suggestions who said, “We’d buy if…”

We also had a pretty good product, but the data showed that it could be improved.

The founder, though, refused to countenance change. They had an idea of what they wanted to do; everyone else was wrong. They knew the customers’ business better than the customer did, and they knew how the world should be run. They were, in effect, pigheaded about the direction of the company and the product; they were right, and everyone else was wrong.

They were not alone; lots of founders are like this. When you challenge their assumptions, and show them data, they argue that:

1. The data is wrong;

2. They have a vision, and they need to be true to that vision.

Ignoring data, one of the most infuriating things about working in startups is seeing clearly that something isn’t working, then hearing founders quote Steve Jobs about ignoring evidence and not changing course:

Oh my GOD. You don’t have customers, you aren’t solving a critical problem, some urge tells you that you can’t iterate or change, and a quote by a guy who died of cancer because he thought witch doctors would save him is what you use to support your argument?

These founders in other places often never do BJJ. And, for some reason, BJJ is popular with founders in Silicon Valley. I have a theory as to why.

When you start BJJ, you don’t do anything right. It’s hard to admit this. It’s really hard to say, “I don’t know what to do here,” and then to try to learn, especially when you have a 240-pound Polish guy with his knee on your chest trying to strangle you (and succeeding).

So people…just do stuff. They wriggle, squirm, they try to muscle their way out of things. Then that’s what they learn: they wrestle using their strength, rather than the techniques that can help them improve. They ignore their lessons and rely on instinct.

I’ve noticed that these people who insist on doing things their way, on not learning from experience, are the ones who stall and stagnate and quit. It’s the people who openly admit that they don’t know anything and want to learn, and then who focus on figuring out how to do things right - these people advance the fastest. Indeed, the most advanced students will sit with each other and actively discuss what they could do to improve, what they could do to change.

In life and business, this is hard. It’s hard to say, “Well, our approach isn’t working, and the feedback we receive is showing that.” It’s hard to ask, “What can we do better?” and actually act, change, because so often we don’t try to get better no matter how much we say we want to. We read tons of self-help books that give us the illusion of improvement without actually doing anything to improve.

But in the long run, success goes to the people who can change, who can pivot.

That’s what I actually think Jobs meant by his quote: perseverance is not sticking to your vision, but having the courage to face facts, try different things, and take advice, then to keep going.1

5. The people who advance the fastest also fail the most.

There is usually a sparring portion of every BJJ class where you can test your skills against other students (it’s called “rolling,” I assume because you roll around on the floor). It’s hard to fail, because the only way you can prevent yourself from being injured is to admit to the other person that they won - a process called “tapping.”

The thing is, tapping is great. It shows you where your weak points are, what you don’t know, where you can get better. It gives you incredible feedback on what you can improve. The people who can tap to others, who can learn what they need to improve, are the ones who can then improve on specific things, then come back to get better. Indeed, the ones who do this advance fastest, and end up successes.

And in life, we often see success, but we don’t see the preceeding failure.2

One thing that I often think about is how the people who were socially successful in high school seem to see their lives peak at about 18. I look at some of the people I graduated with who were the big men/women on campus, and…well, after they got their diplomas, they tended to flounder. I’m not sure about this, but I’d suspect that the same thing is true about “influencers” who are 18 or 19 and have millions of Instagram followers because they look good in a bikini; they may have a short period of initial success, but without failure, without struggle, it’s hard to sustain that level for the long term, because it’s virtually impossible to learn when everything you do seems to work out.

6. Don’t celebrate failure because it’s failure; celebrate failure because it is a chance to overcome internal adversity.

So we can accept that the best BJJ players welcome taps. They learn far more from losing than from winning. They actually really like when someone else is able to win, because they can use that to get better. They celebrate their own failure.

Some people might think that this encourages losing. It might certainly appear that way. But I think the more accurate interpretation is that they celebrate every loss because it gives them incredibly valuable information about how to improve.

And.

Losing is hard. It takes a lot to, say, lose over and over again and then come back for more. We never seem to recognize that publicly - or, if we learn about someone overcoming massive hardship and adversity and then succeeding, we minimize the adversity and explain it away. The thing is, it takes massive amounts of effort to lose over and over again and keep coming back for more, to persevere (see Jobs, above). So when you keep tapping…well, you have to keep building grit, mental resilience, the internal fortitude to know that just because you lost that round doesn’t mean you’ll lose the next.

As in life.

7. Even if it seems like you’re fighting against everyone, jiu-jitsu is a team sport. Life is a team sport. And there’s a lot of hugging.

BJJ requires other people.

In karate, you can punch and kick the air for an hour and have a good class. In boxing, you have bags. In swimming, lanes. In BJJ, though, it is virtually impossible to get better without another person to train with.

So even if you are trying to strangle someone else, or break their limbs apart by ripping their tendons, you’re still on the same team. Because you are putting your safety in their hands, and vice versa, you start to love and respect the other people in your club, and you take care of them while they take care of you. They become your best friends, even if you don’t know their full names; you’d trust them with your life because…well, you literally trust them with your life every time you train. It becomes a habit, and that sort of trust is hard to leave on the mats at the end of a session - you both take it with you out into the world.

Similarly, it’s difficult for you to get better if they aren’t also getting better. It’s far easier if you are advancing together. So you encourage each other, you teach each other, you learn from each other. You realize that your progress is completely tied up with the team as a whole - with everyone on the mats. You train with the advanced students to learn; you train with the junior students to help bring them up.

And you soon start to see that it’s exactly this that makes for a good community, a good team, out in the real world.

8. Technique matters more than natural strength.

Some people come in with huge amounts of strength and work hard to overpower others. This is understandable; they fear losing (above) and they use what they have.

The thing is, just powering through is a bad way to get better. It doesn’t help you improve at the core aspects of BJJ; it just covers up your deficiencies.

The weaker people who focus on technique, though, will advance faster than the strong people who just focus on strength. They will lose at the beginning, but will start winning more and more as time goes on, while those who just use strength will find that their strength fails them.

So if you are looking around and seeing other people powering through while you are working on your tools, don’t get discouraged. Focus on technique and you’ll come out all right in the end.

9. Most people stall just after they start, or while they are getting better but are still beginners. This is the hardest phase, but if you keep going, you’ll break out of it.

In BJJ, 90% of people drop out as white belts (the first belt). Then, a further 75% of blue belts (the second belt, where you are still considered a beginner) drop out before they get to purple belt (the third, where you begin to be recognized as a senior student). There’s something called the “blue belt blues” where people get depressed at blue belt - they feel like they aren’t advancing, they aren’t making the progress they want, they compare themselves to their peers, and then they just…disappear. They never make it out of the beginning stages.

Petal and Hearth noted that most people on Substack stop posting after twelve posts. My suspicion: they wanted to write, but then they didn’t get instant recognition of their genius and publishers weren’t calling to tell them how wonderful they were, so they quit.

The thing is, if they keep going, they will find their audience. They will find their voices. And they will start to advance.

Personally, it took a lot to get traction here; I felt like I was posting out into the wilderness. Then, I went viral with a few posts, and my subscriber count started to climb; I was essentially out of the white belt phase, and into the blue belt phase. Then, I stalled - no growth, no traction, but I kept writing. Slowly, numbers started to tick up again, and now I’m adding about 100 subscribers a week. It isn’t stellar or epic by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t take it for granted, and I’m grateful for every one of the people who have subscribed and supported me.

Speaking of,

10. You aren’t friends with people you are like. You are friends with people you do things with.

It’s tempting to think that you’re going to be friends with people that you’re similar to.

It’s far more common to become great friends with people you do things with. And, when these activities involve the possibilty of bodily harm or death, then you start to bond really quickly with the people you spend time with.

The people I train with at my home club are some of my greatest friends in the world; the people I train with the most are people I’d trust with my life. There is one guy I train with three or four days a week who…well, we often joke that it isn’t that we like jiu-jitsu, we just really hate each other. We’re polar opposites in many ways, not least politically, but I was also one of the three people he invited to his wedding, and he’s probably the person I text most.

I suspect that the same is true in the real world. It’s hard for me to tell, though, as most of my closest friends in Edinburgh are people from my club.

The Pen & Sword

I used BJJ to fight off a home invader 3 years ago. Here's how it affected me.

Back in spring of 2023, right around this time of year, a man broke into my apartment in the dead of night and attempted to sexually assault me in my bed…

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3 months ago · 250 likes · Andrea Tang

And, after every class, Pavel and Tibor talk.

I never knew what they were talking about. They spoke Russian, it seemed, and judging by their body language they usually seem to be in a state of resigned frustration - perhaps with the war, perhaps with being immigrants in Hungary, perhaps they just had resting Eastern European faces. But there is no doubt that they came from opposite sides of a brutal war, and that they are friends.

And walking out past them slumped against the wall, I’d shake their hands and think: BJJ offers so many lessons, and it offers us the chance to learn how to defend ourselves, and confidence in the streets, and better fitness, and a much better understanding of ourselves and what we are capable of.

But above all, it gives us the opportunity to be friends with a lot of people who are completely different from us and whom we love.

And if fear and self-doubt and nerves and early mornings are the price to pay for that…well, it’s a cheap price to pay for a life so rich.

I thought of that old saying that “if you meet an asshole on the street, then you met an asshole; if everyone you meet is an asshole, you’re the asshole.” Two bumped tourists in under a minute? Maybe the problem isn’t them; maybe there is something about my style of walking that causes me to bump into tourists with wheeled suitcases. But: I pass a hundred tourists with wheeled suitcases daily without making any physical contact with them. The second woman, in fact, was engaging in that great tourist activity of looking at everything and paying attention to nothing. I think, actually, that I came across two tourists who were being careless and clueless.

And that’s almost certainly going to happen a lot more in the next few months as we approach the overtourist season here in Edinburgh. The air is filled with clicking luggage wheels, people bob and weave like boxers to avoid swinging selfie sticks on the sidewalks, and walking means slaloming around people either standing and turning their phones around to get their maps to show the right directions, or - much worse - walking while staring at their phones, “engaging” with complete strangers in Boston and Beijing and not paying attention to the world around them.1

This overtourism is a fact of life. About a year ago, I wrote an article about what people should do to be better travelers. Recently, though, I have been thinking a lot about what people should not do in order to be better travelers. It all comes from It Takes What It Takes by Trevor Moawad, who was a mental conditioning coach for some of the top athletes of the last 20 years. One of the rules he preached is to “Stop saying stupid shit out loud.” He noticed that players would say something negative that threw them off of their game; they would talk about a mistake they could make, or how they weren’t feeling 100%, and then they would then focus just on that thing and nothing else. By talking about it to other people, the “stupid shit” got in other peoples’ heads, too, and destroyed their performance; emotions are contagious, and negativity travels incredibly effectively. By not saying stupid shit, though, you don’t let whatever you are thinking take over your reality or the realities of people around you. Therefore, if you don’t say stupid shit, you have a better chance of becoming excellent.

And he goes beyond just what you say.

Eating well doesn’t start by eating broccoli and kale for breakfast; you first have to stop eating ultraprocessed foods and drinking soda.

Reading great books doesn’t start with slamming your eyes into a pile of classics; you first have to stop spending your time reading crap (and you will do a lot better if you cut social media out of your life, too).

And I have a theory: in order to be a good visitor to a place, you first have to not be a bad one.

What are bad visitors? A simple working definition: they are people who negatively contribute to the place they are visiting. What do they do to “negatively contribute”? Well…I think that their behavior falls into two categories, two buckets, of behaviors: they “stay at home” and they “got no respect.”

So I sat down and came up with some things to not do when you go somewhere else. I think that if everyone avoided doing these things, they would naturally become better travelers, and destinations would become better places. Without further ado:

First bucket: bad tourists stay at home.

I don’t mean that they stay at home physically, of course. What I have noticed is that a lot of people stay at home mentally; they ignore what is going on all around them because their attention is so firmly rooted in what is at home, in the familiar. Here are a few ways that bad travelers stay at home no matter where they go.

Cafe Léyo

25 niche rules of the Croatian summer (or any Euro summer)

Wake up early and get out of the house first thing in the morning. I don’t mean you should go for a run or work out (you, actually, shouldn’t do that), but what I mean is that… by 9 am, most locals in a coastal Croatian town have already (1) got dressed, went out, and had their macchiato at a café, (2) gone to the farmer’s market …

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a year ago · 379 likes · 27 comments · Leonarda Komen

1. They don’t pay attention to their new environment.

Something most people don’t notice: in countries where people drive on the right-hand side of the road (the USA, Canada, Europe, etc.), people tend to walk on the right side of the sidewalk. In countries where people drive on the left-hand side of the road, they walk on the left. When people from left-hand-driving countries (Britain, Australia) go to countries where people drive on the right, they bring their walking patterns with them, and vice-versa. But when people from Britain visit Italy, then the Brits (walking to the left) are going to walk straight into the majority of Continental pedestrians walking on the right; when Americans and Europeans go to Britain, they walk on the right instead of the left.

In other words: they bring their own ways of walking with them, and fail to notice - even in the face of crowds and crowds of people coming straight at them and giving them dirty looks - that people do things differently in other places.2

Most people don’t consciously notice these little differences because they aren’t paying attention. They may walk to the right so that they don’t collide with other walkers, but they veer back to the left at the earliest opportunity, or vice-versa. They don’t say “bonjour” when they walk into a French shop (and wonder why so many people are friendly with the shopkeepers when the shopkeepers seem to be so rude to them), they shout into their phones on Japanese trains (and wonder why everyone else is quietly giving them stinkeyes), they wander around Firenze in flip-flops (and admire the Italian fashion sense), they stir the maté in Argentina (and then get leaves in their teeth).

And this is a metaphor for so much of what follows.

I’m not burying the lede here: the absolute most important thing that tourists can do when they go abroad is pay attention. Watch what everyone else does. Adjust your behavior - or behaviour - as necessary so you aren’t rude. Don’t be one of those people who goes somewhere and ignores any differences - or worse, sees people doing things differently, and says, “That’s wrong, and I’m going to show them all how to do things right.”3

2. They eat at McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and get coffee from Starbucks.

A professor of mine, Barry Sanders, used to say that eating with another person is the most intimate thing you can do with your clothes on. Obviously, he never had sex with his clothes on, but I think his intended point was correct: taking food and liquid into your body is a way of connecting deeply - with other people, with a culture, with the world. I think we’d struggle to identify a culture or religion that doesn’t have a ritual involving oral consumption; it is a divine, holy act done with other people that brings us closer to our co-consumers, to God, to both the the tangible and the intangible.4 In the same way, eating local foods in foreign lands - sushi in Japan, injera in Ethiopia, arepas in Venezuela - is a huge part of learning about the place and what it values, its living history, the local ingredients which are available, the resourcefulness and ability of the people to make common things delicious.

So why would you travel from Los Angeles to Hong Kong to eat popcorn chicken from KFC, or from Atlanta to Rome to eat a Big Mac?!?

But people do. They will go halfway around the world, spending huge amounts of time and money to visit a different culture, and then eat the same food that they can get from a drive-thru just around the corner from their office in Brooklyn or Silver Lake or Theydon Bois.

So what should they do instead?

EAT LOCAL.

Eat at locally-owned restaurants. That’s the most basic thing. Even if you’re craving a cheeseburger and fries, go somewhere that will give you a local take on it,5 or, at the very least, is locally-owned. For top scores, though, eat the normal food of wherever you are. You don’t need ’s The Edible Atlas to find out what is special about the local food (although it really is a fun book to read); a quick YouTube search will show you exactly what to expect wherever you are going in Budapest, Bangkok, or Beirut.

What about…the “weird” food? I’m not saying that here, in Scotland, you should eat Haggis, except that actually, you should; it’s delicious.6 Some people think it is disgusting because of its ingredients, and then will happily pay $30 for all-you-can-eat hotdogs at a Guardians game, ignoring the fact that most hotdogs contain internal organs and pig anuses that are “mechanically separated” to make them into that pinkish, pasty material that is the flavor of American summers. What about going to Mexico and eating tripe tacos? I won’t say that’s a good idea, except that it is; when prepared well, tripe is delicious, the softest meat I’ve ever had, perfectly adapted to extraordinary spicing, and it’s hard to justify turning one’s nose up at an intestine or stomach but then eagerly gorging on the buttcheek of a pig or the breast or leg muscles of a chicken.

Et cetera.

The simple rule: don’t be that tourist that goes somewhere and eats the exact very same thing that they can get at home. Take the opportunity to expand your culinary palette and eat things that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. Your stomach (and hopefully tongue) will thank you, and you’ll better understand the place you are visiting.

Crazy Brain

Group Trips are my Version of Hell: Northern India

For every meal, Tod orders tomato soup or pizza and an imported beer “because it’s the safest option.” One night he goes home early because he has a bad stomach. Alexander raves to us about the momos the tour leader suggested he get, as if he is the first westerner to discover the ancient pyramids; and as if we haven’t already had them for the past few …

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2 months ago · 19 likes · 11 comments · Vy

(I loved this piece about group trips; the first line about food was what inspired this entire section, actually.)

3. They compare everything to their own paradigms - and say what they are thinking out loud, to anyone who will listen.

This goes back to Trevor Moawad: people will see something and then compare it directly to their own paradigms, either positively or negatively. They might see a church, or an apartment block, or a tree, and say, “Look at how different that is from St. Mary’s!” or “Imagine if all of the buildings on the South Side looked like this!” or “They’d cut that right down in Shaker Heights!”

Now, looking at the world through our own lenses is natural; we all have paradigms and perspectives that we can’t escape. It’s human. However, stating it out loud to everyone you can talk to, friends and strangers alike, is where the problem is. It takes you instantly out of the space and place and focuses both you and the listener on a mental middle ground that stops you from engaging in the moment, the here-and-now. For example, compare the following, and see what impact the different statements have:

“This street is beautiful.”

vs.

“This street is more beautiful than any street in Des Moines.”

or,

“I love the landscaping of this garden.”

vs.

“I love the landscaping of this garden - you don’t get anything like this in Birmingham.”

or,

“This burger is delicious.”

vs.

“This is much better than what we get at Wendy’s.”

The first are objective statements that focus on the place or the experience. The second automatically makes you think of a completely different place, and keeps you from fully being present. It makes you think of somewhere else instead of staying exactly where you are.

Many tourists show that they are still home by looking around them and then making sure that they talk about their homes. Better ones will stay present and focused - and, when they talk, they won’t bring themselves away from where they are.

4. They obsess over details that are different - not better or worse

I had a long conversation about this with Alice the other day. I have noticed a tendency among some tourists to constantly focus on everything that is different from what they expect, and then either complain about it (negative) or use it to justify their love of a place (positive).

I think both are just as detrimental to experiencing a foreign place.

First: some people poop on everything around them. I suspect that this is a defense mechanism: they are completely awed by the majesty of Paris, for example, and they are overwhelmed by an entire culture that is extraordinary and yet is also not focused on them and what they find normal. They therefore feel like they need to belittle the Eiffel Tower, declare their coq au vin inedible, and look at the Seine and say, “Is that it? I thought it would be bigger.” They can’t appreciate the sunrise in Levuka or the sunset in Rome; to enjoy these things is a threat to every choice they’ve made in their lives so far, and it calls into question their fragile world view. To avoid questioning the value of their lives, they search for negative surface-level impressions to crowd out their ability to see the entire picture; they reduce a complicated culture and society to their negative judgments, based on their limited life experiences, and fail to even think about looking at the whole.

With Alice, though, I argued that the opposite was true: the people who fall in love with every aspect of life in a different place, who become obsessed with living in Barcelona or Berlin or Bengaluru, are just as bad. You know exactly the kind of person I mean: the ones who go to Paris and decide they can live forever on baguettes and coffee, who think Parisian life is an endless chain of macarons and Birkin bags, who spend their days walking up and down boulevards forgetting that they are on vacation and thinking, “I could move here and be perfectly happy.” They search for positive surface-level impressions to crowd out their ability to see the entire picture; they reduce a complicated culture and society to their judgments, based on their limited life experiences, and fail to even think about looking at the whole.

In other words, in both cases, bad tourists miss the forest for the trees.

Alice asked how these tendencies could be corrected. My gut reaction: people need to spend more time in the place that they profess to either love or hate. Only by seeing more of a place will they realize that in order to truly understand it, they need to really get to know it better.7

As Nick Carraway did, be “inclined to reserve all judgments.” It’s better that way.

The City Edit

The Problem With Elsewhere

Let me begin this by saying that I am extremely nostalgic. Painfully, insanely, all-consumingly nostalgic. I will walk past a man smoking and smell his cigarettes, and it will take me back to a July afternoon when I was six, running through the sprinkler in my grandparents’ front yard, and suddenly I am violently yearning to be six years old again, tran…

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3 months ago · 1120 likes · 107 comments · The City Edit

5. They focus on their phones - not their surroundings and experiences.

This…is insidious. Everywhere, tourists - heck, people - will be smack dab in the middle of some amazing place or moment and they will be staring straight into their screens.

It’s bad enough when you’re at the breakfast table at home, or waiting somewhere with your kids, and you’re ignoring everything around you to play a game involving jewels or orcs. It can be worse, though: this is perhaps the most damaging thing a person can do when they travel abroad.

In some cases, people hold their phones below shoulder level. This often indicates that they are doomscrolling social media - they care more about a complete stranger singing in a car eight timezones away or what their friends are eating than they do about the place they’ve spent thousands of dollars and taken 80% of their annual vacation allowance to see.

In other cases, though, they will be holding their phones above shoulder level. When this happens, they are invariably taking videos of whatever their phones’ cameras can see. They can be at a concert, the finals of an international sporting championship, the birth of their children - it doesn’t matter. They experience everything through a screen rather than seeing it directly; they are marvelling at everything in their viewfinder and ignoring the experience itself. Often, this is so that they can “share” the experience with others on social media, because, to them, it’s no good to be somewhere amazing if others don’t know you’re there.8

As above, this means that they are not actually engaging with the world around them. Mentally, they are everywhere else but where they are physically.

The cure? PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY. Airplane mode, power off, away.

@lizleatrice

The year is 2063 and you were never interesting.

Growing up, you were gifted. Your parents would talk about your potential, the things you’d do. You had hobbies, interests. You collected Pokémon cards and adored animals; your singular life goal was to convince your parents to dig a backyard pool so you could put a dolphin in it. You were obsessed with miniature things and death, you concocted elaborat…

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2 months ago · 4108 likes · 136 comments · @lizleatrice

This is a haunting piece - well worth a read.

Bucket Two: “They got no respect.”

This is a phrase straight from my grandpa Frank, which he used about…well, everyone who wasn’t doing what he thought was right.

But a lot of tourist behaviors that locals will hate come down to a lack of respect - for local places, people, and institutions. For example:

6. They treat the destination like a theme park - and locals like servants.

The problem was the Diplomats.

They weren’t actually diplomats; Alice and I just called them that sarcastically. They were a couple staying in the same hotel in Vientiane, Laos as we were and who seemed to delight in belittling everything around them. Every day, we heard them insulting the hotel workers, making absurd demands, then complaining loudly about everything to each other - the hotel, the staff, the service, the food, their children, their grandchildren, the pool, the heat, the air conditioning.

One morning, we were eating a free breakfast when they walked in, sat down, and demanded boiled eggs. When the eggs were brought to their table, the man asked the waiter for an egg cup. Now, if you don’t know what egg cups are, they are little egg holders that you put boiled eggs in; they hold the egg while you eat it with a spoon out of the shell. Reddit tells me that they are used in the UK, Europe, and Canada, so if you are in Laos, it is not surprising that “egg cup” are two English words that you didn’t learn together in English class.

The waiter had no idea what the man was saying, which made the man sigh loudly, tell his wife (and the rest of the dining room) that the staff was hopeless, and then shout “I WANT AN EGG CUP! AN EGG CUP!!!” at the poor server, who was doing his best to keep smiling and nodding. And with that, I’d had enough. Alice’s eyes widened as I stood up and walked over, pushing between the server and the man, and then turned to the server, my ass close enough to the diplomat’s face that I could feel his breath on the sweat of my asscrack. I looked directly at the server, smiling with my eyes, trying to put him at ease.

“Shot glass,” I said, and mimed pouring a shot, toasting, and then downing it quickly. “Two,” with my fingers held up in a peace sign.

The waiter lost his poker face and looked at me like I was batshit insane, giving an unpleasant, cantankerous old man alcohol at 8 a.m., but I was a guest; he went to get shot glasses. I stood watching him, my back to the old couple, hovering over their table and making them, I hoped, squirm, while the entire room wondered what the hell was happening.

The man returned with two shot glasses and a bottle of rice whiskey on a linen-covered tray, and I picked the glasses up, shaking my head at the bottle. I khobchaid him and gave a slight bow with my head, then turned to the table. With an audience, I put the glasses down next to the man and leaned close to his ear.

“This is the best you are going to get here,” I said, so that they, and several other diners, could hear. “Now stop fucking embarrassing yourself.”

The man looked at me, speechless, and a few tables over a woman’s jaw dropped. I walked back to my chair, and we finished breakfast in relative peace. When we walked out, the front desk staff all smiled and clasped their hands together and said “Thank you” - I only assume because they had been getting hell for a week, but couldn’t stand up to guests and keep their jobs.

Some people go to a place and then, because they have paid money to be there, seem to think that they have the right to become imperious and haughty toward everyone around them. It doesn’t matter if they are in Vientiane or Venice, Lagos or Lisbon - they are dicks. The locals hate them. Other travelers hate them. Yet it is rare for their behavior to be challenged.

They are what you should not strive to be.

If you are visiting a place, any place at all, be humble. Be kind. Be polite. Be nicer than you naturally would be. Overthank the people who help you. Smile. Listen. Try to sympathize and understand. As Carlyle said, “A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.” Don’t raise your voice; don’t get frustrated.

And remember: we’re all visitors here, no matter if we are at home or abroad.

The Conscientious Traveller

Five Tourist Behaviours I Judge

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3 months ago · 39 likes · 20 comments · The Conscientious Traveller

7. They break things.

Remember those “great” Americans Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who sliced off slivers of Shakespeare’s chair in Stratford-upon-Avon?

Or Ding Jinhao, the Chinese teenager who went to the Luxor temple in Egypt and scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old carving?

Or the unidentified tourists who were pretending to sit on a priceless museum chair in Verona and then the man broke it?9

Or the German and Swiss girls and the British and Irish men who were caught carving their initials into the Colosseum? (One actually defended his actions by saying that he didn’t know how old it was - as if that was an excuse.)

Or the tourist who broke the toes off of a sculpture while taking a selfie? (There’s an appalling list of selfie art destruction here.)

It goes on and on and on.

I’m just not sure how to say it more clearly: don’t break stuff. Don’t carve into ancient stones or climb on sculptures. Don’t write on art. Don’t climb on sculptures. Don’t be an idiot.

Just SHOW A LITTLE RESPECT.

Please, please, please, for the sake of everyone else in the world who isn’t an idiot, don’t break things. Don’t ruin this world for other people. It’s the least we can ask.

8. They only speak English.

I was down near the marina in the Porto di Sorrento, getting ferry ticket prices, when a woman barged up to one of the terminal workers. “Hey’all, where’s the bathroom?” she asked in a tobacco-harshened drawl. The worker looked at her and said something in Italian - the sort of rapid, staccato clip that is meant to indicate that he couldn’t help her, that he didn’t speak a word of English, although that was hard to believe. She sighed, loudly, and started muttering.

I don’t know why I felt charitable to her - maybe this was my mitzvah of the month or something - but I said to her, “jussa second,” and then, to him, “Scusi, il toilette, per favore?” He pointed to a doorway. “Is that how you say it?” she asked slowly. “Twa-let-tay?” I said yes, and she said, “I been heah foh a week and I ain’t never learned that.”

Don’t be like her. She was a bad tourist.

Just learn a few phrases. You don’t need to aim for fluency; a little goes a long way, and the Paretto principle applies here. Learn how to get by, and you’ll be fine; avoid learning, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

When in Rome, speak Italian; in Mexico, Spanish.10 It won’t be hard to pick up the very core phrases you need (but whatever you do, do NOT waste your time on Duolingo). If you suddenly find yourself needing to be very specific, use Translate on your phone. But do not, under any circumstances, try to bludgeon your way through interactions speaking only English and, when the other person doesn’t understand you, speaking louder and louder.

Show some respect for the local language, and life for everyone - tourist and local alike - will be easier.

9. They expect everyone walking by to make space so they can take an idiotic photograph.

This is one of the more frustrating things about living in Edinburgh. There are often very narrow sidewalks, and historic features abound everywhere. About now is when people suddenly decide that they need to:

a) visit Edinburgh, and

b) take photos of each other in front of Greyfriar’s Bobby, or in a tiny alley, and then get huffy when you are walking your kids home from school and you get in the way of their perfectly-framed shot.

I understand: they want to take a photo of something to remember it by. But these places don’t exist solely to help fill instagram feeds, and just because they are staying in a hotel here for three nights doesn’t give them the right to shout at the locals using the sidewalk for walking.

So if you want to take a photo, be respectful of the existence and priorities of others. Wait patiently. Adjust yourself to others rather than expecting others to adjust themselves to you.

10. They pay the wrong type of attention to their appearance

There are some people who go to a place and then dress in “stereotypical” or “traditional” outfits. They may get off the plane in Scotland in a kilt, or a hanfu in China, or a sarafan in Russia. Their instinct seems to be to show respect for the local population by embracing its historical outfits, or to show everyone that they love the local culture so much that they are willing to dress like a caricature of someone who lived there 200 years ago.

The thing is, they just look like absolute tools.

These people ignore current culture by playing to a culture that is either dead or never actually existed. By ignoring current culture and choosing to focus on historical stereotypes, they are saying, effectively, that their view of the culture is rooted in obsolete generalizations that have little connection to the current reality (and often have no relation to any reality at all).

Yes, Scottish people sometimes wear kilts in Scotland. However, they are often doing so for a formal event (and they don’t want to wear a tuxedo or suit) or they work in hospitality and are required to do so for tourists. Sometimes people wear cheongsam (and get absolutely reamed for it); Google indicates that they are worn by actual Chinese people for “special events, cultural celebrations, and formal ceremonies.” This is the same for Hungarian costumes, berets, etc.

So: don’t be ridiculous. Dress normally, or like a local (above). It’s better for everyone.

Be a Better Traveler

Be a Better Traveler In the Scottish Highlands

Charlotte Cook is a brewer and travel writer who grew up in the Highlands. “It’s not all Brigadoon, but the culture is strong,” she says. In this guide, she’ll take you into Scotland’s past, make sure you don’t embarrass yourself by wearing a Tam o’ Shanter , guide you to the best whiskey, beer and a loch that’s far less crowded (and prettier) than Loch Ness, among other fantastic tips. While the guide is specific to the Highlands, much of it is useful for visiting any part of Scotland. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Charlotte…

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5 months ago · 8 likes · Charlotte Cook

11. Intentionally blank.

I’m sure there’s more. Maybe there’s an entirely new bucket, too. But I don’t like lists that are an even 10, so I’m leaving this blank in the hopes that others can suggest more things in the comments. :)

Addendum - I just read this, and thought: yes. The idea of treating a place like you own it…it has merit.

The ITALIAN DISPATCH By Eric J Lyman

A Thoughtful Tourist

The Borrowed Chevy…

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2 months ago · 58 likes · 39 comments · Eric J Lyman

This is a bit of a departure from my normal posts, but posted about a friend’s recent suicide, and I was inspired to share this here. If you ever have thoughts of taking your own life, please, talk to someone.

When I was growing up, my parents never took us to church. The reason they gave was that both of them were brought up Catholic, and had such terrible experiences that together they vowed that they would not bring us up in any religion at all. It never seemed odd; I think of everyone I knew, Ryan Albert was probably the only person who was a regular churchgoer, and I only knew that because his dad was a host on an AM radio station and talked a lot about Christ.

But I had this friend, Jason. He lived in the Royal Estates trailer park on the other side of Pepper Drive, and had a Nintendo that he could play without any screen time limits, and BB guns he could shoot in the little astroturf patch behind his trailer whenever he wanted to go outside. His parents drank beer, and smoked cigarettes in their living room with the windows closed, and ate store-bought chocolate chip cookies and full-salt chips and heated up TV meals for dinner. My mom would drop me off to see him and suddenly I was in a different world.

Jason didn’t go to church, either. Then, maybe in fifth grade, his parents decided to become Mormon, so Jason became Mormon, too. Automatically, it seemed, the Mormon boys were nice to him, and he got to hang out with the Mormon girls. I never thought about it then, but growing up in El Cajon, those were significant benefits. We didn’t have gangs, but there were clear tribal elements to the social order, and the Mormons were a major tribe. Jason suddenly had church events, socials, and study groups to attend. I didn’t do much outside of school myself; the most social thing I did was to ride my bicycle down to the 7-Eleven on East Second to play Battle Axe and drink Double Gulps with Gabe Feeley. My scholastic social standing reflected these extracurricular devotions.

Despite his new, far more useful social circle, Jason and I stayed in touch, and one evening in junior high, he invited me to a church youth group event. It must have been eighth grade, because I had long hair at the time, and the youth group was putting on a play about Moses; because of my hair, I was chosen to play the lead, majestically parting the seas and leading v1 of the Chosen People to safety. When my mom came to pick me up, I got in the van and told her that I wanted to go to church. She carefully asked why, and I told her that I felt like I was missing out on a core part of a life experience, something that billions of people around the world found both valuable and fulfilling. There must be some benefit to religion, I said, and I was being unfairly deprived from exploring it for myself in a liberal, open-minded way. I wanted to understand it from the inside, then accept or reject it myself, instead of being stopped from learning because of the blind, bitter prejudices of my parents.

She was prepared to debate the existence of God or the morality of his worldly institutions, but she was utterly unable to argue against me having a more liberal upbringing by being exposed to higher doses of religion.

She talked to my dad, and they decided that if I wanted to go to church, that was fine, but they got to choose the church. I thought: win. They did their own research, and then one Sunday, we walked into First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego , which was about the most fortunate thing that could have happened to my teenage self.

The UU church was in Hillcrest, about a thirty minute drive away. Hillcrest was the center of the gay community in conservative San Diego, and, at the time, it felt like the church reflected the radical acceptance of the surrounding community. There was religious education, but it focused on learning about almost every religion – I learned far, far more about Buddha and Shiva than Job or Christ. And I was suddenly surrounded not by the conservatives of El Cajon, but a distillation of the ultraliberals of everywhere else who wanted to go to church but had not found a spiritual home they felt comfortable in. It wasn’t just the adults – I was surrounded by open-minded people my age, a group of peers who challenged everything and encouraged me to accept my self.

And the social events! Twice a year, in summer and winter, we would go to de Benneville Pines camp – 80 or 100 kids, maybe, from around Southern California, and often other places in the US and Canada, packed into cabins for a week without parents or curfews, seething with hormones and supplied with copious amounts of cigarettes and coffee. When we weren’t at camp, different churches in the Pacific Southwest district would hold a “minicon” once a month where the same kids were invited to spend the weekend at the church – perhaps 60 teenagers, and a handful of adults keeping us alive, and mostly safe. I was an active member of the Young Religious Unitarian Universalist community throughout high school; I had my social circles at Granite Hills, and a completely separate, far more consequential and influential social circle spread out through virtually every part of Southern California, full of my best friends, many of whom I still keep in contact with today - and even at the time they were artists, musicians, models, writers, thinkers, leaders. They were exceptional people, and are still, to this day. For some reason, I kept these groups strictly compartmentalised – I don’t think I ever brought any of my school friends to church, or invited them on any of my adventures.

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And this story begins one Saturday in the first weeks of 2001, when I was back at school in Claremont, on the eastern border of Los Angeles County. Lorna, a friend from camp, called to ask me to come down to LA proper. We had lost touch right after high school – I was focused on college, and she was involved in a thousand hustles herself, but we had reconnected when I was on a television pilot that she had helped produce over the summer, and when we hugged and said we wanted to stay in touch, we both meant it. She called, she said, to ask me for help; she and her partner, Moj, had just signed a lease for a new office space. They produced events, and they needed help setting things up, so I drove an hour to LA in the early afternoon, just because we were friends. I remember that the day was bright and warm in the Los Angeles way where you never really know where the sun is because it seems to be coming from everywhere forever. I parked in front of their building; the door was open, and when I walked in, I was greeted by a huge empty space, and mindlightening fumes, and two women on their knees with paint rollers in their hands. It turned out that they had spent seven hours trying to varnish the floors and had done about a quarter of the room. I didn’t know anything about varnish, but I got down with them, and 45 minutes later, maybe an hour, the entire floor was coated and they were both happy.

I quickly learned that they were business partners, lovers, and were living together. We waited for a while, drinking oolong tea in the back, then put on another coat of varnish, and in the late afternoon they asked me to come with them to “the house” for a barbecue. I protested – I had to get back to school, it would be a long drive, I had to study, there were people who needed to be seen – but they insisted, and it really was nice to see Lorna again, and I wanted to get to know Moj better. I got in my car and followed them down Sunset, took a left on Micheltorena, and then went up an incredibly steep hill.

When they turned left, and opened a gate, I thought I must have lost their car and started following a similar car by mistake. This Honda was now entering a gated mansion, with immaculately kept grounds, at the top of the highest point in the LA basin. But just as I was shifting into reverse to turn back down the hill, Lorna leaned out of the passenger window and shouted that I had to come in really fast behind them or the gate would scrape the side of my car. I parked behind them in a large, circular driveway, wondering how someone my age could afford this with her girlfriend, who wasn’t much older. They walked in the front door with body language that I can only describe as proprietary, and said hi to a couple of guys were hanging out in the hallway, talking. One, a smiling black guy, was almost too friendly and nice - even now, I remember the charisma and warmth radiating off of him. The white guy was the second biggest asshole I have ever met. Apparently – and I don’t really remember this, or what was said – Lorna and Moj quickly realized that if we weren’t separated, I was going to get in a fight with the asshole, so they pulled me away to meet their landlady – perhaps pleading that “I had not yet met my host, and it was making me uneasy.” Once out of earshot, I learned that the nice guy was named Cuba Gooding Jr., and the other man was named Ashton Kutcher, neither of whom I had ever heard of; they were there to do a photoshoot for Jane Magazine.

(I wrote their names down – it was before smart phones, so I had to go home and get on a computer to Yahoo! them. And now, 26 years later, and my memory being as demonstrably flawed it is, I doubted my experience writing this down; might I be misremembering who was there? What if it wasn’t them? Why did I so specifically remember Jane Magazine? I can’t say I had heard of it, either. But the internet is a wondrous thing. That is the Cuba I met later that evening, standing on the back lawn, the city laid out below and behind him. There’s a phono inside of Ashton in, I believe, one of the hot tubs that Dana had made – she had taken the giant old water heater, the original one for the house, which had lain discarded for years on the hillside; she cut it in half, lined it with teak, put seats in, and turned it into two hot tubs that sat behind the house, hidden behind some trees. A few years ago, Jonathan got me a copy of this magazine, knowing the story; it is somewhere in my papers, preserved for posterity and ready to be discovered anew.)

Lorna and Moj brought me to the pool and introduced me to Angela, the groundskeeper and personal assistant to Dana, the owner, and then Dana herself appeared. At the time, she was 38, which seemed impossibly old to me then. I liked Dana, immediately, and it turned out that she liked me, too. My Dale Carnegie instincts appeared, and I asked her about her background; she had gone to art school in Chicago, she said, and decided to try to make it as an interior designer in LA, focusing on textiles. She opened a shop that failed, miserably. With her last few dollars, she bought some cheap cushions and covered them in her unsold fabrics. She took these covered cushions and sat by the side of a road, her trunk open, hoping to make enough for gas money back to Illinois. Within 30 minutes, she had sold them all; she went and got more cushions, covered them, and sold those, too, and suddenly her future in Los Angeles didn’t seem so dark. Word spread about her roadside stand; Anthony Kiedis made a special trip himself to buy some, and they became close friends. She stayed in LA, got another shop, built up a clientele, and then, one day, was driving by a house at the top of a hill and she noticed that the gate was open. Something - something - drew her in, telling her that it was ok for her to trespass, that it was meant to be, and she went in and met the tenants: a small group of nuns. These nuns were not ordinary nuns; they believed that some people were touched with a Sixth Sense and could commune with the dead, and their nunnery was focused on housing nuns blessed with these specific God-given powers. Women who had these powers AND who wanted to become nuns were increasingly difficult to find in late 20th century America; the nunnery was on the decline, and they realized that they needed to sell the property because they couldn’t maintain it anymore. Two prospective buyers emerged: well-financed developers, who wanted to raze the house and build luxury condos, and Dana, who, the nuns recognized, not only wanted to preserve the house but also had this sixth sense. When it came time to sell, they lobbied the Holy See to sell it to Dana, and Pope John Paul II himself signed the deed over to her. They made the right decision. Dana used the house as a glorious showroom for her work – everything in the house was for sale, and customers could just pick things out and she would send them a bill. For company, she also rented rooms out to Moj and Lorna and a photographer named Jack. Angela lived in a house across the street that Dana also owned, and there was an old dog, Mary, a flatulent shepherd, who followed Dana everywhere.

And it was beautiful.

Dana told me that the house had originally been paid for by an oil-millionaire father who gave it to his daughter, Daisy, as a wedding present. It was built by a team of operative and speculative freemasons – men who understood how to lay bricks and mix mortar, and also how to design a building that would touch the soul. It was built in a U-shape around a swimming pool. Viewed from above, the right half of the U was supposed to be for the couple, with large, outward-facing living spaces; the left half was comprised as a series of small bedrooms – used as dormitories for wayward girls, then nun rooms. There was a tower in the middle that led to a long hallway-like room, where Jack lived, and, on the ground floor, a ballroom; because the masons thought of the universe and our place in it, they built the ballroom so that, on equinoxes and solstices, the light made patterns that were only visible on those days, and it had such good acoustics that bands used it to record albums and Beck and Elton John had performed intimate, private concerts there.1 A whispering wall had been built on the open end of the U; you could stand at one end of the curved wall and whisper, and it would travel 40 feet to the other side, where someone could whisper back to you, so, at parties, couples could arrange liaisons in the far corners of the grounds without ever appearing to come close to each other. Dana had a dream of turning the whole place into a rock-and-roll hotel, where bands could come and record in the ballroom, then stay in the house overnight, sequestered from the world.

Ashton and Cuba left, and the Paramour was safe again. Lorna made dinner, and we all sat at a table by the pool, talking. It turned out Jack and I were connected by a mutual friend in San Diego, and he told me about his recent breakup, a career crisis, and finding shelter in the tower while he got his shit back together again. Dana left the table and came back with a copy of the book I Dare You! by William Danforth, which she said she loved and suspected I would like, too. With such a gift from my host, it felt like the cozy center of the universe, and certainly the cozy center of Los Angeles, but what I remember of that Saturday night was that in the middle of one of the most desperate, vicious, and uncaring cities in the world, it was so quiet, so personal, so intimate. So loving. Millions of people all around us wanted to chew us up and spit us out, and here we were, new and true friends. At some point that night, when time didn’t matter anymore, I left, driving down highways that were magically clear of LA traffic, back to my dorm room, not quite sure if what had happened had been real.

Lorna called; Dana wanted me to visit again. I started going there on weekends, hanging out with them and their friends – not the fashion designers or magazines who rented it at weekly rates to make their models look good, or the rich people who were buying furniture and paying to borrow Dana’s taste, but artists and writers and musicians that Dana simply approved of and accepted into her circle. For some reason – likely as simple as the fact that they lived close, and I lived far away, but I like to flatter myself that she liked me more than them – all of the other friends would leave and I would spend the night in one of the bedrooms, on the family side, close to Dana. I would take my contact lenses out in the downstairs bathroom, drying my hands on towels that cost more than I had ever had in my bank account, and then slip into whatever bed I had been assigned. I would wake up, and we would all make breakfast together, and I would return to Pitzer, back to my dorm room in Holden with an old twin bed and industrial-wear carpets and hungover neighbors. Walking through the hallways, I would look around at my peers and think that they could never imagine what I had just done, who I had just spent all evening talking to, the incredible company I kept, and so, following the pattern from high school, I never told them.

One weekend, edging toward the Los Angeles spring, I went down for a barbecue – as was more often the case, just me, Dana, Lorna, Moj, and Angela. We were outside at the table and Moj asked for ketchup; I went into the kitchen to get it. The kitchen had a long storage corridor connected to it, lined with cupboards. Closing the fridge, I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked down the corridor. It was empty, as far as I could tell, and I went back outside and asked Dana if she had got a cat.

“No,” she said, “why?”

I told them I had seen something jump from one side of the corridor to the other, and they all stopped and looked at me.

“He saw her,” Lorna said.

Dana then explained that Daisy’s marriage had been unhappy. Her actor husband, Antonio Moreno, was chronically unfaithful to her, and, at some point, Daisy got fed up with his philandering. The house was at the top of a long, steep hill that my car always struggled to climb; one night, furious at some new revelation or the accumulated slights, Daisy got into her car, pointed it down the hill, and never put her foot on the brakes. After the funeral, the house was put up for sale. The nuns knew that her ghost still wandered the house, and when Dana first drove up many years before, they realized that she was touched as well; that was the real reason why they wanted her, and not the developers, to be the new owner. Dana had had an intuition about me, and she confirmed it on that sunny, slightly chilly Sunday afternoon when Daisy came to see who the man was in her kitchen.

On a Tuesday, Kevin Costner came in and bought all of the room I had stayed in the weekend before. Dana just filled it up again from her warehouses, themselves filled with containers of things she’d shipped over from Asia, and the next time I visited, I slept under a blanket that smelled like a century of incense.

That spring, Diesel rented out the house for their Autumn, 2001 show. Part of the agreement was that Dana could choose some of the models, and I was asked to save the date. At the last minute, some of the other models cancelled; knowing I was at a college and surrounded by young, fit people, Lorna called and asked me to round up as many hot, skinny students as I could.2 A few hours later, Mike, Sean, Lani and I got into my car and drove down. We arrived early, and I gave them a tour of the house. I demonstrated the whispering wall, then we walked toward the ballroom; I said hello to a pretty blonde by the pool, and after she passed, Lani grabbed my arm and told me that it was Sarah McLachlan, who I think was staying there for the week. For the show, we all wore white jumpsuits with nametags that said “Barbara,” and showed groups of drunk magazine editors and rich fashionistas around to mannequins wearing clothes from the collection; I’ve never been groped by complete strangers so much in my life, and it turned out that I didn’t mind it all that much, actually. At the end of the night, when things were winding down, I snuck around to the back to the hot tubs, turned one on, stripped down and slipped in. As the sounds of the DJ cut off, and the voices died down, I soaked in the ultimate luxury: being on the inside.

I graduated and moved to Portland. When I came back, Dana was ill – battling cancer – and Angela was in rehab. Jack left to ride trains and take photos. Moj and Lorna had broken up romatically, but were working together on their business – at that time they were doing all of the production work for a new, big party in the Coachella valley that was gathering traction, but it was difficult for them to keep working together, even as their business expanded. I moved to San Diego, and called Moj every now and then to make sure she was doing OK, but the check-ins became less frequent, and at some point it didn’t occur to me to call her anymore. I moved to Barcelona, and one day I was in the DiR gym in Gracia. They always played American music videos on all of the televisions, and an image appeared, and I stopped and stared.

Britney Spears was crashing her car into the pool, and my immediate thought was to worry about the tiles, and wonder what they had done with the whispering wall.

I have lost touch with all of them now. Angela, I will never know about, or Jack – I don’t even know their last names. Lorna, too – she dropped off social media, so the last thing I know about her is that she married a man, changed her name, and her kid is a genius at math. Moj is an absolute titan in LA, runs an expanding business empire, is married to another Persian woman, and has a son, who looks adorable and fashionable and is photographed hanging out with Ariana Huffington. When I see posts about her success, I think of when she told me the best business advice she had ever received: “Always reinvest everything you can back into your business. Always.” Dana apparently sold the house after a very expensive fight with Katy Perry, and I read that she went bankrupt from it, which is why I absolutely hate Katy Perry and involuntarily snarl whenever I hear one of her songs. The internet tells me that I could go spend the night at the house again, but I’m pretty sure they would make me sleep on the dormitory side, and it would cost $1,500 a night.3 If I did, I wonder if Daisy would come out again, if she would recognize me.

When the builders were renovating our apartment a little while ago, they found that the floorboards – 200-year-old Norwegian pine – were all still in excellent condition. They restored them, but in one small spot, they didn’t do all of the staining that they needed to do to make the boards all the same color. Every week or so, Alice varnishes the floor to try to get the color closer to right, and every time I pass that spot, which is 20 times a day, my brain floods with thoughts of Lorna and Moj, Dana, Angela, Jack, Mary, Sarah, Daisy, Sue-Ling, Cuba, Lani, Sean, Mike, Audrey, Devin, Jacob, Liz, Gayla, Sunny, Phil, Joe, Carly, Sasha,

And I think that we tend to treat “ghosts” as if they are the leftovers of dead people, the near-tangible spirits, whatever it was that the nuns and Dana and I saw. But the ghosts I see, the ones who haunt me every moment of every day, are almost all still alive, are the people who have touched me and who still touch me, who made me who I am. They aren’t the dead, they just aren’t part of my life, and I see them every time I see a sailboat, or hear the Indigo Girls, or flick open a Zippo to light a stranger’s cigarette, or put my socks on before my pants, or think that

it is a warm, green rain,

with love

in its pockets

for spring is here,

or put carrots in a pan at the beginning of a stirfry, or fill a Parker 51, or hear Tupac blasting from a car stereo, or see a golden retriever swimming, or blow my nose in a blue handkerchief, or see a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red behind a bar, or a thousand other things that, for other people, might not bear a second thought except that for me they do, they absolutely do, they fill my head with a thousand memories of love or wonder or anguish at these parts of my life long gone. We think of death as the end of a life, but every moment, every experience, has a life of its own, and oftentimes my chest constricts because I am overwhelmed by the deaths that I’m alive to, the millions of moments every day that become ghosts just as soon as they’ve passed. My days are filled with these sightings; my life is just a ghost story, an accumulation of hauntings.

And before last Sunday, every time I lit Morning Zen incense, I thought of Alex Clark, who was alive, who left me that 14-second voicenote asking for me to call him back, and who I never called even though I promised to in a text, in a text, and who now I won’t ever be able to call ever again because he is a ghost.

Alex: thank you for making my life so much richer, and for giving so many people so much happiness. I hope you can now rest in peace.

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First, to get to the market late, you have to be up at 6:30 a.m. Skip your breakfast and your coffee and get down to the M4 line and take it all the way to Kelenföld Vasútállomás, the western end of the line. Even if you start at the very eastern end, at Budapest-Keleti, this journey only takes 17 minutes at the very most; the Metro here is both beautiful and efficient. Because Kelenföld Vasútállomás is also a train station, and it is very early on a Sunday morning, there are three kinds of people you’ll see on the metro at this time:

1. People going to catch a train after a weekend in the city, sagging into the seats, holding on to their suitcases, rolling, and absentmindedly smushing a bag of day-old pastries, unidentifiable purple jam staining the paper, that will soon be their sad breakfast;

2. People making it home from the late night clubs, trying to stay excited and happy but too exhausted to do it honestly, some complaining about the clueless guys who hit on them, some about the girls who blew them off, others excited about their dates for the morning, all wearing the sweaty perfume of young antics;

3. People on their way to the flea market, holding rolling shopping baskets or tote bags stuffed in tote bags, their eyes as sharp and clear as eagles scanning the ground for prey, just wishing that the metro would go faster so that they have the best chance possible of getting a bargain.

These three groups of people exhibit their own particular behaviors when the metro gets to its final stop. The party people will look around as if they are just waking up, confused, then cross the platform with a chagrined shuffle to get the next metro back to where they intended to get off. The train passengers drag their suitcases ten feet and then stop, looking around for a departures screen to help them figure out where their platforms are. The marketgoers surge forward as if they were in a speedwalking race, then lunge up the escalators to the bus stop to get the #40.

You join the last group.

At the stop, there is always a drunk passed out on the bench, head lolled back, mouth a cave for daredevil flies, cheeks raw and flushed in the rising sun. Always. Nobody ever wakes them up to see if they want to get the next bus. You position yourself in the waiting pack, noticing who came before you and who joins after so that you know who deserves deference and who you are expected to step in front of, and the bus pulls up within a few minutes. There is always room for you to sit, but anyone getting on just before it leaves may have to stand. The other passengers are about 60% male, of all ages, mostly white, with perhaps two Vietnamese people who sit across from each other in the back and occasionally engage in an urgent exchange before sitting back quietly, thinking.1 Most of the people are traveling alone; sometimes there is a couple on board, but nobody talks. Once, an older man, possibly drunk, tried to get on the bus just as it left without paying or presenting his pass. When the driver told him to show his pass or pay, he angrily shouted that he was over 65 and didn’t have to pay; however, he refused to show his ID. The old man and the driver got into a shouting match that escalated into hand slapping; the driver said he wouldn’t depart until the man got off the bus, which is when the other passengers – now five minutes later than they would have been had the bus left on time - got involved. Seeing that he wasn’t getting any public sympathy, the old man finally showed his ID, at which point the other passengers shouted that he should have shown it in the first place, and that he was just being an asshole. He sat at the back of the bus for most of the trip, muttering.

These are your fellow travelers.

The bus rumbles out, leaving the drunk alone on the bench, mouth still open. You pass the modern office buildings with American business logos in huge plastic letters, and then you are in the green countryside. You don’t need to really keep your eye on your map; just past the car dealerships is Madárhegy, where 94% of the passengers will fall out of the doors. This is when you want to maneuver yourself to be close to any 70-year-old woman you can find. Everyone else (who, you think, must not be as observant at this hour) walks to the pedestrian crossing 50 yards down the street, crosses, then comes back up to the market entrance. Septuagenarian females, however, will cross the street wherever they want, assuming that all vehicles will stop for them, and they won’t look either way; if a truck or bus is barreling towards them and they happen to catch sight of it out of the corner of their eye, they will raise their hand to waist-height and quickly flick their fingers, as if dismissing a child or shooing a fly, and the drivers, at the sight of grey hair, will slam on the brakes but won’t honk their horns, no matter how angry they might be at having to defer to the invincibile cocktail of age and gender shaken with guts. If you don’t want to walk down to the crosswalk, just follow a step or two behind one of these women. If you are worried that the drivers may see you as an imposter, a pretender, then simply silently mouth something to the back of the head of one of the older women, and throw in a shrug for effect. The decelerating drivers will (you hope) assume that you are a grandchild saying something to the elder in your care, perhaps chastizing them for being so reckless; the woman will not notice because you are behind them and they can’t see you, and they aren’t paying any attention to anyone else anyway, because that’s their prerogative.

Not that I know this from experience, of course.

Once across, you pause near the curb while your escort keeps walking forward. Here you might think of Moses coming to a bluff overlooking the promised land, seeing the home of God’s chosen people for the first time, or Lewis and Clark descending the Rockies and gazing down on flat, verdant plains that held the future of their nascent nation, because as you reach the entrance and see the marketplace spreading itself out below you, full of potential, full of hope, you know exactly how they must have felt.

Standing here on any other day of the week, you would see a giant, mostly empty parking lot with a few warehouses scattered around it. A wholesale flower shop shares this space with a tire-walled go-kart track and a driving school; you might watch some delivery trucks backing up, their cargo doors up and the singular scent of mixed flowers in the air, or an extremely nervous teenager trying to make sense of a glowing dashboard before pushing too hard on the gas pedal for the first time, but that would be it. You wouldn’t expect that, on the Sabbath of all days, thousands of people would come here to jostle, shop, talk, and engage in one of the most sacred and fundamental of human behaviors: creating a marketplace. Every time you cross the threshold of one of these holy shrines you are reminded that markets are a direct tie to the past, to countless millenia of human experience. Except for the relative cleanliness of the people here, the orderly aisles and the modern goods, this scene would have been familiar to anyone in Sweden, Italy, Pakistan, Japan, Nigeria, Vietnam, or Mexico over the last several thousand years. Actually, it strikes you that markets are one of the defining behaviors of human beings. We are fundamentally commercial beings, trading, exchanging value, analyzing relative positions. Prostitution isn’t the world’s oldest profession; that designation goes to anyone tryina make a dollar out of fifteen cents.2 Looking to maximize our margins3 is one of the most fundamentally human things that we can ever do, one of our defining traits, more important than using fire. Perhaps Jesus had been right to cast out the merchants from the temple, because the temple was sacred, not human, and trading is entirely and absolutely a human behavior.

And standing here you think: Marx was an idiot for thinking we could ever excise either religion or hustling from our lives.

So you smell the air, then raise your right foot, extend it in front of you, and take your first step, checking that your wallet and your notebook are in your left front pocket just as, in sacred spaces, you might cross yourself.

You have brought your backpack, two or three tote bags, a rock climbing carabiner (to attach the tote bags to later so they can be slung over your neck), a one-liter water bottle (now almost empty), a small notebook, and a ballpoint pen, of course. These are the bare minimum things you will need - oh, and cash, because vendors here don’t take cards and, strangely, there isn’t an ATM anywhere on the premises. On the bus, you slipped the notebook into your pocket, with a pen, making sure it is easy to pull out.

In the main section of the market, there are always people talking in a loud and persistent hum, like being in a crowded midpriced Italian restaurant at 8:30 on a Saturday night. It’s better to ease yourself into the market, into the fight, rather than charge in at once with your wallet blazing, so instead of walking straight, you ignore all of the stalls and veer right, then make another right at the first possible turn. This takes you from the wide aisle, lit by the bright morning sun and packed with streams of people shuffling into each other, and down a narrower, less crowded aisle that runs between a small warehouse on the left and a grassy hill that comes down from some dense bushes that block off a clear view of the busy highway. This is the poor section, the transient section, and every time you turn onto it your head plays Green Day, the opening chords of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, because you begin to think of this as the “boulevard of broken things,” and you start humming quietly to yourself. These sellers are figuratively and literally separated from the others. Their spaces are small – two or three square yards at the most, packed next to each other with no room to spare, and it is sometimes hard to figure out who is selling what. On the left, in the shade of the warehouse, they all set their wares out on dirty sheets, or on the bare asphalt; on the right, they all set their wares out on dirty sheets, or on the bare grass. About 97% of the sellers here are trying to sell literal trash - half-used pens, stopped watches, 1970s pornography (and you see on the covers that the communists were not that different from the capitalists), chipped coffee mugs from long-dead businesses, glasses frames with one of the lenses removed, broken children’s toys, detritus. Of this vast majority, half of the sellers squint silently at passers-by, willing them to fall in love with something that, while not worthless, is not worth much. The other half of this group seem to see the market as primarily a social space, like atheists who go to church to catch up on neighborhood gossip and drink burnt coffee. These “sellers” set out their wares and then spend the next few hours arguing about soccer with their neighbors and shouting minor insults at their friends across the aisle, visibly annoyed and dismissive whenever anyone actually wants to know the price of something they’ve casually tossed on the ground. The other 3% of sellers here are not regulars; they are urban or suburban families who are just trying to get rid of old stuff they found lying around and figured they would sell it here instead of tossing it out. These sellers clearly own washing machines and showers and use them regularly, and don’t intend to see any of the other sellers ever again.

This aisle is a good introduction for the market. You can walk slowly here, not bumping up against the loads of other people, and you can window shop – not with any intention of buying anything, because there is rarely anything on this aisle worth buying and so there is no pressure here, no stress. It’s a little like a pre-party, a warmup before the big game, like Gayle before Taylor Swift.

Toward the end of the aisle, you’ll notice a shift, and this signals that you’re ready to start shopping. It begins with the jars. There’s always a stall on the right with reinforced cardboard boxes full of jars, and mugs, and plates, and things that could be broken but are not yet, which is a distinct state of existence from the aisle you are leaving. It is run by a 30-something couple, a clean-shaven man and a vibrantly charismatic woman, who engage with everyone as aggressively as if their ability to move their inventory will determine if they can fly to Paris or Bali for a month in the autumn. Unlike the others, they are not simply hoping to sell, or using the market as a pretext to get out of the house; they are making money.

They are part of the middle class of the market.

The middle class isn’t literal, of course; it is, as always, relative, especially to the boulevard of broken things. But these people are also regulars and at least amateurs, if not semi-professionals, here to close sales, and they make up the bulk of the rest of the market. They have bigger stalls and better things; they put their items on tables, or at least have boxes to hold stuff that someone might actually want to buy and use. They seem predictably sober4 and alert; they greet people with a smile. They have either small warehouse spaces or have brought their things in by car. Many are regulars; many are irregular; virtually none of them are one-time-only sellers. They have larger spaces, with tarps that delineate their domains, and some have erected canopies with legs that are weighed down by water-filled tanks. They sometimes have a theme: one man has Hungarian porcelain, seemingly salvaged from a bankrupt wholesaler; there are two women who sell glass lamps with detailed flower paintings on the bases and agestained lampshades; one guy has European football memorabilia; another has animal skulls and antlers; and a couple run a stand that has preserved goods, including pickles, sausages, and out-of-date non-Heinz ketchup. You’ll see collections of coffee grinders, CDs, books, vacuum cleaners, posters, sad irons, wooden chairs, cheese, running jackets, enamelware milk jugs and model trains. Many people, though, just have a load of stuff that they think people will want to buy, and so they bring it back every week in the hopes of making deals.

You will spend most of your time with the middle classes, but you will spend most of your money with the upper classes, the Brahmins of Budai Zsibvásár. There are two places where these brahmins congregate: in the very center of the market and on the far outskirts, and you always think that it’s a bit like the real world, where they live in the very core of a city, in $10 million one-bedroom apartments, and the countryside, in their massive mansions set back from the road. In the center, you can spot the aristocracy under the long tents set up in the middle, lined by evenly-spaced high tables, where, unlike the others, they are protected by the market from the pounding sun or driving rain. The sellers here are almost all specialists: the woman with stuffed animals, the man with toiletries and cosmetics (all stored behind plastic display cases - perhaps he’d had too many thefts), the man with vintage toys, another selling hunting knives, and a woman with pet clothes and collars. These are like food trucks, which are not quite restaurants but could become restaurants if they can prove people will buy; here, these seem to be a few sales away from storefronts.

Then, in the far reaches, there are the warehouse sellers. These people are like the landed gentry; they have dedicated space on site to store their things, and they get here early every Sunday, laying out long rows of cardboard boxes or tables full of antique jugs, and then they retreat to their now-empty warehouse spaces, sitting on actual chairs in the shade, waiting for supplicants to approach them.

But before you see them, you face the consequences of your actions; you skipped breakfast, and drank most of your liter of water, so you need to go to Tembel.

You didn’t become a devotee of Tembel, the better of the market’s two greasy spoons, voluntarily; you were coerced into going the first time. See, in Budapest, you often have to pay for public restrooms. The cost is minor – maybe the equivalent of 50-75 cents, but it has to be in cash, and they don’t give change, and the women who control access to the restrooms - and they are all women as far as you could tell - are Machiavellian at extracting money from the needy; one suspects that they get to keep any excess that they can coerce people into paying. So the first time you went to the market, you stupidly drank that bottle of water and really needed to pee; double idiocy, you only brought 2000-forint notes, and the restroom costs something like 100 forints. The woman, perhaps because it was Sunday and she was feeling particularly charitable, pointed you to the café rather than slipping a dagger into your bladder.

There you were, waiting in line for food and coffee and blessed change, when one of the men in front of you turned, looked at you, and said, “Where are you from?” in perfect English. He was from Budapest, but had spent time living and working in Minnesota as an engineer; he designed bridges during the week and spent his Sunday mornings selling vintage watches which he himself serviced. He lived near the Ferris wheel in the middle of Budapest, and was waiting in line, he said, to get the absolute best lángos in Hungary. Did you want his help ordering?

Of course you did.

This might be a good point to make a note about Hungarian food. In The Food Atlas, a book about different world cuisines, Mina Holland has entries for China, France, Mexico, Italy, Iran, Louisiana, etc., with descriptions of the history that makes them unique from other cuisines. She then writes a single section for all of Eastern Europe. The reason: behind the Iron Curtain, Eastern European cuisines were insulated from the cross-cultural trends that swept Western Europe like fashions in the second half of the 20th century, and also prevented them from getting new ingredients, so these cuisines have actually remained very traditional (and similar to each other). There are a few famous Hungarian dishes: goulash, and chicken paprikash, for example. Less famous, but perhaps more prominent, are lángos and chimney cakes and the myriad fermented vegetables, especially pickles.

The insulation from other cuisines, and the preservation of traditional Hungarian dishes as distinct and unique, ends up being both good and bad. The savory Hungarian foods are exceptional; their treatment of meats in both ovens and slow cookers justifies the same sort of hagiographic fawning that one sees with barbecue in America. Hungarian pastries, though, are less impressive, and one might leave the country with the impression that the lack of foreign influences has left this section of the menu poorer than it should be. It reminds me of an observation Sonny made about Eastern European people (and which Apple Not Far summarized about Hungarians in a comment): “the women look like models, and the men look unrelated.” It’s the same with the food; the amazing savory dishes seems to come from a different kitchen than the comparatively unimpressive sweets.

Anyways, he ordered a lángos for you with sour cream, cheese, and something with garlic in it and you stood and talked - about Budapest, Hungarian politics, America, the joys of children, how to navigate foreign cultures, the similarities of normal people around the world. After about a half-hour, he crumpled his paper plate and started back to his stall. As you shook hands, he said it was good to see a foreigner here; “you are engaged in that greatest of Hungarian pastimes.”

“What’s that?”

“Hunting for treasure.”

As he walked away, you hurried to finish your food, then almost ran around the corner, gave the woman your coins, and hurried to the restroom. The entire time you were listening to him you were dancing, and you felt as if you might burst, except you also wanted to be polite in this foreign culture, to not seem like a rude foreigner who got what he wanted and then left without a care for the indigenous peoples.

But you learn after both the meal and the restroom visit. Your habit becomes: the Boulevard of Broken Things, and then the café, before it got too busy – because, come 10 or 11 a.m., the wait is horrendous. It is worth it, because I do suspect that Peter was right and these are the best lángos in Budapest, but you could easily spend 30 minutes in line waiting to get to the window to order.

And that’s time you could spend hunting for treasure.

And negotiating, which you get better at.

Hungarian is an impressively difficult language to learn. It’s not just a casual opinion; the US Foreign Service Institute lists it as one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world, as it has 18 case suffixes and 14 different vowels. However, there is one language that people around the world speak in common, for the most part: Arabic numbers. Even in the most illiterate places, if you need to use money, people will understand how to communicate costs; they will understand how to read numbers and, almost certainly, they can write them down.

And this saves you.

First, you can find out how to say “how much is this?” in any language from either a quick Google search or Google Translate. If you can understand numbers - for example, if you took French classes in high school, then lived in Spain for a year, you’ll likely be able to understand Italian numbers, too - then you will be able to get by just listening. However, if the language is unlike any you’ve encountered, just bring a notebook and a pen. Here, when you find something you want, you can ask, “Mennyibe kerül ez?” and then hold out the notebook. People will understand, and will write down their opening price. If you think it is too much, you can offer what you will pay, or simply say thank you, köszönöm, and walk away.

There are a few ways these negotiations might play out:

• You see a brand new Keep Cup, which goes for about £15/$20 in the UK. The woman comes over; you ask her your carefully prepared question, five syllables, and hand her your notebook; she starts by writing “2,000” in it, or about £5. You don’t actually want it that much. You köszönöm her, and start to walk away, and she grabs at your notebook and writes “1600.” You smile, köszönöm again, and reach for your notebook, and then she frantically scribbles “800,” then “400,” then finally “200” before you can get her to give it back. More out of pity than desire, you pay her 48 cents and take the cup. This is the “Sun Tzu” form of negotiation - winning without fighting. Your Chinese ancestors would be proud of you.

• In the back, there are two women who set out long rows of boxes from their warehouse, then sit in the shade, talking and listening to an actual radio, drinking tea out of stained mugs. You buy things from them every week - cutting boards, tea towels, more cutting boards, a cabbage grater, a tea strainer, handkerchiefs, porcelain cups, a mug, a conch shell. Every time, no matter how much you bring over to them, when you ask how much they want, the woman on the right looks, says something to the woman on the left, and then the woman on the left looks, and then she always writes down “2,000.” Some weeks, maybe they screw you; some weeks, maybe you get the better deal, but it ends up being predictable. Either way, in these scenarios, you know what you are going to pay, so you just go through the motions, knowing you will end up pulling out the note you’ve saved for this situation.

• And then there are the surprises.
  One week, you are walking by a stall with Daniel, and something catches your eye. You don’t know what you saw that interested you, though; you look again, and there - a cardboard box at the front corner, in a stall full of cardboard boxes and no customers. Why is this cardboard box calling to you? You don’t know. You walk over and kneel down, and on top of a pile of stuff is a wooden box - old, unassuming, with dovetail corners and a halfcup notch hand-carved in the top that indicates that the panel slides to the side. Without knowing why, you open it,
  
  and you remember two decades before, the winter of 2004. It was late at night; you were in La Bonanova ferrocarrils station in Barcelona, completely alone on the platform, coming home after a late night teaching English to Josep, the owner of the largest brick manufacturing plant in Europe. He had a collection of antique Rolexes in a glass case, and black car for every day of the week, and offices scattered across the city, and a yacht, and he just wanted to understand how to say numbers in English so he could negotiate a sale in Bratislava without using an interpreter because his pride wouldn’t let him appear to be ignorant. Working with him was hard; he was older, and never had time to study, so your lessons were basically rote memorization times. You sat down in the station, completely exhausted after a hard day of lessons, and on the bench you saw a magazine. You picked it up. You still have it, in the soda crate bookshelf next to your bed, because it is one of the most beautiful catalogs you had ever seen, even if you had never heard of the brand “Hermès” until that night.
  You flipped through the pages, entranced, and got to two pages in the middle. On the left, a jar that held corks, with a corkscrew sticking out of it; on the right, a divided wooden box with assorted items - cigar cutters, castanets, pinecones, dice, and a deck of cards. Something about those pages spoke to simple pleasures, to an age before distraction, to the luxury not of things, although they were luxurious things, but to activities that were made possible by the luxury of time. This picture, these things, represented a life that was not lived to the dictates of an unforgiving clock, a life without the demands of clients who didn’t study what they were paying you to teach them and somehow expected you to just instantly transfer to them a foreign language, a life without the fears of the immigration officers waiting for you at your illegally sublet flat and sending you back to America, without the long midnight rides on the metro or buses because you couldn’t afford taxis, a time beyond the long month of January when nobody worked so nobody paid you and you could only afford to spend five euros a day on food and ate a pot of boiled potatoes and onions that you called soup and a tub of olives and a baguette for three meals every day because you didn’t know how to cook and these things at least filled your stomach, a life without the isolation of an undocumented worker who was trying desperately to learn the language but could only speak in the present tense so that your friend Robert’s father called you “El Indio,” “The Indian,” and raised his hand palm-out every time that he saw you and said “how” like he had heard in the 1960s American westerns of his youth and you just had to smile and take it, a life where you were able to actually sign up for a bank account and a cell phone contract instead of keeping your cash in an empty cigar box and carefully typing out each text because you were almost being charged by the word like in the old telegrams, a life where all of your stuff couldn’t fit inside a large duffle bag, a life with more than four books on your bookshelf, a life where you could afford to buy the same clothes as the people your age all around you wore and instead you only had two ugly American polo shirts and one pair of unfashionable American khakis, and also fearing the day that they got dirty and you couldn’t wash them and dry them overnight before your morning lessons. The things on these pages were symbols of a life of wealth so profoundly different than yours, a life where you might be able to spend time in casual games that didn’t have any impact on anything at all, to pursuits that had no other goal than to simply enjoy the passing of time, which you could only imagine.
  And now when you slid the panel out and saw the antique bone-and-ebony dominoes held together with brass pins, your heart stopped, and you realized that you’d wanted this set every moment of every day for the last twenty years of your life, and would pay maybe not any price for it but more than you realized you would pay for a game. The ebony was worn down from decades of use by hands that didn’t touch anything any more, the bone scratched by shuffles on tables that no longer had legs. You pulled your phone out and checked to see how many dominoes should be in a set and you counted them and there were 28, all there, and you counted them again to be sure and you took a breath. Normally you have a pretty good poker face in these sorts of negotiations, but maybe the man had seen you and he knew you were desperate.
  You slid the lid back on carefully, stood up, and walked over to him. You held it out in front of you and he took it and you asked your question and held out your notebook and pen and his hand lifted in that gesture that in some instances could be benediction but here was clearly a refusal and your heart sank.
  You looked at him, your poker face gone, and he said something and now you made your face say that you didn’t understand and he grunted. He took out his phone, opened Google Translate, and spoke into it, then held it out to you.
  “It is not a friend what makes blurry in the sea.”
  You had approached him when you were willing to go to $30, no need to negotiate. You did the calculations in your head; between 12,000 and 13,000 forints. Maybe you could do $40. You thought about opening your calculator, but thought better of it. You held out your notebook again, more insistently, wanting him to make the first move, and he held his hand out and shook his head, nem, nem, nem, nem, nem, and then started to explain himself, remembered you didn’t understand, and something came out of his mouth that Google Translate might only interpret as hostile, and he showed you his phone again.
  Daniel asked what was going on, and you said that you had no idea. Why did he put it out if he didn’t want to sell it? Would $50 be too much? Your guess was that the set was late 1800s. What if it wasn’t actually bone but was whale, or ivory? You couldn’t tell the difference, but a quick image search might show you what you should look for. You thought of how you could teach Daniel how to play, and later Nick, and how well this would fit in with your life, 20 years after you first sat on that bench and saw those pages and felt the deep yearning in your soul to have the time to just sit down and play. No, $50 would not be too much to pay, and you could pay it, and later you would forget the cost, the 21,000 Hungarian forints. You would have to go on the bus to find an ATM and pull out the money and then come back, and it might take an hour or so, but it would be worth it, and one day Daniel would understand, and appreciate your dedication.
  The man was now, it seemed, more agitated, pacing and looking around, and you didn’t want him to jack the price up further, but he hadn’t given you a price in the first place. Maybe he didn’t like foreigners? He wouldn’t sell to you because you didn’t speak Hungarian? He resented you because you had the money to come here and buy the things that his great grandfather had left him, a true patriot, a man of the people and of the soil, maybe one of the founding fathers of Hungary, and now he was forced to sell this set, and he wanted to keep it in Hungary, his beautiful and beloved homeland, to not send these national treasures across the sea? Surely he knew what it was worth - objectively, and to you, personally. You smiled apologetically, and tried to think of what to do, what to say to Daniel, while the man held his phone out with gibberish on it and you held the box impotently in your hand, its potential ownership slipping out of your grasp.
  And then he smiled and gestured, and clapped you on the back, leaving his hand there a beat too long in a caress of friendship and supplication. He said something to a man who had suddenly appeared over his right shoulder while your vision had tunnelled from the stress, and the new man said “köszönöm” to him, and then suddenly the new man was standing in front of you with his gaze turned down momentarily as he searched for the words and the first man was walking away.
  “Friend,” he said, gesturing to the man who had just left, then put his hands on his chest in a sign that meant “I” or “heartfelt,” working hard to get the right syllables out.
  “Me…toilet.”
  The man had simply been trying to tell you that he didn’t have the ability to sell it to you because he wasn’t the owner of the stall, and that the owner would be back soon. That was the true meaning of, “it is not a friend what makes blurry in the sea.”
  He glanced at the box, pulled out his phone, opened the calculator and typed a number in, then turned the screen to you.
  “400.”
  And here your poker face made its triumphal return. You looked down at the box and furrowed your brow, as if trying to decide if it would be worth a dollar, and your face communicated that you were conflicted because it was really old, not new, and these pieces - wood? Seriously? - were chipped and scratched and very well-used, and the dovetail corners were coming apart, and then you shrugged, looked at him, and said, “OK,” because you instinctively understood that it was necessary to make him feel as if he had asked a fair price and that he wasn’t being robbed; it was perhaps the most important part of the negotiation, making him feel good about the sale. You handed him a 500 forint note, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a 100 forint coin and handed it to you as change. You both köszönömed each other, and he ruffled Daniel’s hair, which normally you fucking hate because how dare other people assume that they can touch your children without consent just because they are children and what if you were to ruffle his hair and coo at him, would he fucking like that? but now you just smiled and muttered, “OK Daniel, we need to go now,” and you walked away quickly, your left hand clutching the box, your right hand clutching Daniel, hoping you didn’t hear him shouting at you to come back and also resisting the urge to jump in the air, and now you have an antique bone domino set that sits on the 1948 soda box bookshelf that holds that Hermès catalog and every time that Daniel asks to play dominoes you pull the box out and turn out the tiles and think of how now, after so many years, you still don’t have the life you once yearned for, especially with the deliciously distracting lure of the everywhere internet, but your life is closer, and you are grateful for it.
  And that’s the last way these notebook negotiations can turn out: unexpected bargains.

The last few stalls near the exit have produce - piles of dirt-caked carrots, corn cobs in their prophylactic sheaths, watermelons so large that they must have been split open with machetes, their red wombs protected from the flies and the dust by saran wrap. These stalls have the vast majority of the fresh food available here, save for one lone woman who appears for one week in late June with boxes of freshly-picked figs from her trees and sits next to the LEGO sellers, taking up a square yard of space to sell her small parcels of overripe fruit. Next are some toy sellers, with boxes of Matchbox cars that the boys longingly search through. There is a tool seller, with iron inventory that must weigh two tons.

And then you’re back at the road.

This time, you don’t need to look for the old women; just walk a few yards to the right and wait at the stop. Buses seem to come every five minutes, and take you right back to the train/metro station, and then 22 minutes later you’re walking back through the quiet Budapest morning streets. It’s Sunday, and people are still asleep; when you walk in, the boys are eating raspberries in their pyjamas, each finger with a little red hat that gets pulled off by a giggling face. You feel like you have come back from a different world.

And you have. You’ve seen a unique part of Hungary, one that the ruin bar tourists could only dream of, and you have returned with treasure - with stuff, yes, but also lessons, and stories.

You just have to get up a little bit early to get there, and bring a notebook.

“Would you like to go to South America, Jake?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I never wanted to go. Too expensive. You can see all the South Americans you want in Paris anyway.”

“They’re not real South Americans.”

“They look awfully real to me.”

- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Afterwards, Nick and I went into the market hall and waited in line at Boszorkány Tanya, which is indisputably the better food stall and the one you should go to when you visit. We agreed to share potato salad, a giant sausage, a slow-cooked hunk of pork with a dollop of mustard, and perfectly fried chicken topped with coleslaw, sour cream and shredded cheese, and I carried the plastic tray to one of the wooden communal tables, where we sat on a long bench and Nick said “oh” sadly when I told him that they didn’t have ketchup, but he loves pork products and fried food and carbs, so he wasn’t sad for long. I helped him cut the sausage with a flimsy white knife, and then I pulled our new old chess board out, and opened it, touching the edge that had broken off and looking closely at the rooks, because it is usually the tops of the rook walls that get chipped over a century of play, but these were somehow in excellent shape. I was telling Nick what the pieces were called when an elderly man and a slightly less elderly man walked over and started speaking to us.

It was clear from my expression that I didn’t understand a word they said, so the younger man did that facial tic that people do to speak another language, where his chin shot to the sky and his eyes rolled up and then squeezed shut for a half-second as he switched internal dictionaries, and then he opened them, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Where are you from?” as if his brain had just rebooted in English. I answered, and he said, “We were just saying how it is good that you are teaching him chess at such a young age instead of,” and his fingers tapped and swiped at the air and the older man muttered something and they both laughed. I told them that Nick was three, and he definitely didn’t know what to do with the pieces; we’d just purchased the chess board because it was clearly a handmade antique and I was hoping that, one day, he’d be able to play and appreciate its history. The younger man - his name was Peter - translated for the older man, who said something back, and then Peter said, “But it is very old - why did you not buy a new one?” I told him that it was because it was old and well-used that it was beautiful, and Peter translated for the older man, who gestured extravagantly to his own face, and we all laughed together. Peter said, “But you are a foreigner, on your vacation. Why are you…” and he his hands opened to encompass our surroundings: in the not completely clean food hall of a Saturday flea market in the almost-rural outskirts of Budapest, surrounded by Hungarians who rarely saw people from outside of their own neighborhoods, eating fatfull dishes whose names we couldn’t pronounce, far away from the ruin bars and the historic churches and synagogues and the carefully curated food tours of “authentic” Hungarian restaurants, talking to two old men who could remember communism.

I smiled, and said, “Because you are here.”

What I meant was that we (and I include Nick in this) were more interested in Hungarian people, and this was where we could see how Hungarian people had lives that were both similar and different to our own - and where we could learn. Peter took it as the cue for him to tell us about the market, his town (not far away), and how he loved meeting Americans because he could practice his English. The older man, thinking that we were talking about chess, interrupted us, and Peter translated that he said he loved chess, even though he only started to learn it when he was 60, and often carried around a portable chess board, playing against himself on the bus and in cafes because he didn’t have anyone to play with, so he was excited to think that Nick may someday be able to sit across a board from him. Then Peter told him we were not talking about chess anymore, and the old man just looked at the pieces and waited for Peter to finish.

But Peter and his friend were talking, I really considered the question. Why were we spending a Saturday in a flea market when we could have been soaking in the thermal baths, or flying in hot air balloons above the city skyline, or at the Star Wars museum?

He was actually asking how we wanted to spend our time on vacation. We definitely spent time splashing around with the kids, and exploring parks and museums, and - yes - dressing them up as servants of the Empire. However, these activities don’t really serve the real reason we - and, I think, people generally - travel.

Going anywhere else in the world is about exploration. It is about learning. It is about experiencing new things - not just to revel in the experience, but because of what it makes of you, the process of becoming a new person. When you go somewhere else, you will naturally want to learn about other people, because it is true that iron sharpens iron and one person sharpens another. When we see a beautiful temple, or an extraordinary castle, or glorious ruins, our thoughts naturally drift to the people who were involved in building these edifices, who lived or worshipped or supported them, whose lives revolved around them, because it is these people who were responsible for making the buildings so impressive. We are in awe of the Egyptian and Mesoamerican pyramids because of the pharaohs and emperors with their wealth and power and because of the massive amounts of thought and (often slave) labor that went into building them. When we roam European cathedrals, we don’t focus on the type of stones used in the foundations; we daydream about the struggles between kings and popes, the HR problems that the master masons faced when they organized the work force, and we smirk at the pride of the men who thought that they were more important than Ozymandias and donated money for their elaborate tombs. We tour Parliament buildings, or ancient battlefields, and think of the life-and-death decisions that were made in these places by people just like us hundreds or thousands of years ago, and we hope that human beings have moved on from such folly.

As social creatures, when we go places, we want to learn about other people.

And that’s exactly why I strongly believe flea markets are probably the best use of your time when you are travelling. Paris, Singapore, Buenos Aires and Lagos are all interesting places, and they have extraordinary buildings. However, when you really explore them, the people and cultures will be what you truly remember, what gives you the really memorable stories, and most of all you will remember both how the people were the same and how they were different, and this comes from…well, meeting them, like we met Peter, and finding out how they live. One of the most visible and tangible ways to see how people are both similar and unique is to see what they consume - food-wise, of course, but also the things that they use in their daily lives. How do they wash their clothes1, or brush their hair? What tools do they use to cook their cuisine?2 What are their chairs like?3 What toys do their kids play with?4 How are Korean chop sticks different from Chinese chop sticks which are different from Japanese chopsticks, and what do these things say about these cuisines and these people?

Now, you can kiiind of get an idea of what people consume by going to stores. However, stores are unreliable indicators of what people really use:

1. Tourist stores are, as a whole, absolutely and irredeemably useless for telling you about a culture. They sell a false, stereotypical narrative of a people to customers who want to be deceived. Going to a tourist shop looking for anything “authentic” is like saying you want to read a biography and then heading straight to the orc-and-fairy section.

2. Normal stores will stock things that they think people want to buy. However, this is still speculative; just because a shop has something for sale does not mean customers actually want it - and this applies to some of the most sophisticated stores around today.

There are three places where you can see what people actually have bought and use:

1. Their homes. Here, you can literally see how people live. However, this is generally difficult to do, as you will likely struggle to convince multiple strangers to just let you into their home to look at their stuff.

2. Trash dumps. This is a great way to get clues into what people have done in the past; just think of the exceptional cultural history that we get from Roman, Chinese, and Aztec trash piles. However, accessing modern trash dumps is smelly, inconvenient, and sometimes illegal. Also, when looking through trash, you have to separate the signal from a lot of noise (much of which is decomposing).

3. Thrift stores and flea markets. Here, you can see what people have bought in the past and what they might buy in the future - and the value that both buyers and sellers put on these things.

I guess I could have explained all this to them, but the translations back and forth would have been a struggle, and I don’t think that they really wanted to know just how much deep thought I have put into justifying my love of flea markets, at home or abroad.5 Anyway, I now propose an iron rule of learning about other cultures: if you really want to get to see how people live, the best way to do this is to go to a flea market and browse.

Luckily, in Budapest, there are two weekend markets that are…well, extraordinary, and well worth visiting. The first one is where I met Peter and his friend: Lőrinci Flea Market.

Here’s how to see it.

On Saturday, you have to wake up early - like, 6:30. Get to Budapest-Keleti and get on the S60, one of which will be waiting for you and runs every 30 minutes. Once out of the station, you are suddenly surrounded by the ruins of communism - dilapidated and disused train depots, crumbling concrete schools, and overgrown everything. You’ll cruise past small, regional stations which have been judged by capitalism as unworthy to stop at, see tall grass growing through cracks in the platforms, ESL graffiti on tunnel walls, and advertisements for a McDonalds twelve kilometres away.

Get off at Rákoshegy, which isn’t the third station you pass but is the third stop. Descend the stairs, go up the brightly-painted ramp, then cross the street to the bus stop and get on the #198, which should arrive in the next few minutes. Even though the train only took 17 minutes to get here from the center of the city, the cultural differences are immediately apparent as soon as you sit in your seat. First, the people on the bus are entirely white and, save for a few children, are all middle-aged and older; there are no roving bands of teenagers this far out, no 20-somethings returning from a big Friday out. Everyone seems to be on pleasant terms with each other; they may not all be talking, but they all have Mona Lisa smiles, as if they didn’t want to seem hostile to neighbors or potential friends and are just waiting for someone to start a conversation to pass the time in an entirely stereotypical small-town way.

Which is jarring, considering that, outside of the bus, virtually everything looks as if it was designed to be as hostile as possible.

Not that Budapest is set up to be friendly, really. I would love to hear how Jane Jacobs would analyze this city, because she would probably be able to say exactly why it is that Budapest’s buildings are so unwelcoming. Perhaps she would point out that they are all five stories high, or that they are crowded up on the sidewalks, or that they are separated by wide streets that are often hard to cross apart from official pedestrian crossing points. Maybe there are subtle design elements that came from communism and the secret police; maybe it goes back further. My amateur architectural language only lets me say that each building has an atmosphere of privacy, of standoffishness, that makes them seem like impenetrable fortresses - if there is a door, it will be locked; if there is a gate, it will be metal and closed; if there is a wall, it will be stone and high. But that could describe any major city; Budapest is somehow less open than most others, and I can’t say exactly why.

Out here on the #198 bus, though, I can say exactly why the suburbs seem unfriendly: the houses are all on big lots separated from each other and the street by 12-foot high brick walls topped with glass bottles that were broken into the concrete on top or, if such walls were too expensive, chain link fences topped with a double helix of razor wire, and they make liberal use of plants to hide the buildings from eyes potentially prying from the street. They have locked gates, too, that look as if they were designed to stop armored cars, if not tanks, from crashing in. When you can see inside the lots, the homes look like self-sufficient dachas, with slightly messy gardens and playgrounds and free-standing basketball nets weighed down by those black plastic water tanks that need to be emptied before the winter comes lest they explode. But often, you can only see the second stories of houses, with broad windows reflecting the sky, or perhaps the roofs; everything else is blocked by the brick walls or trees and hedges. It is unclear whether crime is rampant out here or if people have simply learned that they needed to defend themselves rather than rely on the state to save them, but nothing about homes here screams “community” or “welcome,” and it is such a clear contrast with the visible midwestern collegiality of the people sitting in the plastic bucket seats all around you.

Get off at Regény utca, along with most of the friendly passengers. The stop is a small reinforced glass box, which you have to walk around, and then you can stumble down the small deadgrass slope to the parking lot, then meander over to the entrance.

And beyond those gates: heaven.

The clothes sellers congregate closest to the entrance, on the right. There is one who focuses strictly on used camouflage hunting gear, a couple on used women’s clothes, a woman who sells used jeans, another who sells really well-worn tee-shirts hung off of long metal poles, and a few who have mountains of whatever they can get their hands on, displayed in shifting piles as people pick through them, looking at labels, holding shirts up to shoulders or skirts to hips. Further on, the rest of the market is mostly tables set up by specialists: antique dealers, the obligatory couple selling LEGO in Ziploc bags and individual pieces from small plastic tubs, the man who sells antique picture frames and smoky mirrors, a guy who has a truly incredible number of pencil sharpeners (one of which I have in my backpack right now) and fake Zippos, the man who only sells vintage communist memorabilia, the woman with knockoff perfume set up in rows of white boxes with pastel labels.

And in the far right corner, there are the boxes.

An iron rule of flea markets: don’t put too much time into people who arrange everything they have for sale out on tables. Tables are a luxury: first of price, because the sellers clearly can spend money on them, and second of space, because everything can be displayed and seen. When the seller cares enough about what they are selling to put it out on display, then they probably also know something about its value; you aren’t going to find an amazing deal on treasure when the seller knows how much something is actually worth.6 Instead, you want to find people who are just trying to sell as much as they can and don’t know anything about what they are selling; because they are going for volume, these people do not put their stuff out on tables. Tarps or blankets on the ground are slightly better, but still indicate some amount of care, of attention, of knowledge of what the seller has and, often, what things are actually worth. You can get good stuff from tarp and table sellers, but by being able to see everything…well, it is more difficult to find a brilliant deal, the kind of deal that makes you pump your fist in the air right after you have paid and feel as if you made a dollar out of fifteen cents.

Anyways, Hungarians are often flea market professionals, and the professionals look for boxes, for it is in such boxes that treasure can be found.

So, when you go, take a few minutes wandering through the table sellers, but save your forints for the back right corner. Here, two people, a man and a woman, have set up their domain; both alternately calling out “400, 400” because literally everything they have is 400 forints, or, as of this writing, $1.31. The 1974 Munich beer stein, stonewear, hand-painted, with the litre mark etched into the side? 400 forints. The pair of Le Creuset egg cups, robins-egg blue? 400 forints. The 1800s Japanese tea cup with the agecracked glaze? These people do not care what they are selling as long as it is sold, and the price is 400 forints.

To get through these boxes requires patience, and understanding. Some people approach them with trepidation, or show that they are not really serious by only glancing at the items on top without searching deeper. These people - often younger, sometimes clearly with new significant others on a Saturday morning date - must be ignored; they are amateurish interference. The people you need to be wary of are anyone over 57 or so. They are usually with one other person around their age, and there is an unspoken agreement that, as soon as they get to the boxes, they will stop talking and not acknowledge each other unless they find something of either objective or subjective value and want reassurance that they should purchase it. They have hawk-like eyes, laser focus, and impeccable and instantaneous judgment. They always reminded me of Napoleon, actually, because apparently Napoleon had the ability to glance at a battlefield and see exactly what was happening, as if he could read the microscopic changes in the battalions from a mile away and understand who was moving where, the resistance they were facing, and where his troops needed to be reinforced in order to win. Here, the 50-somethings can approach a box, stir things around, and, within microseconds, either ignore the box and move to the next one or pull out a solid silver ladle, stamped on the handle by an artisan to the Czar, or a scrimshawed whale tooth, almost untouched since it was violated by a carbon steel blade on a wooden deck in 1870; alternately, they may pull out a photo frame, asking their companion about how it would look nice on their mantle, or a set of six French glass cups with orange and yellow swirls, deciding that they would be nice for dinner with friends. It is imperative that you watch them to see where they are going and then place yourself in front of them; only then do you stand any chance of finding the good stuff before they do.

They are your rivals, and they are dangerous.

The flea market is good, but it is only part of the market here - and not the most popular part. If you go out of the south-western exit and walk past the food huts, you will come to a bigger market, filled with fruits and vegetables and heaving with crowds.

By sheer coincidence, it turned out that a friend of ours from Edinburgh spent a significant portion of his time in Hungary, as his partner lives in Budapest, and he was visiting while we were there. We met up with him, and his partner, who I’ll call David, asked me what I thought of Hungarian food. I looked at him, and said, “I like that you don’t have broccoli right now.”

He paused to think about it, and then said, “yes,” and we understood each other.

We couldn’t get broccoli anywhere. The reason: it wasn’t in season, and Hungarians seem to take it for granted that their food will be seasonal, and grown as locally as market forces allow. I’m sure that lemons from Spain and Italy make it over, and they probably import plenty of bananas, but much of what we saw was picked days if not hours before it arrived on the shop shelves, the dirt still clinging to it. David, realizing that I understood that, then said that we would soon be able to enjoy the pickle season - they were just about to start getting heaps and heaps of pickling cucumbers in the shops, which Hungarians everywhere would buy, pickle at home in big vats of brine, and then eat as quickly as possible. (While preserved pickles would be available at other times of the year, outside of this small window, fresh pickles would not be made; the seasons were respected.)

Anyway: in the produce market in the middle of June, you are confronted with mounds and mounds of corn, tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, zucchini, potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, watermelons, cantaloupes, cherries, strawberries, blackberries, and all manner of other delicious plants that you can eat, all sold by dozens of sellers standing above it all and raking in money. Hordes of people - and this is so encouraging - crowd the aisles, searching for the best of whatever is available; they walk back to their cars weighed down by bags, with plans for everything they have purchased. There are a few non-fresh-food stalls, too - pasta, bread, and a woman who sells fresh wine; her table had five bottles on it, and I wasn’t sure if she had learned that people would just grab them and run or if that’s all she had left, but I took one of them home (paid for, of course).

In the back of this section, too, there are a few antique stalls - I couldn’t figure out why. At one, Nick and I found the chess set, with old, well-handled wood and beautiful pieces. I asked the man how much it was, and he wrote in my notebook: 4,000. About $12. I decided to get it, but then counted the pieces and found that there was a bishop missing.

I opened Google Translate and ordered it to say, “There is a bishop missing.”

His complete lack of surprise told me that he knew. He simply reached for my pencil and, in the notebook, wrote, “1,000.” About $3.

I looked at the set for a moment, trying to figure out if we could fit it in our luggage, and then he pulled out his phone, opened Translate, hit the microphone, and spoke into it. The translation of what he said was: “You have a beautiful son. Please this is a gift for his future.” He touched his heart and bowed his head when I looked up at him, and I said, “Nem, nem, nem, nem, kérem,” and after a brief struggle he accepted the 1,000 forints, a warm handshake from me and a high-five from Nick, who gripped the box tightly.

Just beyond the produce section is a non-produce hall. I’m not sure how else to describe it: it is indoors, and sellers hawk everything from cheese to paprika to meat - basically, everything that isn’t a fresh plant. The hall has the smell of dessicated carcasses; you get used to it after a few minutes, but, after being surrounded by the perfumes of berries and melons and the produce of life-giving soil and then being assaulted, olfactorily-speaking, by carrion, you can understand why people might suddenly decide to become vegetarian. Because it is inside, and you just left the height of summer outside, and there are fewer people and more shadows, it also feels stale and dead compared to the rest of the world, and you wonder if this is what Hungarians in 1975 felt about their own country compared to London and Woodstock and San Francisco.

This market also solves a mystery.

Because in contrast, Fővám tér market/Nagycsarnok, the central market hall in Budapest, is architecturally stunning. It has high ceilings, ornately decorated stalls, and a lot of food for sale. The thing is, it is almost exclusively used by tour groups looking for an “authentic” Hungarian food hall experience. You’ll see guides holding up strangely colored umbrellas or wearing ridiculous hats so that their charges can follow them; the only thing in the food bit that seems to sell is small bags of overpriced paprika. If you go upstairs, you are overwhelmed by tightly-constructed aisles of tchotchkes, as well as a few food stalls. The top review of one of the food stalls (as of this writing) indicates that the beef goulash costs almost $30, and is served on a paper plate; the writer wonders if they should have gone to a restaurant (the answer is yes, it would have been far more delicious and half the price). The vendors almost all speak English; it is almost impossible to hear any other language. If you are looking to observe tourists buying overpriced Chinese-made trinkets, this is a great place to do it; if you are looking to see how Hungarians shop for food, you’ll be frustrated.

But here, in the rundown market hall…

There are piles of bags of paprika here, it’s true. But instead of bags that hold about four tablespoons which you’d find in the central market, here the famous Hungarian spice is sold in two-litre bags, by aggressive grandmothers who insist on you not touching them until money actually changes hands. There are sausages for sale here, but instead of being sold from immaculate stands by people in spotless white caps and shirts, the butchers’ aprons here are infused with animal liquids - clean, probably, but undeniably stained, and there is an acceptance (maybe expectation) here that meat comes from animals, and these animals were killed and dismembered by human hands, that blood was spilled, and that death is messy. This meat is arranged behind glass display cases, and lines of people talk to the butchers about what they want, and then the butchers sharpen cleavers or the long, thin cimeters, satisfying the demand for theatrics by grating them against the steels, and the meat is handed over in wax paper and white bags for its final destination. There are cheese stands, and alcohol stands, and places for salt and herbs, and a mother-daughter stall that sells canned tomatoes (and half-litre bags of paprika).

And it is here where you can buy potato salad, a giant sausage, a slow-cooked hunk of pork with a dollop of mustard, and perfectly fried chicken topped with coleslaw, sour cream and shredded cheese for $13.27, and talk to old men, and leave having made a couple more friends in the world, and learning through direct experience that many Hungarians are kind, friendly, funny, community-minded, generous and, in general, good people, even if the ones who are 57 and up are, occasionally, your rivals.

Whenever someone asks me who, living or dead, I’d like to have at a dinner party, George Plimpton will forever be near the top of my list.

I always wondered what sort of divine alchemy could lead to a life where one’s accumulated experiences just keep building and building successfully over time in so many different realms and in such extraordinarily interesting ways. I have been exceedingly fortunate to have two friends, Tom and Charles, who have had lives like that - and, from what I know of them, it’s about doing as much as possible to fill life up to the brim with opportunities to expand, grow, and learn; the legend comes after that. It’s impossible to be in the middle of things if you’re only observing from the periphery; you have to actually be in the arena. I always secretly believed, though, that they also had a special sixth sense for recognizing opportunities - like they were born with an internal tuning fork that vibrated violently at a particular pitch to alert them that they had the chance to see history being made, or an internal voice that, when a remarkable opportunity presented itself, spoke through them to say “yes” without a second thought.

And I never felt like I had that in me.

So it was remarkable to suddenly find ourselves flying into Budapest just as history was being made.

We flew from Edinburgh to Budapest in the early morning. On the plane, the boys drew in the new notebooks that the Plane Fairy got them, Alice read, and I went through my flash cards, struggling to learn the numbers one through ten. Hungarian is like no other language on earth, and even after a month of practice, I could barely remember “Thank You” and “Hello” and “How much is this?” - a question that was to prove totally useless, as I would never be able to understand the answer.

We passed through customs, got our bags, caught a bus into the city center, then got an Uber to our apartment, in District VII on Damjanich street. We settled in and then, eager to see what Budapest had to offer, fell into the streets, eager to experience Hungarian life.

But everything was dead. It was ferociously sunny, and about 95 degrees in the shade, but for a capital city in July, the heat didn’t fully explain the eerie silence.

The boys were running around a shaded playground when Alice got a message from her mother. Apparently news stations around the world were covering Budapest; Alice leaned over and said, “It’s Pride here today.”

My brain went through half-remembered Hungarian history and Economist articles I thought I should read but didn’t pay close enough attention to.

“Didn’t Orban…ban it?”

He had.

But it turned out that the repressive Prime Minister and his “laws” didn’t matter.

I didn’t really know about Pride until college. One spring Saturday, and I like to think it was around the time I learned about Plimpton, I was in my dorm room when Paul and Jake, two of my friends, showed up at my room in neon, glitter, and the brightest smiles that I have ever seen - even now, I can’t stop myself from grinning when I remember how happy they were. They were on their way with our friend Shannon to Hollywood for a parade called “Pride.” At the time, I didn’t put two and two together to think that it was a gay pride event; I knew they were all gay, but…well, they wanted to go to a parade. They were there to ask: did I want to come with them? No. I find nothing interesting in parades; it’s mostly just standing around watching other people, and that’s boring to me. They, apparently, enjoyed parades. To each his or her own, I supposed - if a parade was their thing, let them enjoy a parade. Later, on their triumphant return, I remember how light-hearted they seemed - and I still didn’t have any clue what the big deal with this parade was, or why three of my friends would all go instead of staying on campus to study. A few years later in San Diego, I avoided Hillcrest one weekend because another Pride parade had shut down the streets and meant I couldn’t get to the Trader Joe’s; later, after repeated run-ins with Pride in Barcelona, Cleveland, London, Palermo, and Edinburgh, I eventually gathered that it was some massive international event for the LGBTQIA+ community.

And from Hollywood on, Pride was always…well, I always thought it was a celebration. A parade. There were people in neon and glitter, floats, organized groups marching and dancing to music, sequins, leather, and fun. I never had any reason to see Pride as anything other than a good time, a place where people of all stripes and preferences could gather and celebrate themselves.

But this is not how Budapest sees it.

We spent an exceptionally lovely first day just outside of the city center, slathering the boys with SPF50 sunscreen, playing in public water misters to fight the heat, eating paprika-spiced link sausages, and enjoying the quiet streets and playgrounds. Meanwhile, a mile away, virtually the entire city was looking to engage the enemy.

In the late afternoon, we saw what we’d missed - which was, basically, the photo above, tens of thousands of people taking over the city in defiance of the official law. Immediately, I thought:

1. We can’t risk taking the boys there, and

2. I really want to go.

I wasn’t worried about the boys being crushed, or lost in the crowds; I was worried that Orban’s mouth-breathing goons or bussed-in counterprotesters would start attacking the marchers, and we wouldn’t be able to protect the children. But my internal tuning fork rang this time, and I thought: this is important, and I want to be part of, or at least witness to, the arc bending toward justice.

So later, after the kids had gone to sleep, I slipped out the door into a city I didn’t know at all, looking for a story. The streets were still relatively quiet, the sun leaking down between the grand buildings, the Italian restaurant on the corner with two patrons sitting at an outside plastic table, talking over white wine and a pizza. I walked north on the cooling sidewalks and then got on a metro line that promised to take me to the river. I held on to a leather strap while it hurtled through its underground tunnels, a metre or so under the fanciest street in Budapest, stations and people appearing every minute or so in the gloom, with the cool, wet clay smell of all underground tunnels rushing into the car through the open windows.

The stations were busy, and everyone seemed to have been at the march. This wasn’t a parade. Paul, Jake and Shannon had gone to a parade; they were there to have fun, to dance, to drink, to ogle and flirt without fear for their safety. There may have been a political element to Pride in Hollywood in 1998, but their experience seemed to be that politics was mostly secondary after all of that glitter and face paint and CK One. Marchers, though, are standing for something, showing solidarity, drawing lines.

Budapest Pride wasn’t a celebration - it was a statement.

Virtually everyone I saw - from the old women with shopping bags to the children in buggies - had rainbows. At Kodály körönd, a lesbian couple collapsed against each other on a bench, one rainbow flag draped over both of their backs. At Vörösmarty utca, seven men in very short denim shorts and the tee-shirt equivalent of bras, all holding hands, rainbows on their matching cowboy hats. At Opera, a seemingly heteronormative family with two children smaller than Nick, all of their faces painted with rainbows. There were dozens of people standing alone, staring at their phones, with rainbow shirts and buttons, or rainbow tote bags, or rainbow ribbons woven through their hair.

Everyone looked exhausted, ready to keep going, furious enough to never stop.

When I got to the river, all was peace; it was clear that the march part of the day was long over. There was a soft glow from the sun setting over the high Buda hills; tour boats left their wakes up and down the Danube, and lovers - men and women, women and women, men and men, and probably other variations I am too ignorant to recognize - held hands on the riverside parks, held each other on the benches, and said “hello” for the first time. Club music drifted out of bars and restaurants and the docked party boats, wafting through the air just behind the cigarette smoke, and the coolness of the river (and its rotting-plant stench) seeped up as if it was trying to reclaim the city from the sun. I half-expected government stooges to stage a late attack on marchers who remained for drinks; I figured they might want to provoke some sort of reaction, or, now that virtually everyone had gone home, to try to use violence to claim some sort of victory, but they didn’t. It was just the same as any other blissful, eternally peaceful summer night, except this time the world was sprinkled with rainbows.

I still didn’t really know the layout of the city, so I wandered, assuming that I’d be able to find my way home. I walked east a block away from the river, then north, the sounds of gaity following me from the banks, and I headed toward what looked like a park. Then I saw it: a police van, stopped in the middle of the street, its lights on. I wondered if Plimpton ever felt reluctant to step into the ring, approach the line, strap on his skates, approach a bull - or if this was the moment he yearned for, the Rubicon he crossed time and time again, knowing that if he stayed back he would have joined those masses of people who never dared, who played it safe, who lived quiet lives of desperation, but by crossing over he would have a story, something really worth writing about, and I thought: what’s the worst these jackboots can do?

So I walked on, and realized that the car was parked in front of the Parliament.

And I kept moving forward, step by step, feeling my skin tingle and my back tighten.

And then everything happened all at once.

Actually, it didn’t - that was a cheap dramatic trick, and I’m not at all sorry I hit “publish” before I took it out, because you’re obviously still reading this.

As I got closer, I realized that it was a medic van, not a police van; a tool of safety, not repression. A drunk woman was standing next to the passenger side, plastic bags by her feet, talking to the EMTs in the front. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but it looked more like she was trying to get a few Forints for a drink and they were listening to her to stave off boredom, and none of them noticed me as I walked by. The grassy lawn in front of the Parliament building was empty, too, except for the sort of trash that one might expect if a million people moved through - empty soda bottles, chip bags, sandwich wrappers.

Business as usual. No sign of conflict, of insurrection, of a battle over the direction of Hungarian society.

And I thought: peace is dangerous.

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A few hours earlier, the streets had been filled with people who both supported LGBTQIA+ rights as well as those who opposed the government; it was hard to determine who was a friend of Dorothy and who was an enemy of the enemy. The results were the same: as soon as he was even threatened with a political punch in the nose, Orban ran away, and the people won the battle. The thing is, the marchers took the streets for a day. Orban will be here for…well, as of this writing, perhaps just for another few weeks; we can only hope he is put out to pasture by the electorate. But to make progress in gaining rights does not require a parade, or a march; it is a protracted struggle. Just because a dictator crawls back into his hole for a day doesn’t mean he or she is dead; they might simply be regrouping to come back stronger, later.

And that’s why it is dangerous to stop. Some1 humans have a natural inclination toward oppressing others; we must be vigilant against that. We have to continue to resist, to be angry, to protest, if we are to retain our rights against the seemingly natural tendency of some people to try to control.

Jefferson was just reporting when he wrote that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This isn’t aspirational; people shouldn’t hope for self-sacrifice and personal martyrdom, and we shouldn’t hope for the chance to kill an oppressor. It is, instead, a neutral quote that recognizes human nature: no matter what past generations have done to oppose oppression, we have to remember that freedom must be protected, that the battles should never be considered to be over, and that our generation has to continue to fight for it.

And that means: we need to keep fighting.

On the bus back, I thought: What would Plimpton do?

And then: he’d write.

Plimpton was a storyteller, an observer. He got to see things, but what really counted was that he could tell people what he experienced; it wasn’t so much that he engaged in things but that he communicated his experiences to the public. I’m sure he was a great guy,2 but I’d confused his being witness to great events with being a Great Man.3

The bus trundled through a clubbing district, sweaty people crammed into open bars and kebab shops gyrating their hunks of meat for the late-night traffic, and it hit me: there are some “great men” or “great women” who will be remembered by name, but the really great people are the masses who keep showing up without recognition to fight the same exact fights. Washington could only do so much on his own; he required Hamilton and Adams and Jefferson, et al, but he really depended on the foot soldiers who ate their own horses and each others’ boots at Valley Forge. Lincoln may have been a great president, but he depended on his team of rivals; we have to remember, though, that the real heroes were the soldiers who marched against the Confederates to preserve the union. Martin Luther King Jr would have gone nowhere without the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but he really needed the millions of marchers to walk on all of those roads. Orban will never go down in history as a “Great Man” - oppressors may win the day, but they never get a good judgment in the history books. The people around me, though, on the bus and in the metro and in the streets and bars - they will be the Great Group who future generations should be able to look to for inspiration.

And I thought: Plimpton’s great luck wasn’t in participating - it was that he was able to tell the story.

I am no Plimpton. But I hope someone, someday, tells the full story of the people who marched in support of Pride, and who continued the movement that overthrew a would-be dictator in Hungary.4

And that after the story is told, they will still keep marching.

That comment stuck with me - not because of sleep training, but because I have been thinking a lot about the idea that kids can’t, or shouldn’t, be trained. At first, that sentiment might make intuitive or emotional sense - maybe we think that kids should not be made to do things that go against their pure, childish nature, or perhaps we shy away from intentionally training them to behave in a particular way and let them grow up naturally, responding to their environment and getting real-world feedback on what works and what doesn’t. But in thinking about it, I now take the opposite view: we train children constantly, whether we intend to or not, and we need to be be intentional about how we train them.

For example, if we teach children to use forks, spoons, or chopsticks to get food to their mouths, we are training them to use tools to eat; similarly, if we let them eat with their hands, we are training them to interact with their food in a more direct manner.1 If we insist that they put their toys away, we are training them to keep their spaces orderly; if we let them leave all of their stuff out, we are training them how to live (and perhaps thrive, or wallow) in disorder. If we read books to them, we are training them to sit still, listen, pay attention, follow narrative arcs,2 and perhaps identify letters and words and sentences; if we put screens in front of them, we are training their brains to constantly search for new stimuli, seek out dopamine hits, ignore the world, and develop in otherwise unnatural ways. Speaking, walking, crossing streets, drinking, sleeping in beds - the very act of “raising” children is training them.

And I was reminded of my friend Mike Pastor. He had a rough youth, but went on to get his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, become a world-class boxing and MMA trainer, and is a physical fitness genius who, importantly, also raised a thoroughly badass daughter. A long time ago, before we’d had Daniel and Nick, he said something that has informed pretty much everything I’ve cooked for them in the last seven years.

As a trainer, many of his clients could find the time to work out, but found it difficult to improve their diets. The reason: they said that their kids would only eat crap – donuts, chips, fries, pasta, burgers, all day every day. His adult clients felt like if they wanted to cook healthy food, they might cook chicken and broccoli and rice for themselves and then microwave macaroni and cheese or burritos for their kids. This either was too much work, cost too much money, was too complicated to plan, or the unhealthy alternatives their kids were eating were too tempting for them to resist. Mike’s advice to them - that they should compost all the crap and stock their fridges with fresh, healthy food - ran into the seemingly immovable wall of “I would love to, but then my kids wouldn’t eat anything.”

Mike’s response: kids ate crap because the parents had trained them to eat crap; the entire family simply needed to be re-trained. The parents could change their habits, and impose these changes on the kids, and the kids’ habits would change.

This is actually easier with kids because they are mostly blank slates. We, as parents, have little control over the genetic “nature” side of their lives; however, we have a huge amount of direct control, at least in the early years, over how we nurture them. Because we create their environments, we also create and enable their habits and influence their actions and choices, whether good or bad. Unless we intentionally help them learn to make good choices, then we, by default, probably train them to do poorly. If children become used to eating crap, it is the parents’ fault for creating this unhealthy world for them.

Mike’s quest was to show his clients that adults can change and kids can change. A new habit like eating healthy might not be comfortable at first, but kids are remarkably resilient and adaptable, and they will adjust - and be better off for it.3

Anyway, I am thinking of these things because we are preparing for yet another very long trip in another country, and a big part of that is preparing the kids for spending five weeks away from their friends, toys, and familiar surroundings to live in a completely foreign culture where they don’t speak the language, won’t know anyone else, and will have to adapt. In other words, our job right now is to train them to be excellent little travellers. I thought that other parents might possibly be interested in how we have learned over the last few years to get small children ready for a big trip. A lot of it might go against current parenting norms, or may seem idealistic, and parents may not want to do some of these things because they feel like their kids would see them as strange.

Perhaps. But parenting norms today often seem to be incredibly poorly thought-out, and are ripe for disruption; good parents always try to improve on whatever their upbringing was, no matter how well they remember it. Also, if we more or less create what our children see as normal, and if they end up benefitting because we their parents create a better world for them, how is that a bad thing?

Let’s start with food…

Train them to eat.

The goal: you want them to be healthy, and you want them to also be willing and able to try new things when the comfortable things aren’t available.

Three observations:

1. When travelling, kids will need to adjust to changes.

2. They can do this better when they are able to regulate their emotions.

3. Regulating emotions is a million times easier when they aren’t filled with sugar-saturated, ultraprocessed food.4

So we start, here, with food.

To get them to eat healthy on the road, it helps to start way before the trip by making sure that they have, and eat, good food. It is easier to get them used to eating well if they are not used to junk food.

The first step: get them accustomed to eating better long before you leave. Give them apples and bananas instead of chips and dip; frozen yogurt and fruit pops instead of creamsicles; vegetable fried rice instead of microwave hot dogs; water instead of soda.

We haven’t had to try to change the boys’ eating habits because they never got used to chips, then had to switch to apples; they never had a steady supply of chips in the first place, but they have always had all the apples they could eat. My suspicion is that it is easier to ease them into the change rather than force them to suddenly go cold turkey on fried chicken; get them eating better little by little rather than all at once. If you are starting with a baby, though, make it easy for yourself and don’t feed them crap.

Sometimes, our kids will ask for chips instead of bananas for a post-school snack, or ice cream instead of porridge for breakfast. I say no. They know my no is no because, unless they can make a compelling and logical argument, when I say no, I mean no.5 For other parents, this may be difficult. If you’ve trained them to think that you no is “possibly,” and that if they can get a “yes” just by whining and complaining, then you can expect a meltdown.

On the road, it helps to pack healthy snacks; this requires a minimal amount of planning. For example, Alice always packs one “travel Apple” per person on any leg of a trip. It is great solution to stave off hunger when there is a delay or a problem. (This is obviously location-dependent; you may need to adjust to mangoes or dragon fruit or blueberries as available.) Healthy food should be available no matter where you are; to make it easy, it rarely comes in plastic bags with a “Best Before” date two years in the future.

Finally, there is a temptation to splurge on vacation, to eat things that are a bit indulgent or simply convenient. This is fine, but kids rapidly get used to the treats that they get. Also, when suddenly given massive amounts of sugar, they seem to react poorly.6 It is better not to go down that road in the first place. The easiest thing to do: train them to eat well, pack good, healthy snacks, and leave out the crap so that there is no choice involved. Fruit is excellent. They can drink water. Not only will they be fine, they will be better travel partners.

Train them to ask questions.

The goal: kids who are inquisitive, notice things, and learn to actively interact with their surroundings.

For some reason, our kids never went through the “Why? Why? Why?” phase, but lots of Nick’s friends are going through that phase right now, all together. When they ask me why 100 times in a row, I always answer; at some point, their parent will eventually step in and say, “hey, stop bothering him.”

I take the opposite approach: questions, even “why? Why? WHY?” don’t bother me. Questions are a sign that the child wants to learn and understand the world, and is trying to actively engage with it. By telling them to stop questioning, parents are telling them to stop learning, to not explore. Asking questions is a good thing - and something that should not be trained out of them, but which we should train them to do more, especially in democratic societies.

This is particularly important when travelling, as kids will be in a new place and culture where things are clearly different and they will want to understand why. If they don’t ask questions, they will train their minds to either ignore differences, to judge any differences negatively without trying to understand them, or to dismiss them completely; their brains and world views will ossify, and they will close themselves off to new information and experiences. If they do ask questions, and feel like they will be acknowledged, they will learn about their surroundings, be encouraged to pay attention, and get positive feedback that helps them further explore their world.

When kids ask questions, answer to the absolute utmost of your ability. Admit when you don’t know something, and then work to get the answers, if you can (preferably without going straight to your phone). To go the extra mile, ask them questions - about what they notice, what they like, why they think things are the way that they are, etc. This is positive reinforcement to help them interact with the world.

I admit that this is not always comfortable. For example, in Budapest, there is a display of brass shoes next to the waterfront. It was created as a memorial to Jews killed during World War II. The Hungarian fascists used to bring Jews to the river, bind a group of them together by their hands, shoot one, then push the whole group into the water; the idea was that the dead one would cause the others to drown, and thus the fascists could save bullets by not having to shoot each person. If you go to see this, and you’ve trained your kids to ask questions, then naturally there will be uncomfortable questions asked. You may decide to tell them that an artist made them (technically true); you may tell them that it is a memorial to remember dead people; you may tell them that a bunch of evil people killed a lot of other people, and this is to remember the innocent victims; you may tell them all the details possible. But imagine the alternative: blowing off their questions, or that it doesn’t matter, or that they shouldn’t ask. What does that train the kids to do? Why would they want to explore the world, if all they got was, “kid, stop being so annoying”?

Don’t raise such children. Questions, questions, questions.

Train them to be comfortable with boredom.

The goal: get them to be OK with boredom and to make their own fun.

There seems to be this attitude nowadays that if a kid is bored, it is a negative judgment on the parents’ ability to keep them entertained as well as a potential lost opportunity for the kids to maximize their time and do something productive.7 Parents are eager to step in with solutions - usually screens - in order to avoid a child’s boredom; brain damage, it seems, is preferable to boredom.

But I take the opposite view. Helping kids to be bored, and working through it, is a critical skill that helps immensely with travel.

Boredom is great for kids. First, the very realization of boredom shows them how to recognize their emotions, name them, and understand what they are feeling. They learn to tolerate less-than-ideal experiences (which is helpful when you are on the road - see below), “develop planning strategies, problem-solving skills, flexibility and organizational skills — key abilities that children whose lives are usually highly structured may lack,” according to Jodi Musoff, MA, MEd of the Child Mind Institute.

The alternative: kids always have something to do, usually provided for by other people - either their parents or Andreessen Horowitz. They don’t learn to deal with and regulate their emotions. They don’t learn to be independent. They don’t get creative with some of the tools you’ve brought (below). Worst case scenario, when they feel a twinge of boredom, a screen is pushed in front of their faces and they zone out, overstimulating their brains and training them to keep looking for dopamine hits.

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So when a kid says that they are bored, instead of providing them with a solution, train them to occupy themselves on their own. Give them the tools to be creative, or simply sit with them and watch the world (some pro tips here). They are kids; this is how they were meant to learn.8

Slowly.

Train them to be comfortable with uncertainty.

The goal: help them be prepared to deal with the inevitable changes that occur on journeys.

On trips, even sanitised trips like cruise ships or resort holidays, things can go wrong, or at least different than anticipated. The more you leave well-worn paths and enter the real world when travelling - a foreign city, the countryside, the jungle - the less certain things will be.

This can be tough for kids. They often like at least some amount of routine and predictability; on the road, though, this is tough.

But you can train them to deal with it by…well, showing them how to deal with it.

It is important to make sure that children are exposed to some amount of uncertainty, to eustress,9 to things not going their way. When something comes up that is unexpected, make sure that they know:

1. You are going to adjust to it;

2. You expect them to adjust to;

3. They absolutely can and should cry, but it won’t change anything, and you are not going to move heaven to change earth.10

The nice thing: kids are resilient, and adjustable. They can deal with change, even if it upsets them. This won’t be what they complain to their therapists about.

Train them to use new words.

The goal: at a basic level, to teach them to communicate; at a deeper level, teach them to get into other peoples’ minds and to accept differences.

Some people throughout the world believe that their way of doing things is the only right way, and any alternative is “wrong.” They seem to feel that there is some sort of moral quandary in, say, driving on the left or right side of the road, eating with chopsticks or forks, wearing jeans or sarongs, or saying “toe-may-toe” and “poe-tay-toe” instead of “toe-mah-toe” and “poe-tah-toe.”11

This is something I absolutely want to train out of my kids. I want them to not be pedantic. Pedantry is small mindedness added to inexperience and multiplied by rudeness. A big part of this training is the simple act of travel - showing them that other people do things differently. A wonderful way to really help kids learn to understand other ways of doing things is to pick up words in another language.

This shouldn’t be terribly difficult, but it is surprisingly uncommon. Kids only need to know a few words – thank you, hello, goodbye. However, naturally curious kids will want to go on and learn other words – police car, poop, punch, dinosaur, excavator, cake, water, giant donut, smilodon. They will start working to understand how other people communicate, and, naturally, this means that they will be getting into other peoples’ heads, and working to understand them.

There are three other benefits:

1. They actually learn parts of the language;

2. You actually learn parts of the language;

3. Old people will love that they know how to say “thank you” or “hello, beautiful.”

Some people argue that if God wanted people to speak Spanish, He wouldn’t have written the Bible in English. Smile, nod, promise to call, and turn away.

Train them to create, play, and read.

The goal: give them things to keep themselves occupied, express their creativity, and have fun.

First off, if the question is “screens?” The answer is “NO.”

Kids love to play. They have imaginations. They love toys.

So pack a few toys - not a lot. We let them fill a kid-sized backpack with whatever they think they will want, but that’s it, because they know we are going to go to flea markets to find new toys wherever we go. We are more forgiving with books - in many places, English-language books are hard to come by, especially at thrift stores or flea markets, so we either bring text-dense books to read to them (it is more efficient, size-wise) or Kindle versions (which have text you can read, but truly suck for illustrated books).

In addition, when packing, instead of picking “toys” for them, select “tools” that you all can use to get creative. For example, if you have a choice between a set of pens and a notebook OR a miniature tractor, go for the pens. The tractor is a toy that can be used for pretending to farm; the pens can create worlds, games, puzzles, or can simply be used just to draw.

For flights, Alice has also invented a “plane fairy” who gives the boys activity books with stickers, coloring-in, etc. These only cost $3-5 each, and can fascinate a kid for hours. When they are done with these, we make sure we have books, playing cards, dominoes, travel chess, and assorted tools for them to create with.

And do they?

Yes. They are fine. Worst-case, they look out the window at clouds and are bored.

We get a lot of feedback from other parents on this policy. It always falls into, “I wish my kids could do that. They go crazy without my phone,” or, “your kids are so well behaved and engaged with the world!” When old people see it, they usually say something akin to, “Now that’s how you raise children.” Of course, I very, very privately believe that my kids are inherently superior (genetically, intellectualy, and morally) to all other living beings who have ever existed; I am a father, after all. My secret fear, though, is that they are actually quite average, but other parents have trained their own children to tune out and only focus on screens, whereas we have trained ours to do things like observe their surroundings, play, and engage with the world.12

Can this engagement with the world exist alongside a phone on a train blasting “Samurai Pizza Cats”? Some people will argue that it absolutely can, and they intend to teach their kids to be able to be able to play endless hours of jewel-sorting games, watch hundreds of dubious healthcare videos and pay attention to where they are walking, all in the way of some sort of “digital learning strategy” to prepare them for the real world.13 I think it can, in theory, but reality is a whole different beast.14 It’s like saying, “you can work a full day, watch the American average of 3.5 hours of TV a day, spend the American average of 2.25 hours on social media, and also be a contributing member of your community, read books, play an instrument, and sleep eight hours a night.” It is absolutely possible, but a well-lived life is made infinitely easier by avoiding screens as a source of distraction from the world; you get your time and attention back to spend it on things that matter.

The same thing applies to kids. Pack some stuff for them to use to get creative when they are bored and train them to help themselves.

Train them to pay attention to screens.

The goal: prepare them for what they will see.

But.

There’s one use for screens (in very small doses) that I think is useful before a trip, and in controlled environments: YouTube.

Kids like learning about where they will be going, and a wonderful way to do this is to show them videos of the destination. Someone somewhere has done an English-language video showing the highlights of virtually every destination; these are good places to start. Then, make a list together of the things they want to know more about or see, and then delve into each. This can be done over months; you don’t need to binge watch them. For example, you might look at a video about Budapest; say your sons notice the food, and want to know more about goulash and sausages. You can find great videos about the food, and the kids get a soft introduction to what they might see, hear, and eat. Then, when you see these things in real life, they will already know something about what they are experiencing.

Can they do this from books? Absolutely. However, we’ve found that travel books are not often written for children (Geronimo Stilton was an excellent exception to this in Italy; we read two of them). Encyclopedias - the print kind - are inevitably 40 years out of date. Plus, if a kid can’t read in the first place, it’s harder to engage with books. Videos are really good for helping everyone prepare.

(Although a contrary view…

)

Another great resource for both kids and adults is transportation videos. There is an entire genre of YouTube videos that show viewers exactly how to use public transportation in other places. Sometimes, these are actually entertaining. Almost always, they are invaluable. There are many regional variations between bus services - from the technologically advanced systems in Milan and Rome to the almost antiquated systems in Palermo; if you expected the systems to be the same, you might find yourself getting fined for not getting the proper tickets.15 It is much easier if you can see the public transportation system in action and know how to use it before you go.

Finally, there are so many food videos from other cultures that teach viewers what to eat and, occasionally, how to eat; these can be wonderful to be able to show kids the variations in cuisines, and they will almost certainly enjoy learning about sweets and pastries that they might be able to taste as part of their cultural immersion program.

So to sum up: when used intelligently, YouTube is excellent for teaching kids about what they will see and experience before they step foot on a plane.

Train them to learn.

The goal: focus their attention on learning about a new place, and help them explore the culture that they are entering.

Kids are learning machines. They will learn. With a small amount of thought, you can turn a trip into a rewarding and enriching learning experience.

The focus here should be on exploring foreign cultures. Kids can learn about dinosaurs, space, or the deepest oceans wherever they are from books. When travelling, they have the opportunity to learn about other people and places, as well as themselves, and they should use their particular opportunities to learn.

There are a few ways to do this:

1. Museums

Many times, local museums have engagement activities for children - quizzes to fill out about exhibits, interactive displays, etc. These are great to visit on rainy or extremely hot days.

One caveat: sometimes a museum visit may seem to be a failure because the kids only engage for an hour or two. It can help to think of these museum visits more as a way to introduce them to museum culture, rather than to keep them looking at the landscape paintings of minor artists for four hours. Eventually, they will be more comfortable with art, and you will be able to justify paying for them to get into the Louvre.

2. Stories

You can learn a huge amount about a culture based on the stories that they tell themselves, and the stories that their children are raised with. Do their fairy tales emphasize compassion or violence? Do the characters treat other people as friends or enemies? Do they work together, as part of a team, or are they ruggedly individualistic? What do the villains try to do that is frowned upon, and what do the heroes do to save the day? These morality tales show what their culture has historically valued. In some places - the UK, Germany, and Denmark, for example - these are more readily available (in English) than in other places like Laos; however, it can be an adventure to find books that you can read together or to search out people who can tell local stories to your kids.

3. Religion

Similar to stories, learning about religious traditions is a great way to learn about a people. This can involve visiting places of worship, learning stories about their ideas of how the world started, or reading what might seem to be acid-trip accounts of past events. Official religions, too, may have local variations, or spirits or saints that matter to a city but are not as prominent elsewhere, and locals are often more than happy to share these traditions with interested children. Like with children’s stories, learning about religion is a great way to discover what people think of as important.

Train them to explore the real world through play.

The goal: help them run their little butts off, and get them used to physical exertion.

Kids, no less than adults, need to let off steam. Daily. Make sure that they explore playgrounds, parks, and anything else that will let them run around and get their energy out.

And who knows? They may make friends.

In Budapest, at a playground, a little girl walked up to me and said, “do your kids speak English?” I said yes, and she said, “can I play with them?” I said it was up to them. Nick, as is his way, said “you can be my friend!” and they played for a half hour together. Her babysitter, watching it all, told me that her parents were Americans who were in Hungary for work, and the girl didn’t have any friends; withing minutes, she was holding Nick’s hand as they ran through the misters to cool down.

You may wonder what you should do while kids play. I try to let my kids play without me being involved; it is a struggle, though, as my natural tendency would be to helicopter. So I try to sit on a bench and watch, from a distance, and let them explore. Some would then be tempted to check email, or catch up on the news, or to go through whatever feeds appear on their phones. I don’t think that this is a good idea. In fact, I think it is a grievous mistake - it takes your mind elsewhere. Instead, take the opportunity to meet other locals, to practice language, to meditate, or to relax.

If you can talk to other parents, it is a low risk and high reward experience - they are parents, right? You can get expert insight and tips from people who have the same concerns as you about things to do with kids, places to go, child friendly restaurants, good museums, or immersive kids theater (seriously). You may even be invited to coffee, tea, or for a play date; other parents are always eager for their kids to be exposed to English.

A plug: in Budapest, I met another father, Marc, who I now subscribe to (and recommend you do as well). He is American, speaks a bunch of other languages, has a handful of advanced degrees, and writes his local observations of international politics as a Hungarian resident (and his work on Ukraine is…well, terrifying, actually). He answered some of my questions about his hometown of Boston, and our kids played a bit in the sand pit. Now, I rely on him for a nuanced (and extraordinarily adventurous) voice from Eastern Europe.

You will never know who you will run into (or what you might discover) at foreign playgrounds, but one thing is for certain: you won’t meet people if you have a phone wall up.

I’m sure there’s more; please add any other advice you have in the comments!

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One of the great tragedies of life is that we are all immortal until proven otherwise.1

We don’t live with death in the same way as people did in the past, as we don’t confront mortality as constantly. For most of human history, people have lived with war, famine, and very few possessions, and they knew that everything was impermanent. Their constant companions were hunger, thirst, battle, exile, conflict, uncertainty. They yearned for the opposite: a state of peace, plenty, where everything they could possibly need was taken care of and they did not want.

So people invented imaginary lands – Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, Svarga, Jannah, Garothman, Gan Eden, Takamagahara - where things were permanent, and they had all of the necessities they could hope for, and they yearned for these lands, because the world as they knew it was none of these things. In our daily life, we have order and predictability – at least, compared to 99.99999% of our ancestors. What we have today, what we take for granted, is what people throughout history have wanted more than anything else. We live, really, in a world of near-permanent abundance.

And we expect that what we have will last – in a good way (indestructible plastic Nalgene water bottles, for example) and a bad way (plastic, generally). This expectation of permanence applies to everything. We live, really, in a synthetic bubble, where we expect what was here yesterday to be here today and here tomorrow. If anything seems like it might threaten this permanence, we get shook.

But when that happens, when something dislodges us from our reverie and reminds us that this too shall pass, it is eustress - it makes us stronger. We need these reminders.

Travel is a way to impart eustress in an intentional way.

And one of the things about travel is that is so magical is that it reminds us of the impermanence of…well, all of our daily experiences. In a new place, we are suddenly reminded that:

1. There is a world outside of our normal and immediate bubble;

2. Virtually every other person in the world doesn’t know or care about us;

3. Everything ends, and soon, we will have to say goodbye – to people, places, things.
   And life itself.

On our last day in Palermo, we took the 806 to Mondelo Bay. Marcello met us and showed us to our beach umbrellas. We bought roasted corn on the cob from the old man who showed up every morning at 11 a.m. to walk back and forth at the edge of the island, chanting the same words over and over to the sea and the sand, with his 30-something son pulling the giant plastic cooler that left flat tracks in the sand, and we rented a pedal boat from the nice family who always remembered that the boys love wearing lifejackets. I swam around the pier just before noon, treading water 20 yards out to listen to children doing cannonballs from the old wooden beams, then got toasted caprese sandwiches and mushroom arancini at La Lunette, and I thanked the woman who never smiled for always looking after us, which made her smile and call the chef out so that we could shake hands one last time. Under the umbrellas, I ordered a “Birra Messina cristalli di sale per favore,” and the teenager stopped, looked at me through his sunglasses, and said, in English, “You have a really good accent.” We got the 806 home, taking four seats in the back facing each other as the bus picked up teenagers and families until the aisles were Tetrissed with bare shoulders and smelled of sunscreen and sweat, and it would be the same the next day, and the day after that, and on and on perhaps for eternity, but never again with us on board as witnesses.

At the last stop on the line, we got out and walked slowly to Dolce Capo. We got cones and sat on the patio across the street. I went in for a second cone and two Germans with black North Face backpacks were going back and forth over what to get, and I helped them order because the woman behind the counter was getting impatient with them holding up the line.

We packed. As I layered things in my bag, I made a list of souvenirs. They were,

From Milan:

1. Ten Muji notebooks, which became a written record of the trip;

2. One “ABRACADABRA” tote bag (sent to Bianca);

3. Post-Its from a stationary shop, used for planning.

From Bologna:

1. A half-burned candle from a nunnery we stayed at;

2. One corkscrew advertising the “Castellana Grotte” caves in Apullia, which we did not visit;

3. A red “Leonardo” inkwell and a stick of sealing wax, also red, from the pen shop;

4. Two packets of pepper seeds from the botanical gardens, which are growing on my windowsill as I type this.

From Florence:

1. One half-marathon shirt from Lucca, a race that they didn’t let me run;

2. One green Bianchi water bottle, found next to a dirt trail while I was running a substitute self-created half-marathon;

3. A 1963 tourist map of Florence, found in the street on my way back from the gym, showing that there had been no change in the layout over the last 62 years;

4. “Hair paste” from a corner store;

5. Perfumes from a small perfumer to make me smell like a 1972 Fiat 500 convertible driving from Positano to Arienzo in April;

6. A chef knife, purchased when the knives in our kitchen had the sturdiness of paper; Proraso shaving soap; two shoe brushes (one for Daniel alone, one for me and Nicholas to share); burgundy Saphir shoe polish and Saphir Creme Universalle, and a stick of “Victor” deoderant from a general store in Florence;

7. Be like the Fox (a gift from Meredith, a biography of Machiavelli arguing that The Prince was actually a satire.

From Rome:

1. One extra-soft toothbrush;

2. “Several” tubes of Italian toothpaste;

3. One Marconi straight razor (circa 1910) from the Rome flea market, which is now the only razor I use;

4. One small moonstone found in a crack near the Spanish Steps in Rome;

5. One silk pocket square, found in the Borghese gardens in Rome;

6. One sailcloth backpack from the Trastevere flea market;

7. One bar of Trader Joe’s soap, brought by my dad as a present from California.

From Sorrento:

1. MyPompeii annual pass from Pompeii;

2. One spatula, as the apartment had brand-new pots and pans but no cooking utensils;

3. Laundry soap, because our apartment didn’t have a washing machine;

4. Three Roman coins and one Roman nail, found in the dirt near the swing set in a playground;

5. Three wooden wine crates, found on the side of the road during a short run;

6. One chunk of marble, found on the side of the road during a long run.

From Palermo:

1. Assorted nautical strings collected from the bottom of Mondello Bay;

2. Two pearl earrings (unmatching) (“Those are pearls that were his eyes”) from the bottom of Mondello Bay;

3. Two friendship bracelets from the shore of Mondello Bay (one sent to Bianca and now lost forever, one which is still on my right wrist);

4. Assorted seashells from Mondello Bay;

5. One Speedo-style bathing suit, purchased as a replacement when my old suit ripped obscenely during a swim;

6. One brass belt buckle, found floating with a pair of Levi’s size 38x32 in Mondello Bay;

7. A box of marzipan fruit from the convent bakery, sent to my sister;

8. Two bottle openers from a flea market, one advertising a San Pelligrino drink that was only made in the 1950s (which we use almost daily) and one advertising what appears to be a fake business set up as a mafia front (sent to my sister);

9. Four 1920s school dip pens from a flea market (two sent to my sister and Bianca, two kept);

10. 1930s English pen nibs from the flea market, €5 for a box of about 100, which are incredibly frustrating to use;

11. One shoe horn from a 1930s shoe store that appears to have been bombed to smithereens during the war, bought at the flea market;

12. Persol glasses frames (in honor of Sonny);

13. One stick of red sealing wax from the stationer run by the three septuagenarians who never seemed to have any other customers;

14. Two litres of vino sfuso - one red and one white - from Palermo and Mondello, which nearly sent me over my luggage weight limit;

15. One green shopping token from the Famila grocery store that someone had left in a trolley, and which we used every day;

16. Two meters of Sicilian fabric from the cloth market, to be made into lampshades and napkins and patches for ripped garments;

17. Two Morretino coffee cans, purchased from the puppet museum, one which still holds espresso beans, one given to my brother-in-law;

18. One extremely long rolling pin from a flea market.

Plus:

1. Eighteen plant cuttings, carried home in a water bottle and propagated;

2. Stickers from every city we visited, all mosaicked on my water bottle.

If anyone asks you if you would rather take a bus or a train from Palermo to Catania, take a train. The bus is hot, crowded, and has a toilet that, while technically functioning, smells so strongly of month-old sewage that nobody will use it after the first person opens the door and floods the cabin with the stench. You do get to see the center of Sicily, though, which, at the height of summer and under a cloudless sky, is a manifestation of Eliot:

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

The middle of Sicily is like the Wild West – small villages perched on far-off hilltops separated by a Hobbesian hell. I grew up in Southern California, where the “reclaimed” desert was so parched that my friends’ homes burned in our near-annual wildfires, but Sicily made our San Diego sagebrush suburb look like a rain forest. Occasionally, we’d catch a glimpse of livestock huddled in the shade of an orangebrown sheet of corrugated iron, or a shack (not mudcracked, but not far off) that looked uninhabited save for the tricycle laying in the dust outside of an open doorway, wheels still spinning, but other than that, it would have been hard for anything but lizards and snakes to survive. Between the rare outposts, everything seemed subject to rapid desiccation.

And then you enter Catania, at the base of Etna, and it is beautiful – like a wealthy, non-bombed Palermo. There are tiled squares and air conditioned cultural centres, gushing fountains, a stunning cathedral, reasonably good gelato, the most elegant jewelry store I’ve ever seen, extraordinarily narrow streets, tiny restaurants full of plants, and encampments of refugees hoping to make it across to the boot.

On the morning before our flight, I went for an early walk. I passed Roman ruins waking up to their 730,544th (or so) morning, and followed a group of middle-aged construction workers into a posh bakery and waited while they flirted like school boys with the shop attendant. I ordered twice as many pastries for breakfast as we needed, but it was the last meal before our trip died, and I carried them in their fancy box down Via Alessandro Manzoni with Etna smoking behind me. I picked up a succulent with purplegreen leaves that had fallen from a planter and put it in my water bottle with the others - a final souvenir. I stopped at a caffe for an espresso and stood next to a man with a thin moustache and light sunglasses who seemed as if he was trying to be seen.

The taxi arrived. The driver took us around the gardens, then through the suburbs to the terminal.

And then we were passing through gates that testified silently that we had nothing to declare.

Our apartment was the same, just dustier. We unpacked, and I sorted all the plants into their new homes and souvenirs into their new places. I sent packages to Bianca and my sister. I brought the fabric to the tailor, who made a set of napkins. We searched through Italian cookbooks for Cacio e Pepe and Porchetta recipes, got books on pizza and pasta, and learned to use an ice cream maker. I stopped drinking Americanos and only drank espressos.

And got restless.

We have the tendency to look at trips as separate sections of our lives. There is a beginning – a boarding time, say – and end: our ETA, or perhaps that first moment we walk back into the office. And before and after these times, we experience the rest of our lives. The vacation is the fun part; the day-to-day part is drudgery, what we try to escape.

But it would be good to remember that what we experience in our every-day lives is a dream vacation to other people. I’m not just talking about living in San Diego, Miami, Boston, Paris, London, or Rome; plenty of people would love to get to someplace “normal” like Des Moines, or Buffalo, or…well, even Salt Lake City has a certain je ne sais quoi.

St. Augustine didn’t actually say, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page,” but someone did, and it now seems to be generally accepted. If we assume it is true, and we can agree that books teach us, assuming we can learn, and if we learn, we grow as people, then travelling, too, helps us to learn and grow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson also apparently wrote, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” This, too, is often accepted as wisdom. But I’d argue that it isn’t about either the journey or the destination, because that is external; the real value is about who we become in our travels, both at home and abroad. Maybe we should focus on the journey, of course, but we need to be grateful for the product: ourselves.

And if Carlyle was right that we should not rely solely on formal education to learn, but that “the true university of these days is a collection of books,” and that it is important to continue to learn/read long after our formal school days are done, let’s push this further: if reading is critical, and the world is like a book, and to read the world we need to travel, then we need to keep travelling (and reading!) in order to keep learning and growing.

We wanted to find a capital city that would offer the kids a lot of places to play and give the adults a lot of culture. It needed to be cheap enough for us to stay a month, have a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu club and a gym, good public transportation, good day trips, and bodies of water that the boys could play in to escape the heat. It would ideally have amazing food, a history of good coffee, a unique indigenous fermented beverage, a strong sense of history, beautiful architecture, a zoo, multiple museums, a brilliant literary tradition, good parks, and be a direct flight from Edinburgh.

And so we beat on.

Next stop: Budapest.

But are they the right words?

The words that tell you what is actually happening?

They capture physical objects at a single moment in time, but do they explain history, emotions, the future?

I was looking for photos of Cefalù in order to anchor this piece, and found very few of any interest or use. The thing that struck me is that photographs are really so limited. Let’s assume every photo actually does speak a thousand words. A thousand words is fine if you want any thousand words, and oftentimes it seems like any unselected, haphazard thousand words will get a thumbs up, or a heart, especially if the thousand-word photograph says something about a slim 20-year-old white woman in a bikini. But for the real story of a place or time or people, are those thousand words appropriate? Enough? Do they convey the right information? What do they actually say that is important? A photograph can direct our attention to a single scene, but you don’t get anything outside of the frame, beyond the borders, to the left, right, above, below, or behind the viewer, and they won’t communicate what a bowl of bibimbap’s steam smells like, how a honeycrisp apple cracks, the flutters of the muezzin’s voice, the hard coldness of a glacier-fed mountain stream (or how a rainbow trout, taken from it by a fly and cooked over a campfire, tastes after a day-long hike). The best photographs can tell a pretty good story - about the subject, or perhaps ourselves. But the best stories still tell the best stories, and oftentimes, the real stories aren’t photographable, because photographs can’t actually tell the whole story - they can only tell a small part.

Photographs are short stories for lazy people who don’t want depth.

And for those stories that are far, far larger than photographs, we still have words.

I think that's the difference between Substack and other social media, and why I am trying to train the algorithm to stop adding photos to my notes feed: here, the thousand words do not need to be scattershot, or random, but can be chosen, selected, intentional.

And that makes a real, valuable, difference.

Anyways, here’s a photograph Alice took in Cefalù.

What is there to say about Cefalù? It is as inoffensive a place as is possible to imagine, nestled between volcanic cliffs and the tranquil Mediterranean sea. The tourist shops are full – of tourists, yes, and bottles of mass-market limoncello, paper-thin shawls, straw hats with vaguely nautical ribbons, polyester beach towels, racks and racks of postcards and fridge magnets and, incongruously, an impressive variety of plastic snow globes. There are long, rambling single-lane cobblestone streets spilling over with caffès and trattorias, and an antique cathedral with a huge square in front of it surrounded by caffès and trattorias, and a sandy city beachfront that curves along a cove with a boardwalk lined with caffès and trattorias. Potted plants spill out from windowsills and line the sidewalks, and a three-wheeled truck, outfitted to display a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables from its back, crawls through the streets, a forlorn voice calling aging dowagers from their ground floor apartments to top up their pantries for cena. The sun shines here but, unlike Palermo, the streets are arranged so that they are mostly shaded by the buildings, and with the breeze dancing between the lava cliffs above and the blue brine below, one could spend a genuinely pleasant afternoon here.1

The thing is, on this particular Tuesday, I couldn’t stay in this part of Cefalù.

Twenty-six years ago, on a similarly pleasant spring day in Los Angeles, I’d climbed into my car with a guy I didn’t really like and two complete strangers. I was a sophomore at Pitzer College; the guy, Dan, was my former roommate; the strangers, Bianca and Cindy, were first-years and, in retrospect, it is remarkable that they both decided to go on a ten-hour car trip with two strange men. A few days before, I’d sent out an all-campus email: I was going to San Francisco for spring break and I was looking for people to share the ride and help cover the cost of gas. Dan, Bianca, and Cindy were the first three to respond. For some reason, Bianca got shotgun for the first leg of the trip. Seconds after pulling out of the parking space, and before we’d even exited the lot, she said, “I never thought I’d spend New Years naked, tied to a pole, getting whipped by transvestites in a basement in Oakland.”

I stopped at the intersection leading out of our college, looked at her, and said, “We’re going to be friends.”2

Dan and Cindy stayed in the back of the car for the rest of the trip; I don’t remember them talking at all.

Bianca and I have been friends ever since, despite the fact that we never lived in the same place after that semester. I studied in Wales for a year; when I returned, Bianca was off to do the same in Japan. I moved to Portland after graduation, then San Diego; when she graduated, she moved to Berkeley, then back to Japan. I moved to Barcelona, then Cleveland; she moved back to San Francisco, then Chicago, then Bloomington, then Chicago, then Las Vegas. She came to see me in Ohio, and I visited her in Illinois.

And we had adventures. For her birthday one year in Los Angeles, her boyfriend ditched her to do something else, so we spent most of a Friday drinking champagne and gluing googly eyes on Birds of Paradise flowers - hundreds and hundreds of them, so many that a college class came out to discuss what the “artists” intended to communicate with their unauthorized installation project. In Cleveland, we smoked Cuban cigars on Rockefeller’s grave and drove through the back roads of Ohio Amish Country, blasting Tupac to the cornfields and eating burgers at roadside stands. We danced obscenely with each other at Mickey Avalon concerts, clearing floors and going backstage to meet the Dyslexic Speedreaders themselves. We ran a 5k nearly naked in frigid Bloomington, Indiana, where she got her Masters; she wore a tutu, I wore a silicone horse mask.3 Instead of going home to see her family for Thanksgiving, she took a six-hour Megabus to stay with me, and we lounged around in pajamas, drinking Alizé and cognac and eating Cuban pulled pork instead of turkey. For Halloween one year, we dressed up as Die Antwoord; we started at a bourgeois house party and, after drinking a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red by ourselves, somehow ended up in a dungeon where, trying to pretend I was not out of place at all, that I was completely comfortable, I tried to make small talk with a lesbian couple, one of them wearing a black leather dog collar and unable, by agreement with her partner, to speak without permission.4 Once, knowing I’d been through a bad breakup, she invited me to stay for Labor Day; she made a joke that we should wear coveralls for the weekend, but I didn’t get the joke, so I said I could bring my Amish hat, too. She did a “Yes, And” and immediately told everyone that her Amish cousin was visiting on his Rumspringa, which led to one of the greatest weekends of my life.

For most of this time, and especially during the pandemic, we wrote each other letters. Bianca's were always long – she would fill a bound notebook with her thoughts over the course of months, then send it whole, and every package was like receiving a small personal book, written just for me. Over time, she got more and more into spirituality, and her letters began to detail her journey and explorations, culminating in her deciding to get into a group known as OTO. As she wrote to me later:

Ordo Templi Orientis (or O.T.O.) is Aleister Crowley’s co-ed sex magick focused initiatory occult order founded on the principles of a religion called Thelema and vaguely related to Freemasonry.

I had been saying that I needed a social outlet, “something like Church, but not Christian,” and an acquaintance invited me into the local chapter, which was in desperate need of female members to fill the Priestess role in ritual. I was obsessed with the lore of Jack Parsons, a polyamorous occultist Rocket Scientist who pioneered O.T.O. in the USA in the 1940s, and wanted to follow in his footsteps.

A week before we went to Cefalù, I sent Bianca a message that we'd be going, and that there was an abbey there she might be interested in:

I had no idea what I was in for.

Everything I knew about Thelema had, so far, been from her letters. I started doing research on the abbey, and on Crowley, “the wickedest man in the world,” and then went down the rabbit hole of Thelema. In short, Crowley had moved to Cefalù in 1920 to start the abbey, which he wanted to grow as a school of “magical devotion,” and he had planned to support it using tuition from students. However, just a few years after it started, one of the students died; the student’s wife blamed the death on a ritual that involved drinking the blood of a dead cat and, as an international furore grew, Mussolini himself demanded that Crowley leave Italy. After that, the abbey was abandoned. The dilapidated remains are now in the shadow of a local stadium, and they are a pilgrimage site for devotees of Crowley and Thelema (like Bianca), or their unwitting and susceptible proxies (like me).

But I’d made a promise to Bianca so, after most of a day seeing the pretty parts of Cefalù, I said goodbye to Alice and the boys at a tree-shaded playground and started up the hill. When you have a family, and two young boys, and you are all on vacation, and suddenly you have alone time in a completely new city, there is a sudden adjustment: you go from being a 60-year-old shepherd to becoming a 20-year-old pioneer. There is a reversion, a youthing and immaturing process, that might take a moment but needs to be acknowledged. Suddenly without responsibilities to be an adult, one’s first instinct might be to find a bar and drink a pitcher of their cheapest chianti, to go to a corner shop and get a hundred euros in lottery scratchers, to pick up smoking. I wasn’t walking with my back hunched over to make it easier for Daniel to hold my hand; I wasn’t pushing Nick along steep stone streets that weren’t even designed for cars, much less buggies. My eyes weren’t darting every which way to search for speeding cyclists on the sidewalks, dog shit smeared into pungent landmines, drunk urine puddles, anklebreaker potholes, shattered beer bottles, pedestrians watching TikTok on their phones; I could wander, light-footed and carefree.

So I straightened up, my legs taking longer, faster steps just because I could. I had a job to do.

After walking along the picture-perfect Via Giacomo Matteotti, I turned right on Via Giuseppe Mazzini, and I was suddenly in a different part of Sicily. It was like going backstage, behind a play set, and seeing the well-used ropes and painted sheets and actors without their make-up on. Cefalù is topographically deceptive; because of the way the streets slope gently in the main town, and the buildings are packed so closely next to each other, it is impossible to really get a sense of how close to vertical the surrounding landscape truly is. Once you get out of the city center, the streets become two way and two lane, and the buildings start spreading out, and you can see that the terrain climbs at a remarkable angle upwards - you can see it in the first photo above, the steps rising up and up and then the apartment building and then, just behind it, a cliff, demanding attention. Also, because of the shade in the streets and the breeze near the sea, it is easy to forget that 99.99% of Sicily is oven hot and desert dry, and once the ocean is more than a few blocks away, the sun seems suddenly so much closer.

So just as suddenly I was sweating, and climbing uphill at what felt like a 45° angle. If it had been cool, it would have been tough; in the Sun, it was murder. Cars zoomed past, kicking up dust and spewing diesel fumes, and a visible layer of filth built up on my clothes and on my skin as it mingled with my sweat, which, despite how dry the air was, seemed only to accumulate, soaking my shirt and boxers and shorts and backpack in dark, sour-smelling patches. I stopped twice and drained my water bottle. Sweat collected in my eyebrows and, when I went to squeegee it toward my temples with my fingers, a drop escaped and cleaned a line down my dusty sunglasses lenses.

I had a vision: Crowley and his followers on this road, the women in layered dresses and hats and the men in loose suits, descending into town to secure supplies, or to ceremonially bathe at the waterfront, then returning up the hill in this same unrelenting heat.

I was out of breath when I got to the stadium parking lot entrance. I stopped, my boatshoe soles barely insulating my feet from the volcanic rocks and molten sand. Except for a rhythmic metal clanging, the only thing I could hear was the low howl of the wind, and suddenly I was in the opening scene of an exceptionally violent western movie. Rather than a cooling breeze, though, it seemed to be bringing air from the sweltering inland toward the cooler coast, and it brought no relief.

I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heart down.

The clanging was coming from men working on the stadium bleachers. They were wearing orange vests and white hard hats, and I could see them see me and then turn away. I wondered how much they knew about where we were.

The abbey ruins are just inside the entrance, to the left, sandwiched between the stadium parking lot and some apartment blocks. "Ruins" is generous: there was a vacant lot, overgrown with dense weeds and bushes that were growing between trash that would never be collected.

As I looked at it, I slowly realized that I was staring into a hole.

In Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series, and in many of his stories, there are places of evil: single points where anyone walking by would feel a heaviness come through the ground, places one would expect small animals to suddenly fall dead, without explanation, and scavengers wouldn't go even for an easy meal. Kids tell stories about these spots, and dare each other to go closer, but they never do; bad things happen to the ones who venture too close. Maybe their elders cross themselves when passing to ward off the evil eye; maybe young and ambitious priests attempt exorcisms in order to show their faith to their superiors and to test their faith themselves. These are wicked places, evil places. Perhaps, when designing the stadium and the apartments, the architects and planners saw that building here would be a bad idea; maybe something in the topography or the soil indicated that any edifice above would ultimately fall, and the land was skipped over. Maybe the Mussolinis still owned the land and refused to sell. Whatever it was, though, it was here, overgrown, empty, abandoned, dead. I wondered if it had always been this way – if the Romans, landing on the beach and wandering the hills, had felt it, and if the natives, for thousands of years, had stayed away, keeping their sheep and goats from grazing here, tasting a sourness in the milk of the cows who had nibbled the grass growing between these rocks. I wondered if the people whose apartment windows I could look into had any idea what had happened here, if they knew of the orgies, the ritual violence, the sacrifices, the characters with worldwide reputations who had lived here 100 years ago. Was this a place that the neighbourhood kids thought of as haunted, and then, when older, if they came here to smoke cigarettes and talk? Maybe nowadays, kids don't do that sort of thing – they just sit on their phones, their attention consumed by Chinese technology vying with American technology to degrade their dying attention spans. If they looked up, they might feel like I did: as if a tiger was crouched, ready to pounce on top of me and drag me to my death.

I thought: did Crowley see the same thing? Is that actually why he came here, to this very spot?

I took a step backwards. It stayed, the darkness, stuck in place.

I took another deep breath, this time to try to slow my heartbeat down.

There was a line of low concrete blocks, which I stepped over, but that was as far as I dared go. What was wrong with me? I didn't believe in this crap. Darkness. Spirits. The evil eye. All nonsense. It was a vacant lot, with dark green plants filtering the life-giving light, returning nutrients to the fallow soil, and I, a nonbeliever, could enter at will without being troubled by these superstitions. I thought of the line from The Sun Also Rises, where the upset narrator, Jake, says that it’s easy to be hard-boiled during the day, but at night it’s another thing. Boy, he hadn’t come to Cefalù.

And I thought: there was starlight here, once.

Gin in tall, cool glasses, sipped by people with big plans.

Lights flickering out in the town below.

The tweeting of birds, lizards rasping, insects buzzing, rodents rustling through the brush. The neighbors, after dinner, washing metal pans, and perhaps a waltz from a distant radio.

Yellow gas lights, not enough to read by but enough to light the way.

Laughter.

And someone was watching me.

I took a step forward, then another, then tried for a third. I was not welcome here. I knew it.

I put a few of the coins on a broken down stone wall, and flung the rest into the tall weeds and grass that had been growing there for 100 years, that very well may have been the direct descendants of the clover and dandelions that were sprouting during the death. I raised up the bottle to the sky and said, “this is for Bianca, who asks for your blessing,” and then tipped it over, watching the purple Chianti stream out onto the dirt, being sucked up into the dry ground as soon as it struck, barely even splashing, so thirsty was the soil. Maybe the workers fixing the stadium were watching me; I didn’t turn my head to see. The eyes I felt on my face weren’t theirs anyway.

Sometimes, when you are watching a cat sleep, they suddenly exhale loudly, forcefully, and they relax even more, and you realise that even though they looked as limp as an old sock before, there was a hidden tension in their muscles that was just released. Now the wind came up from the whiteblue Mediterranean and the leaves of the trees shook as the last few drops of wine dripped off the lip of the bottle, and then the leaves settled back, for all appearances exactly as they were before, but something was different, as if the cat had relaxed, as if a debt had been paid.

I pulled out a plastic bag and scooped up dirt for Bianca.

One step back, and a vine caught my ankle. I had the feeling of being at the edge of a tiger’s cage; as long as I kept my distance, I was almost safe, but any further and I would be consumed.

I got back to the parking lot. Suddenly, I realised how loud the plants were; here, just over the concrete blocks, the wind was blowing and the clanging was coming from inside the stadium again.

I took one last deep breath, turned on my heels, and walked away.

I walked quickly, at some points almost trotting, slowing down when I was in the shade of a building and speeding up in the sun. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone in a car; I passed two pedestrians, and nodded to them, and I have to hope that all they saw was a sweaty, smelly tourist. It was in one of these sunny spots that I suddenly felt something on my legs. I went back and knelt down next to an open grate. A tiny spray of mist was coming up out of a cracked pipe; the droplets evaporated almost as soon as they hit the concrete, but I had not imagined it - it was a tiny spring. I passed my hands through the spray, rubbing my forearms down, and then stood over it, angling my legs, calves, and feet, trying to cool them down. The water collected on my leg hairs, and the larger droplets trickled down, collecting some of the dust as they went, leaving dark trails.

I got to the playground. The boys ran to me, and I lifted them both, laughing. Nick asked where I had gone, and I told him that there was just something I needed to do. Then I went over to the water fountain. I filled my bottle and drank it, filled it again, and then put my head under the stream of water, trying to wash it off of me.

When I got back from Italy, I sent Bianca a package. It had the long letter I had started in Milan and finished in Catania, candles from a convent we stayed at, a 1920s dip pen with a nib from a flea market, some sailing line I found on the beach, a pearl earring I found at the bottom of Mondello Bay when I was swimming, a moonstone I found on the Spanish Steps in Rome, a silk pocket square I found in the Borghese gardens, a friendship bracelet, a tote bag that said “ABRACADABRA” on it, and the dirt.

The package never arrived.

I had sent it tracked, and it was marked as delivered, but she got nothing. There was no photo confirmation, and no way to collect insurance on it. It had simply disappeared.

Then, two weeks later, Bianca sent me this photo.

She was in the alley behind her building taking out the trash, and she found the letter. I had written it with a fountain pen, using blood-red Italian ink, and since it had rained the ink had run. It seemed as if the package had ended up behind her apartment, and had been opened. She had the illegible letter.

Everything else was gone.

And this, to me, is the most enduring image of Cefalù - a photo actually taken in Chicago, of a letter written over months traveling the entire length of Italy, to a wonderful friend I’ve had for decades, for whom I would stare down darkness and pour out perfectly good wine as a sacrifice to supplicate the angry spirits.5

And while I love the photo, that love comes from knowing that the more important thing - the entire 26-year story behind it - is something no mere thousand-word picture can ever capture.

3

We also got in the newspaper:

In the center of Palermo, there are the four corners, Quattro Canti, where Via Maqueda and Via Vittorio Emanuele collide. This is where the old city divided itself into quarters; now, it is a square where opera singers compete for spare coins and pickpockets bump into inattentive lovers.

We are staying about 50 yards to the east and, on this day, we invite you to come with us for a treat. We will ciao Giuseppe, the doorman, sweeping the stoop slowly as he listens to a morbidly obese man in a chocolate-stained chocolate-colored polo shirt, then go right on Via Vittorio Emanuele, past the Wild West bar, which is successful enough to sponsor the local football team but suspiciously never seems to have any customers, and then we cross the street. The hot street. It is midday in Palermo, and the sun is on top of us, and the heat has settled onto the city, not ricocheting from every surface so much as infused into every molecule of air, every atom of stone wall and car window and sidewalk slab. It sears us as soon as we step out of the short shadow of the apartment block, and we scurry across the black asphalt like mice trying to escape a cat’s notice until we get to the narrow marble stairway cut between the buildings. Here, the walls provide some relief (come in under the shadow of this white rock), but only temporarily.

This is the last point when we can put on our sunglasses before we really need them.

The steps have been worn by 500 years of penitent feet and, like everything else in this city, they are covered in pollution, dirt, filth. They smell like layered deposits of wine urine and beer urine and the fried food that still sits in the discarded takeout boxes that have been kicked into the corners, waiting for the trash collectors to make their daily rounds. There is a glare from up ahead, like the sun just about to rise above the horizon, but it is wider and brighter and angrier. With each step up it gets more intense until we reach the square. In this place, at this time, the heat is as intense as it was in the street, but what now overwhelms us is light, light, all-encompassing light, as if, in Genesis, God’s first action had been to let there be this piazza, and there was this piazza. Because the marble is white, and the sun is directly overhead, the rays attack from every direction; sunglasses can help a bit, but we still have to squint, and Nick, in his buggy, just leans back under the visor and covers his eyes with his chubby little fists. To the right is the Pretoria fountain, best visible in the early morning and at night, when it isn’t so violently and aggressively radiant.

This is the Square of Shame.

We scurry towards the staircase on the left wall, stumbling up it, grasping our way to the unmarked door. The best and most famous bakery in Sicily is a signless holy speakeasy, and the only reason to think we might be able to enter is the young person standing duty outside, welcoming everyone who approaches with a smile. There are perhaps five people who rotate through this job, and they are all so similar that you get the sense that they might be related. Their main job, rather than welcoming people in, seems to be to warn them about the steps inside, and it is not because this place would violate pretty much all ADA regulations. No matter how quickly you can get through the glaring square, your retinas will be pinpricks, and entering the cool, dark doorway is like being swallowed by a whale. Suddenly all is darkness, and where we were blinded before by the light, now we are merely blind. A moment in the vestibule will reveal vague shapes, and we will fall up the stairs. Now, too, our senses change priority. On the surrounding streets, the sounds and smells assaulted us: the clip clop of horses hooves pulling carriages, arancini frying, hoarse-voiced waiters calling for customers in a hundred different tongues, Vespa engines gunning, unfiltered cigarettes, unfiltered exhaust, 11 am drunks shrieking over their Aperol spritzes, horse and human urine boiling on the stones, the hiss of espressos. Here, there is the smell of dusty rugs, and

Silence.

Five hundred years ago, this might have been why people might have given up sex and society: for the peace of these rooms against the sensory maelstrom outside.

The museum at the top of the steps is interesting, but we will see it later. Now, like most other people, we pass through the rooms with barely a glance on our way to the inner courtyard. The sunshine is bright here, but instead of the exposed marble covered like a smoker’s lungs in sticky black filth that we just passed through, this courtyard is a facsimile of Eden framed by a covered walkway and filled with trees and plants and a fountain in the middle, and the light is diffused, subdued, calm. We follow the walkway to the left, then right, and then up to the door, where another young person is smiling and beckoning us in. We take a numbered ticket from a little machine. On a weekend, the line of customers outside of the door can stretch the length of the covered walkway as the greeters limit how many people go inside; on a weekday, we always walk straight in. Let’s pretend this is a weekday and we part the clicking beaded curtain that keeps the flies out to enter a massive, almost imposing hall. In my memory, it is colored terracotta with exposed wooden beams and white walls. Photos tell me that it was much more modern, almost like a high school cafeteria, with metal refrigerators and efficient workspaces everywhere.

The cannoli station is in front of the left wall; the round brown shells, the bags stuffed with filling, the toppings in their individual bowls, symmetrically arranged as if they were on an alter. The cases with pre-made pastries and cakes are straight ahead, displayed simply, without any need for earthly adornment, with small signs saying what they are, and anyone with a rudimentary understanding of any Latinate language will smile and consider getting nun’s breasts or chancellor’s buttocks. The marzipan display and checkout are on the right, the fruit-themed diorama looking like a Renaissance still-life and the cash register reminding everyone that yes, this is a commercial enterprise, and a successful one at that.

If we didn’t have numbered tickets, we would have to line up in order as if we were waiting to check our bags at the airport. When we got to the front, the woman behind the counter – and they are all women – would ask us what we wanted, and then, suddenly able to roam about and actually see their offerings without fear of losing our place, we would make our decisions. Instead, the tickets give us the freedom to wander, browse, decide what we want, and when our number is called, we can order and be served more rapidly.

So with this freedom, we wander, making our choices.

“Trentatrì!” We approach the counter. Even though there were at least five women serving customers at any given time, Maria served us every time we visited. She had glasses and brown hair and, after our first or second visit, always a warm smile for the boys.

There are three steps to ordering. First, the cannoli – and we must get the cannoli here. Second, any supplementary pastries, like a slice of cake, intricately decorated cookies, marzipan fruit, or nun’s breasts. Third, we take our receipt to the till in the northwest corner, and then bring that receipt back to collect our treats.

On some days, we took the pastries home. The superior way of experiencing them, though, is in the courtyard, so let’s go there. If we earlier entered on a weekday to avoid waiting, now, let us imagine that we exit on a weekend, our hands full, because while hunger may make the best sauce, there is still something uncomfortably and sinfully delicious about having what everyone else wants and is waiting for. So now, we walk out past the long line, our pastries in hand, and back into the sun, which is not as bright here in the garden, even if we are closer to it. Here, orange tree branches bend low with their wombs, roses offer themselves outrageously to anyone passing, and bees helicopter between the perfume blossoms, inhaling the fragrance with an intensity we humans could only dream of. Today, as with every day, we find the bench in the far corner gloriously unoccupied, and we bend to blow away the fallen brown flowers before sitting on its paintpeeling slats. Unfolding the paper is an unboxing ritual Apple could only wish it had designed, and, once undressed, we see the colors of our sacred sweets – colors that have been muted inside the hall but here, in the leaf filtered sunshine, seem to breathe life within an intensity that only God could have given to these breasts and bottoms.

The pastries here are not often available elsewhere, so it is difficult to say that they are superior to their competitors, since direct competitors often don’t exist. There are plenty of places to get cannoli, though, and one may be tempted to ask, “well, why shouldn’t I just get cannoli elsewhere? What is special about this?”

For a purely objective answer, imagine you are given two tortilla chips and two bowls of salsa, as identical as possible, and you have to eat and compare both chips with salsa. The difference: the chip on the left can be dipped in the salsa and eaten immediately, while the chip on the right has to be left in the salsa for at least four hours before it is consumed. The natural result: the salsa-marinated chip would be soaked and disgusting. Something similar happens with cannoli. You have a hard, fried shell, with a crunchiness somewhere between a chip and a graham cracker, and it is filled with sweetened, flavoured ricotta cheese and assorted extra bits. Consumed immediately, as you can do here, a cannoli is a multi-sensory experience: it is soft, sweet, and crunchy, all at once, and the shell will flake where your teeth sheared off chunks. If it is consumed four or six or eight hours later, though, the shell takes on the consistency of a day-old shrink-wrapped grocery-store croissant, and the flavours that were so distinct when it was fresh have melted together. Because cannoli are most efficiently produced at scale in a factory or at least an assembly line, 99.999% of places that serve cannoli will either buy them from a factory or, at best, make them in the morning, then let them sit in refrigerated glass pastry display cases for hours until someone orders one, and the server will then pick the oldest one to send out.

So yes, you pay for the story here, and the atmosphere, and the ingredients (but even then, the higher price is so slight as to be negligible). However, unlike so many luxury experiences, fresh cannoli here is one instance where a 2X or 5X or 17X increase in price would be justified, simply because the quality difference is so dramatic as to be easily recognised by anyone.

Finished, the boys watch the bees among the rose petals and trace the patterns on the shattering blue-and-white tiles, but other pilgrims are eyeing our bench, so we release it. On the way out, we pass the confessionals, and then go through the museum, looking at the sceptres and gowns and other status markers of long forgotten days.

At the bottom of the stairs, just before exiting, we put on our sunglasses again. It is time to re-enter the world. I realise that perhaps this particular door had been designed 500 years ago as a metaphor, and that with the heat and sensory overload of the city, with its grime and trash and the omnipresent smell of animal waste, one might be forgiven for imagining that this was an almost literal descent into hell. If that is the case, it is still nice to know that heaven is just a cannoli away.

###

For more, Gambero Rosso has an excellent writeup here; National Geographic had a wonderful history of cannoli here; and for more about the actual convent, see:

Shop Rat by Emilia Petrarca

The Holiest Cannoli Is Inside a Convent

Ciao! I’ve been traveling alone in Sicily for the last five days and, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve become obsessed with a convent…

Read more

2 years ago · 128 likes · 7 comments · Emilia Petrarca

"Just to be crystal clear, I've never met an American I didn't like, but I absolutely hate America."

He went on to explain that in his view, America was an imperialist cancer that had shown an historical eagerness to use unrestrained violence to achieve its own ends, trampling on the rights of millions of people in foreign countries, solely after wealth and plunder without concern for others. A diplomat even at 20, I smiled and decided not to point out that every criticism he had of America could also be levied against his own beloved UK, as well as France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Russia, China, Japan, and many other countries and peoples, and would be true for every other country if they could only gain sufficient power and military might. But his words and sentiments about my homeland have stayed with me ever since, and I’m reminded of them now more than ever.

Because now, America - or, more specifically, the American government - is causing all sorts of international stress. Europeans in particular are looking at America and feeling a mixture of anger, rage, and fear. The majority of Americans seem to be feeling the same things about their own national government.

But just as he recognized that the American people and the American government are different, people elsewhere know the same thing: that America is different from Americans. And for any American readers of this little note who are thinking of travelling abroad, but are worried that they might face discrimination or attacks because they are American, I want you to know: however people abroad might be feeling about America is probably not how they will feel about you as an American. They will, more than likely, see you as an individual, and interact with you as one.

A few years ago, I was in a store in London, and after some small talk the owner asked me if he could ask me a political question. He said that he knew, factually, that millions of Americans had voted for Trump, but, in hundreds of interactions with Americans in the UK, he had never met a single person who was a Trump supporter. Did I have any idea why that might be? I made an offhand comment that Trump voters usually didn't leave their own counties, much less the country, but to me, it proved the point: people over here know that most Americans that they will encounter don't necessarily support the policies of the government. Actually, an American in a different country will probably be opposed to many of the government’s actions. People here know that Americans generally tend to be good, principled people, and if we are travelling for either work or pleasure then we are probably interested in the world and don't share the "America first" philosophy – that we have international and worldwide interests and sympathies.

But there may still be some fear about travelling abroad right now. You may be thinking that you want to go to Paris, or Budapest, or Prague, or Copenhagen, but you fear that you will not be welcomed, that people will be openly hostile to you because you are American.

Let me write this as firmly and with as much conviction as I can: people will not hate you just because you are American. The vast, vast majority will judge you not as an American but based on your own individual merits.

There are, of course, things that American travellers can do to ease their travel abroad. Most of these things are common sense: be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone,1 don't shout at people (and, in fact, talk more quietly than you would normally; Americans, myself included, tend to be very loud). In short, be a good citizen of wherever you are going. (If you want tips on how to be a superior traveller, here you go.)

Actually, the American brand is still highly popular abroad. No matter what people might think about the government, people abroad love the idea of America, and the symbols of our country and way of life. If you were to walk down the street in any British city or town, it would take you less than five minutes to see a New York Yankees baseball hat (and it always amuses me that so many British people love a team named after a group of people who beat them in a war). The same goes with the American flag: when I was studying abroad, I was told by the foreign studies department at my college that I should consider putting a Canadian flag on my backpack, so that nobody would know I was American and attack me, but as soon as I got to Europe, I realized that wearing an American flag - the bigger the better - was probably the single best way to fit in, because so many locals have American flag sweaters and tee-shirts. Walking in any city here, you’ll see people with Ohio State and University of Michigan shirts, or Harvard2 and Yale sweatshirts, and shirts that advertise made-up baseball leagues (the 1974 Sacramento Mid-Atlantic Hardball Championship League is still my all-time favorite). People still love the idea of the United States, even if they, like that professor, hate what the government is doing.

Again, everyone in their right mind is on edge right now. There are things we can do and things we can't. If we only focus on our fears, or our inability to act, then these fears and inabilities will grow.

Instead, we must do what we can do, right now. At home, protest; the more people around the world see that there are decent, good people in America acting to oppose the American government's actions, the more people around the world will see that many Americans are still decent and good. And the more they interact with decent, good Americans travelling abroad, the easier it will be for them to know that we Americans are not all neocolonial monsters. (And, if you have read this far, I think it is safe to say you are not in that camp.)

The worst thing that we can do is stay at home and let the people with official titles act as the sole representatives for our country. The best thing we can do is lay the groundwork for future international peace by becoming ambassadors ourselves – ambassadors of decency, goodness, and peace, on behalf of our fellow Americans.

So: if you are worried about how you will be treated if you go abroad this summer, don't worry. People won't see you as an American, but as a human being first.

And the more we do now to lay the foundation of a peaceful, mutually respectful international world order in the future, person by person and relationship by relationship, the easier it will be to make that future a reality when things change.

David Sedaris wrote about the same thing almost 30 years ago, where he differentiates between “Hard French” and “Easy French.” Hard is when you actually try to learn the language, and Easy is when you just say things more loudly and slowly, expecting people to eventually understand.1

But Stina’s post got me thinking a lot about communicating in other languages. Perhaps that guy had studied Spanish, or had done twenty minutes of Duolingo a day for six months, and then found that it was insufficient for his purposes. Maybe he knew the difference between tú and usted, and ser and estar; he may have been able to talk about the weather, about handbags and gladrags, and about permaculture gardening based solely on his in-app studies. But in that moment, suddenly face to face with the real world, he couldn’t communicate.

What to do? Well, let’s start with a well-noted fact: Duolingo doesn’t work. For anyone trying to learn a language, just like with socializing, there are myriad better ways to do it than through a gamified app designed more to capture your attention than to actually change your life.

As an experiment, I downloaded Duolingo and went through a Romanian lesson. Here are the things it taught me for the first lesson, then tested me on:

1. Boy

2. Girl

3. Woman

4. Man

5. I am a boy.

6. I am a man.

7. I am a woman.

8. I am a girl.

9. a boy, a girl

Are these words and concepts important in a language? Of course. I could tell that it was introducing gendered nouns, sentence structure, and verb conjugation. However, I highly doubt that the vast majority of Romanians ever have to say “I am a man” in order to communicate anything. Like many middle managers, these particular words are not worthless, but they are not worth much. Landing in Bucharest, will you need to clarify that you are a man or a woman right off the bat? If you said, “I am a woman,” would the immigration officer look at you, confused as to why you are offering her this information?

The problem, I think, is that Duolingo teaches nouns and verbs, adjectives and participles, but they somehow miss the most fundamental goal that people have in learning languages: the ability to communicate. They might be able to teach you how to structure a sentence, but they aren’t teaching people what they need to send or receive critical information. Because lots of people are using these apps, though, then tourists preparing to go to a foreign country will also use them to try to learn how to speak the language, not realizing that they will not learn how to communicate.

It’s well-known that the Pareto Principle operates in language: most communication occurs with relatively few words, and the vast majority of words are used infrequently, if at all.2 I suspect that, for people travelling, the vast majority of words that they need to get by is even smaller; thirty words, fifty at the most, will serve you indefinitely, and anything beyond that is wonderful to have, but not critical.

Imagine, instead, a language boot camp for - in Stina’s honor - Spanish, or any other language. The instructor has one hour to teach the students core, basic words that will get them most of the way through their stay in Guatemala. What are the ten or twenty words that they should they know?

Well…I actually asked a few extraordinary travellers that very question. Their answers fell into a few categories.

Etiquette

Dale Carnegie would love this: the vast majority of words that people think are absolutely critical to know are words that grease the wheels of human interactions. Stina herself provided a good initial list:

• Hello

• Goodbye

• I’m sorry

• Thank you!

• How beautiful!

• I love your country 😎

Gunnar Miller added these, with explanations:

• Hello / Hi – For greetings; a friendly opener goes a long way.

• Thank you – Politeness opens doors and often earns patience.

• Please – Shows courtesy when asking for things.

• Yes / No – Crucial for basic responses.

• Help – Can be lifesaving in emergencies.

• Bathroom / Toilet – One of the most practical words!

• Water – Staying hydrated is critical.

• Food / Eat – For ordering meals or asking where to eat.

• Where? / Location – Helps with directions (“Where is…?”).

• Excuse me / Sorry – For getting attention politely or apologizing.

The last one is critical: in English, you might get away with saying “excuse me” to someone you have bumped and to get the attention of a bartender; in many languages, you wouldn’t say “excuse me” when “sorry” is more appropriate.

And the ever-brilliant Hamish added:

• Other good options include:

• “Nice to meet you” which starts you out on good footing

• “I don’t know/understand” is another good non-committal phrase when you’re in a difficult situation

• “Good” and “very” have many uses

• “I’m hungry/thirsty” are both useful phrases to endear yourself in an otherwise English conversation.

• “Beautiful” is rarely a bad thing to say.

Personally, I’d add:

• “Is it possible…?” This often leads to an opportunity to use basic nouns (“Is it possible a cornetto?” for example) or charades/miming (“Is it possible (brushes teeth)?” Miming will actually spur people to tell you the word you want (toothbrush, for example); if you write it down, they will have the good feeling that they helped you learn.

• I would also add, “I’m very sorry, but I don’t speak (language).” This fact is probably obvious to anyone who looks at you, but it shows humility and an understanding of one’s own limitations, and does a huge amount to generate sympathy.

It can also get you drunk.

To wit. I was in Paris once with my girlfriend at the time, and we went into a bar for a drink. The bartender looked at us very, very suspiciously; it seemed he was having a bad day. I gave my “I’m kind of embarrassed…” smile and started with my standard phrase, which translated to, “I’m very sorry, I don’t speak a lot of French…” The man smiled and said, in English, “You have an excellent acent! And I lived two years in Minnesota.” That led to a fifteen minute conversation about how the hell he ended up in Minnesota for two years (school, then a woman), why he came back (school ended, and then a bad breakup), what he thought about America (much nicer than France), what we thought about France (much nicer than America), and then free cocktails. I can’t promise that you will get the same response whenever you use this phrase, but it is a great way to show your own humility, admit that you are at a disadvantage, that you recognize your position, and that you aren’t going to be linguistically imperialist on other people; they will, more than likely, do their part so you can both communicate.

Human needs

A general consensus is that the most useful phrase you can travel with is: “Where is the toilet?” This is, in my opinion, where Duolingo should start for every single language; it should be the most commonly-learned phrase in the app. The fact that it is not is, I think, a failure of nearly Biblical proportions. It is something you might use immediately upon disembarking from your flight all the way to boarding to go home. (Even better may be “Toilet, please,” because you get the requirement across and you learn how to say “please.”)

Commerce

You’ll need to exchange money for things no matter where you go, even Communist China. Stina suggested “I want to buy this”; Hassan added:

• How much is this?

• Do you have…?”

• May I have…”

Gunnar suggested knowing the numbers 1-10. I would actually argue that it is critical to know 1-1000, and perhaps even more, depending on the value of the currency. Knowledge of numbers also scales; if you know 1-10, then 20, 30, etc., and then 100 and 1,000, then you can probably figure out how to get up to a million just based on how the language structures numbers.

Directions

Right, left, and straight. Even in the age of Google Maps, an incredible amount can be communicated by asking, “Excuse me, (PLACE)?” and then listening when they say “straight” and then “right.” At worst, you will get closer to your destination before you ask again.

Safety

Stina also said that she has found that “stop!” and “leave me alone” were useful. Unfortunately, we still live in a world where that is the case. Gunnar also suggested “help!” which, along with “emergency!” can save lives.

Do Not Learn

Hamish recommended against learning how to say “Cheers” when drinking, with a really solid justification:

When you have a new friend at a bar, there’ll undoubtedly be an opportunity to clink glasses. You probably already know the word for cheers, but pretending you don’t gives you the opportunity to ask. Most people actually like teaching others, as it makes them feel both useful and superior. But most people don’t have the willingness to waste their time teaching others. However, in this situation you’re both sat with a full pint and it can help move along a sagging conversation.

Based on this reasoning, I’d add that many languages have something that they say before meals that equates to “Bon appetit.” (Many people think that English doesn’t have a standard pre-eating benediction because, historically, English food has been so terrible.) Not learning this, and then paying attention to what people say before they eat, offers a chance to connect.

And this leads to another opportunity. In Stina’s note above, the guy clearly didn’t want to compromise his ego by either learning the phrase, consulting Google Translate, or charading his way through (imagine acting out “oat milk” with a barista!). If you clearly don’t know the words for something, acting it out and working together to get to an understanding can lead to a hilarious time for both of you and, if you can get some understanding, it becomes almost a bonding exercise: you have worked together to overcome a challenge, and you both benefit.

This actually happened to me recently in Budapest, when I went to get a haircut. I went to the highest-rated barber shop near me that was open late (after bedtimes) and didn’t cost $50. When I walked in, it turned out that it was run by two Vietnamese guys in their early 20s who had just moved to Hungary. Negotiating a haircut with a new barber without a common language was fun, and I got perhaps the most carefully detailed haircut I have ever had. The best part: when I paid, I said one of the few things I knew in Vietnamese: “Cảm ơn,” or “thank you.” It took the guy a second to realize that I was speaking Vietnamese, as he’d expected Hungarian or English, but when realized what I had said, he was so touched that he stopped the other guy in the middle of a haircut to tell him that I had spoken Vietnamese, and they both bowed and shook my hand.

Perhaps transmitting information is the base level of communication; touching hearts is next gen shit.

Personal

Sometimes, there are things that you need to know just because it’s you. “Oat milk latte” counts for our friend above, and it is very unlikely that Duolingo knew him well enough to include this in his first month of lessons. Stina included “I don’t eat meat,” which I’m going to guess she was smart enough to memorize ahead of her trip.3

Hamish came up with a list of some really interesting ones that he has thought about over time, with his trademark solid reasoning:

Delicious

Locals will generally be impressed by any knowledge you have of their language, but nothing will cause them more surprise or delight than coming out with a word they never expect you to know. In a restaurant you’ll already have shown your lack of language skills from the moment you walked in and confirmed that whilst ordering from the English menu. When the waiter/ress checks up on you or hands you the bill, pat your belly and exclaim “Delicious!” It will cheer you both up.

Maybe

A lot of the time you won’t understand what folk are saying. Even if they’re speaking English. We’d all love to be confident, secure and blunt enough to say “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re on about”, but a “maybe” normally gets you through. If it’s a situation where someone is trying to sell you something, then it’s good to have a word of slightly more advanced local language to show that maybe you know the fair price and won’t be so easily ripped off.

Later

Useful as a phrase on exiting, especially to the receptionist in your ho(s)tel, or at the nearby cafe you liked and plan on returning to. It also doubles its usefulness when combined with the above for a “maybe later” aimed at a pushy salesperson.

Wife/children

Some words you need to know in order to say them, some you need to know in order to understand. That woman next to you on the train is probably asking you if you have a wife or children, but it’s good to have the knowledge to know that’s the case. Also useful: “Where are you from?”

I’d add “Perfect.” Similar to Hamish’s “delicious,” “Perfect” is something that nobody will ever object to hearing about themselves or their work - particularly when you pair the word with a contemplative nod of approval.

And really, the most important part of communication…

Exact percentages differ, but people seem to agree that most communication is non-verbal; it comes in facial expressions, body language, hand gestures, tone. In Stina’s example above, one can almost see the guy’s body language as he specified his oat milk latte - shoulders tensed, face serious and almost angry, eyebrows perhaps showing exasperation. It’s almost painful to think about how the barista must have felt.

Imagine, instead, if he had been smiling, or if his face had betrayed his humility at being so incompetent in another language. What if he had asked for an “oat milk latte?” hesitantly and apologetically and questioningly? Imagine how she would have responded; instead of simply not understanding him, and hoping he’d get out of the cafe as quickly as possible, she likely would have tried to point to different drinks, or, ideally, brought out a carton of milk, then soy milk, then oat milk, and perhaps mimed steaming it, maybe even with sound effects for a laugh. Maybe she would have asked him if he spoke French, or Mandarin, both of which she studied. Perhaps she would have brought her phone out to try to help.

In short, a confrontation based on his ignorance would have been turned into a linguistic adventure that benefitted them both, just based on body language.

So along with words, I’d add:

• A smile. Like Dale Carnegie advised, this is one of the most important things you can bring with you into any foreign country.4

• Talk hesitantly. Show that you are unsure. The only thing you will get is help and sympathy.

• Talk quietly. Very few people like being shouted at. If you are shouty, then you may inspire a Substack note and/or post about how much of a dick you are.

• Use facial expressions that show you are struggling, are unsure, and that you are trying.

• Don’t be afraid to make it clear that you are consciously incompetent. (This is also a good life skill.)

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The how

So…how to learn these words?

I’m a huge fan of flash cards. I don’t mean apps; I mean physical flash cards, pieces of paper or 3x5 cards, with the English on one side and the translation, along with its phonetic pronunciation, on the other. I learned this from Mr. Bosworth at Granite Hills High School: take a set of flash cards, then pick five of them. Go through them until you know them all. Then, flip them over so you are looking at the translations; make sure that you know what they mean if someone else were to say them. Shuffle them and go through them again. When you know those five, add a few - three, or five more. Do the same thing with the whole stack, and add more cards every time you can show full mastery of the deck.

This doesn’t have to be done in private. Indeed, making it clear that you are trying to learn a language on a bus is an excellent way to meet people. This is especially true of children with very specific interests who want to learn, for example, how to say “dinosaur” or “police car” - nobody in the world (save perhaps Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Donald Trump) will object to a three-year-old repeating “dinosauri” on an Italian bus.

Going Pro

It’s pretty easy to google the “top 200 words in (language).” In this list should be most of the words you already know, and you may see 20-30 other “must know” words that you didn’t think of. Prioritize these, and, if you want, add the others; there is little downside to knowing an extra 150 words in a foreign language, and there is potentially huge upside, if it helps you understand other people or communicate concepts more readily.

In addition, after these, you may consider Duolingo et al. You’ll have enough of a foundation that, when the little bird teaches you how to say “Do you have an extra catheter?” in week four, you can re-work it to say, “Do you have a toilet?” and thus appear more fluent then just gasping “toilet!” with your legs clenched together.

If you can, immerse yourself.5 Bring post-it notes and write the local word for common items - book, closet, bed, freezer - on the items themselves so that you see them every day. Find someone local for an exchange; speak English to them for a half-hour and then speak the local language for a half-hour. If you can, date a local; it’s an incredibly useful way to learn how people really speak, you’ll have an incentive to learn more if you meet their friends and relatives, and you will probably learn creative cursing and sharply-tailored insults - which, let’s face it, is 75% of most language these days.

Finally, carry a notebook around with you. You can write down words that you want to know the translation to, or words that you see or hear that you don’t understand. In addition, it can be useful when negotiating the price of something in a marketplace, and you want to communicate the exact offer in very clear, unambiguous terms.

Objections to this approach

There’s a New York Times piece on Duolingo that argues that “Using a phrase book to memorize…phrases in another language is a quick and dirty way to get the job done, but that’s not really “learning” the phrases, it’s just memorizing them.” The obvious answer to this incredibly astute analysis: no shit, Sherlock. But it is a far more effective way to learn how to communicate with the people you will encounter, and will lead to far less frustration on both sides of the language barrier, than perfectly conjugating the verb “to suck.”

And again, I do think that Duolingo has a function. Similar to how all human beings pick up languages, once you have the basics down - toilet, water, overproof rum, etc. - you can move on to more advanced structure, if you want. However, I think that Duolingo should not be the way people start to learn a language; there are better, easier, more functional ways to learn, and they all come from the paradigm that you shouldn’t be learning so that you can speak another language - you should be learning so you can communicate.

Does this take time? Yes. Does it take less time than 20 minutes a day using your phone? Yes. Will you learn how to say “I also like to water house plants” with more or less comprehensible pronunciation? No. Will you actually be able to communicate your needs to people? Yes.

All in all, this takes less time and effort, and offers greater rewards than traditional options. It is easier to remember words and concepts, will help you understand more, and will smooth over any rough spots that may come up.

Now, please excuse me. I have six months to really nail 200 words in Romanian, and I still have to make my cards.

, this one’s for you:

If you ask Google Maps how to get to Mondello Beach from Cafe Latino, it will tell you to walk down Via Vittorio Emanuele to Via Roma, cross past the corner that always smells of horse urine (which is not a detail Google seems to care about or track). Then, cross the street, turn either left or right, and take the 101 or 102 bus north to the stop just outside Giannettino, the little food stall on Liberta' Notarbartolo. From there, get on any 806 bus to Mondello. This will absolutely get you to the beach, but if you follow these directions, especially just after the high schools get out for the summer, you will arrive at Notarbartolo and see at least 37 other tourists standing around, waiting for the 806 in shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses, and overstuffed backpacks. When the 806 arrives, every seat will already be taken by locals, and your children will need to stand or be held for the 45-minute ride - and the bus will get more and more crowded with people and things, more and more uncomfortable with proximity, and hotter and hotter with bodies at every stop. Italians love children, but they will not give up their seats for a mother holding a two-year-old, and people standing in the space marked for buggies will not move out of the way for an actual buggy. Any parents in this situation, particularly Germans and Australians, will get visibly and vocally frustrated, and the Sicilians will not care. At some point during the trip, at least two teenagers in the back will start playing tinny dance music through their phones or bluetooth speakers; a few of their friends will start vaping, knowing that the conductor will never come back to stop them because he - and all the conductors we saw were men - can't get through the mass of bodies crowding on the bus hurtling towards the cool beach breeze.

The better thing to do is to have an adorable five-year-old who wants to learn Italian. Make some flash cards of words that the five-year-old is interested in - ambulanza, macchina della polizia, impalcatura - and, while standing with him on the 102, go through the cards to distract him from the fact that he is standing on a bus, which he hates. Do it quietly, and, if anyone else looks at you, smile at them. An Indian guy next to you may ask if you are going to the spiaggia; say si, and he will suggest that you get off with him, this is the stop. Google Maps says he is wrong, but he is insistent.

And it is actually not your stop. You will get suspicious, and keep your wits about you as you follow him across two blocks, past a vacant lot, in generally the right direction but just...a bit off. He will say very little until you turn onto Via Alfonso Borelli, which spits you out onto a large square, all pavement and plants, and you see the statue of Francesco Crispi that you passed before, on the way to the Giardino Inglese, and his reticence may be that he doesn't speak much English, or it could be more sinister. You look at the back of his neck, thinking of the violence you could inflict upon him if your family is threatened. But then he will walk with you to what is actually a bus stop, and explain that it is the inizio de the bus. The 806 will arrive, completely and totally empty, ready to start its journey, and you will line up with him and a handful of others, all speaking Italian or Hindi, and join them on the extraordinarily empty seats in the back. You will ask, and he will confirm, that he works on the beach, with a hundred other Indians, selling food, trinkets, blankets, bluetooth speakers - a low-paying job that must, somehow, be worth it to him, must allow him to send something back home to a family who are worse off than he is here, but now better-off because of his labors than their neighbors. When the seats are full, the bus starts up, drives ten meters, makes a right, drives another ten meters, and you recognize that you are at the same exact stop in front of Giannettino with all of the Germans and Australians, who will grumble as they stand. When your savior gets off near Mondello, you grazie him a mille, and promise, in your mind, to buy whatever he is selling if you ever see him again, but you never see him again, which makes you sad.

You use his route to the beach for the rest of your stay - and, luckily, you have almost a month left. Twice, you see other families waiting with small children, and you try to tell them to come around the corner to the beginning of the line, but both times they demur, they look at their Google, they say "it’s fine, we will wait here," suspicious, not trusting a stranger, and then a few minutes later, when you are sitting with your beautiful family, with leg room to spare, even with your four bags and butterfly nets and arrancini in greasy paper bags, and they are standing, you will make eye contact with the fathers and they will look quickly away, perhaps ashamed at the discomfort that their distrust has caused their children.

And now the 806 crawls along Via della Libertà until Piazza Vittorio Veneto, with its Statua della Libertà in the huge empty circle, and then up Via dell'Artigliere to the most complicated intersection in Palermo. A teenage girl gets on with her friends; she sees Nick and gasps and says, "ciao, bello," and spends the rest of the trip sneaking glances at him, trying to touch his hand to get him to smile, which he does, readily, because he likes girls. Once you get through the intersection, it is as if the bus has released its brake; it shoots up Viale Diana and then suddenly there is a campground and scrub and you are in the dry Sicilian countryside. The brush is dense, and tinder-dry, and, on the right, Monte Pellegrino rises so steeply that you can't see the top from the bus windows, even if you press your face to the glass. You continue on, cruising now, until the road opens up again into residential neighborhoods, and the first stop in the vicinity of Mondello comes. Two or three beach-bound tourists will get off, thinking it is the beach, not knowing that they will now have to walk five more blocks to see the sand. You'll go around Piazza Valdesi, then up Viale Principe di Scalea, one block from the beach, a stop every block or two, until the very last stop on Via Teti. You'll be the only one to call back into the bus and thank the driver, who will look up, smile, and wave, not used to appreciation from his passengers. Marcello will meet you on his scooter, walk you to your umbrella, give your kids a treat, and then shake your hand; as he turns, he will see someone he needs to talk to, and you'll see him shaking hands up and down the beach like a politician. The people he knows, having seen him with you, will look over and nod and smile, and you think that you might now have people here, a community. For the rest of the day, if you make eye contact with someone, your default will be a familiar smile and a nod, which will always serve you well.

After a few trips, the beach routine will be established. The stuff is dropped between the two chairs, the backpacks are opened, and the tote bags - one each for bathing suits, sunscreen and beach toys, water bottles and snacks - will be hung up on the very convenient hooks under the umbrella. A quick trip to the changing room, which is pitch black compared to the million suns of the sand, and then the slathering of sunscreen, with a 15-minute timer set; the boys will play in the sand, and then, when the timer goes off, there's a race to the water, a quick splash, and then the unrestricted play of youth.

Once settled, there would be one or two hours before lunch, and then we would go to Le Lunette Mondello, getting a Caprese sandwich for Alice, a sausage and chips sandwich for Daniel and Nick to share, and a couple arancini for me. Because the beach chair rental place had a "no outside food" policy, we would take the food to the edge of the water and eat it there, throwing any crumbs to the fish or the birds. There would be an hour to digest, and then we might rent a paddle boat for the kids from the family that ran the first stand south on the beach. They would remember that Daniel was insistent on having a life jacket, and Nick would give them high-fives, and they would tell us we had an hour, but would pat me on the shoulder to let me know that they were flexible. We would paddle out, me and Daniel on the paddles, or Daniel and Alice, and look at everything we could see that was fascinating. We’d go to the pier, and then the docks, and circle around the teenagers who had stopped their boats to dive. When we returned, the men would make a big production about Daniel and Nick getting back from a voyage, and there would be the shaking of hands until the prossima, and we would walk back to our umbrella.

Then I would go for a long swim. The water at Mondello is the clearest water I have ever seen, perhaps matched only by Pereybere in Mauritius. I would wade out to my waist, then turn around to wave to Daniel, who would be watching me from just past the waterline, amazed that I could do something so brave. I would flip my goggles down, start my watch, wave again, and then fall forward, feeling the sea suck me in. I'd crawl out 20 meters, around the most adventurous paddlers, then turn right, down toward the giant restaurant on the pier, and then start really swimming.

Because it was so clear, I could see four or five meters to the bottom, which was mostly white sand, with occasional dark spots of seaweed bubbling over with fish. Because it was so clear, and the sand was not rocky, not dirty, I saw everything. Once, from the paddle-boat we rented, I saw a flash of light that was not quite natural; later, I swam back to the spot fifty meters from shore and dove down and found a pearl earring, fallen from an empty ear. I found friendship bracelets dropped by the sellers who plied the waterfront, one of which I have on my right wrist right now, its rainbow coloring a reminder of the Sicilian sunsets. Once, swimming past the restaurant, I saw something almost human floating in the water, swaying with each passing wave. Getting closer, I saw that it was a pair of Levi's, the cuffs bobbing at the top of the water, the waist weighed down by a leather belt, the pockets empty. I pulled the belt off and let the jeans float away. On that southern side of the bay, there is a giant sandbar rising up fifty meters from shore that is so shallow that you could stand up and the water would only go to mid-calf; I took the belt to the sandbar to examine it, then wrapped it around my waist. North-west of Mondello, there is a ridge of high, steep mountains, so steep that only a few roads switchback up their feet a bit and then end, as if defeated by the brutality of the Sicilian stone. While I was standing on that sandbar, a belt incongruously wrapped around my waist above my Speedos, I looked up to see the beach and the mountains. Clouds were pouring over the tops in a rapid stream, floating like a waterfall down the rock face, and then disappearing into the air. I took my goggles off, not fully understanding, and even without the goggles I saw that yes, the clouds were appearing over the mountains, then disappearing into nothingness. I could only reason that they were coming off of the cool Mediterranean or Atlantic, then, as soon as they got over the mountains, the Sicilian heat caused them to instantaneously dissipate. I watched for probably ten minutes, stunned by nature, and then swam back, past the jetty with the restaurant, listening to children playing among the pylons. When I got back to our AirBNB, I cut the buckle off the belt with a chef knife and attached it to my own Amish belt from Eli Miller, which is where it is now, reminding me every day of the way the clouds evaporated in the heat.

I found other things at Mondello. Walking back to the bus, I found two clippings of jade plants on the sidewalk; I looked around, and there were no jade plants anywhere else, so someone must have tugged them off of a plant, brought them to that point, and dropped them. It reminded me of my first real girlfriend ever, who worked for a congresswoman in California, canvassing door-to-door. One day, she was having a really tough time, and she got to one home with a friendly family who said they would support her candidate. She noticed a huge jade plant, and asked if she could take a branch to grow to remind her that there were good people in the world; that was the first time I had ever heard of propagating plants from clippings. She kept it alive for years; I wonder if it is still alive now, 27 years later. I hadn’t thought of her in years. I picked the clippings up from the sidewalk, put them in my water bottle, and brought them back to Edinburgh, where they are growing on my windowsill.

And Mondello provided some challenges. Back in 2001, Patagonia was just getting a purchase on the small, private liberal arts college market, and a few people had Patagonia clothes. In the spring, my suite had a party; when I woke up in the morning, and went to the bathroom, I saw that someone had torn apart a small pile of beef jerky and left it on the top of the toilet. I looked behind the closed door and saw a Patagonia jacket on a towel hook, perhaps from the jerky shredder. Nobody ever came back to reclaim either of these items, and I was a vegetarian, so I kept the jacket, and still have it; I don't know what happened to the beef jerky. Later, I somehow came across this video of a man who had bought some Patagonia board shorts and then kept repairing them until they were like the Ship of Theseus.

And in 2012, ahead of a family reunion in Mauritius, I got a pair of Patagonia board shorts to swim in. In 2022, they ripped really badly, so I repaired them; the fabric felt delicate, though, and I knew they would be damaged again. I brought them to Italy, and, on a swim in Mondello, they ripped again - a huge gash down the butt, obscene in virtually every culture. I brought them to a tailor in Palermo, who said that it would take a week to repair - she was absurdly busy. I wanted someone in Palermo to repair them, but that meant that I would not be able to swim...without another swimsuit.

So I went to a sporting goods store just north of Parco Piersanti Mattarella. Growing up, the stereotype was that Europeans and Australians wore Speedos, while Americans wore more conservative shorts; I thought, "I am never going to be able to do this again," and, almost in Rome, I got my first pair of swimming briefs. I never actually wore the shorts again; while Europeans wore far more shorts than Speedos, the briefs were easier to swim in, and that made the difference. The board shorts now have a beautiful blue-and-white piece of Sicilian fabric covering the tear, and, while I want to wear them, the sky-blue briefs really are nicer in the water.

On the last day of our stay, we went to Mondello. I started my swim, and was immediately diverted by something that looked like a robot face on the bottom of the bay. I dove down, and pulled up a combination mask/snorkel that turned out to be just the right size for me; someone must have dropped it off the side of a boat. I looped my own goggles around my wrist and put the snorkel mask on, and decided to just go as fast as I could, able to power through and breathe hard without turning my head. I found another pearl earring on that swim, and, at lunch, bought two litres of white vino sfuso, some of which was consumed and some of which was brought back to Edinburgh and turned into white wine vinegar. I sent the first earring to my sister and the second to Bianca; Bianca's package was stolen, so she didn't get the 1930s Italian school pen with its English nibs, or the Abracadabra bag from Tigota in Milan, or the friendship bracelet I found on the beach and sent to remind her that we have been friends for 25 years.

And those are the souvenirs of Mondello.

6. Feltrinelli Librerie

I was on the bus this morning, on one of those elevated seats in the back, above the wheels. In front of me, on the lower level, an older man was playing a game on his phone – one of the games where you tap the screen, and birds or treasure chests seem to explode, and a number appears with some number of points that you just got, and it tells you how great you are, at the game, and obviously in life, as a human being, and it implies that you’re so good at tapping the screen and getting these points that it’s surprising that you’re not the king of the world. He had the volume up high so he could hear it without his hearing aids, and was playing this complete waste of time game, and I looked back at my book.

Books. Throughout history, they have been luxuries – entire worlds, objects that speak of beauty, symbols of leisure. Windows to the world. The word. What is more important than the word?

While Zacco is great to patronise if you want to support the local literary scene, why would I add a chain book store to the list? Well… They have more books, including children’s books and some in English. But also, they have pens, and a manager who believes that the word is so important that she will give your children pens so that they can write, they can be encouraged in their literary ventures, and who has earned my gratitude when we didn’t have pens to fill out the mother’s day cards that the boys got for Alice.

Luxury Ephemeral Experiences

7. Dolce capo

Over the months that we spent in Italy, we had a very strict ice cream schedule: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and no more.

No more, that is, until we got to Palermo.

Of the Palermo gelaterias, Gelateria Ciccio Adelfio is undeniably excellent. So is Gelateria da Carlo, across the street. Ruvolo Gelati e Granite, Primo Canto Gelateria, Gelateria Ciuri Ciuri Palermo, Cafè Latino di Vincenzo Stira - all have good ice cream, made better by the searing Sicilian sun.

But by far, the best ice cream we had in Palermo, and the best ice cream I have ever had in my life, can be found at Dolce capo.

I’m happy to say that I’m not alone - with 4,905 ratings on Google as of this writing, they have a score of 4.9 out of 5, and lots of other people echo me in saying that they’ve had none finer anywhere in the world.

Unlike handbags, where a cheap one can be far better made than an expensive one, or suits, where it is hard for most people to tell the difference between one that costs $200 and another that costs $2,000, or wine, where even trained experts can’t tell the difference between red and white, there is a clear, easily discernible difference between normal and exceptional gelato.

And trust me, Dolce capo is exceptional. It will also likely ruin ice cream for you forever, or, like it did for us, inspire you to get your own ice cream maker.

There was the mango, that tasted more like mango than mango. Rum raisin, mint, strawberry, lemon, tangerine, caramel. Mixed berries. Wine and peaches. Watermelon. Cantaloupe. Fig. They probably have a hundred more flavors that they trot out with casual ease, showing that they, more than anyone else, have mastered making the ice cream version of anything taste more vibrant than the actual item listed on the label. Their presentation is also extraordinary: the tub of peach wine gelato is adorned with a bottle of wine and peaches; the tangerine with tangerine branches; the cantaloupe with rinds, implying that the ice cream has exploded, fully-formed, out of its tan-green shell.

The gelatos are beautiful to look at, and they are also fleeting. You can’t take this home with you; you can’t even take it around the corner. A better writer than me might make some analogy with life itself – that really, life is the beautiful thing, the luxury, that life is something that has been denied to too many. A better writer may point out that, like visitors to Palermo, most of whom won’t taste perfection like this ice cream, most people will similarly never live, never fully be alive, and it is only those who reach out and embrace these beautiful, transient experiences, these fleeting opportunities, who can rightly be said to have lived - and really, our time here on earth is fleeting, is temporary, and we should be willing to embrace every experience that is presented to us, to celebrate our lives, moment by moment, sip by sip, lick by glorious mango lick. A better writer than me may point out that yes, life is like a box of chocolates sometimes, and yes, perhaps sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get, but that a better analogy might be that life is like an ice cream cone on a Wednesday afternoon at the corner of Via dei Candelai and Vicolo Travicelli - that you often get what you order, what you ask for, what you deserve, but also that no matter what you do, you have a choice: you can lick the ice cream or let it drip away, and if you lick it, if you take advantage of having a life to live, if you pay attention to it, you will probably get to the end and have an enjoyable experience to look back on, but if you let it melt, it will slip through your fingers, it will drip away with predictable determination until you are left with nothing at all to look back on but a mess.

I’m obviously not that writer. But I can say that Dolce capo makes beautiful ice cream, and it deserves a visit. In fact: I predict that, if the Michelin guide ever has an ice cream section (and perhaps it does – I know virtually nothing about how food criticism works), Dolce capo would have the requisite number of stars (five? ten?) that indicates that Palermo is actually worth a visit just to taste this ice cream, because it is that good.

8. Olive Oil from the Vino Sfuso shop

I was at lunch recently with a guy who ran a hedge fund in London – let’s call him George. George had “fuck you” money, and had brought a couple of bottles of wine to this lunch – one was 17 years old, the other 38. George said he was really excited about drinking both of these – he drank a lot, and his parents have been collecting wine for decades. Our host and mutual friend piped up and said that George had excellent taste in wine, and could always be trusted to have good bottles.

Once opened, George swirled them around in his glass and tasted them and was satisfied. I tasted them and…was unimpressed. I mean, it was wine. As I often do, I doubted that anyone could taste anything interesting in them – they were flat and dull. The only thing we knew was that they were old; that was apparently enough of a story to make them valuable.

Wine is a story, of course. Actually, I should rephrase that: a wine bottle is a story. Stories are exactly what the labels strive to communicate: they tell a tale of a particular plot of land, region, country, grape, blend, year, family. Sometimes they will have a turn-of-the-century style Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a cat, or a pencil outline of the château, or simply words with no other adornment. The designers had to ask themselves: should they write the label in serif or sans-serif? Should the label be white, off-white, or black? Do they have a real cork, a plastic cork, or a screw type? What would it say if it was all in French, or all in English? All of these tiny details contribute to the story that the consumer is able to interpret, what they can tell themselves and others about their taste - or, rather, the taste of the wine and their personal taste, generally.

But these bottle-label stories can be told anywhere – at least, anywhere you can get a particular bottle. In other words, a bottle of wine will tell the same story in Santa Ana, Santa Fe, or Santa Barbara, provided that the bottle is brought to these places to be consumed; it’s like reading a book.

But: what if getting the wine is, itself, the story? What if you, the consumer, are part of it?

I think this is what I keep trying to say about vino sfuso in Milano, Bologna, Firenze, Pisa, Rome, Sorrento, and now here in Palermo. The magic of vino sfuso, the story, is in getting to the shop, talking to the owner, learning about the wines, picking one, two, three, filling the bottles, taking them home, and then and only then finishing the story by drinking them. These are far more interesting and personal stories than anything they can ever appear on a label affixed to glass. Actually, short of pressing the grapes oneself, this is about his personal story as one can get with wine.1

So, in Palermo, get vino sfuso. I liked Lucchese Vini, but there are a few shops around, and you can get bottles at some fruit and vegetable stands around the city for a few euros.

But, if I may: an additional benefit of Lucchese Vini is is that they have olive oil. This isn’t the olive oil produced for tourists to pack away in their suitcases in 250mL bottles, intended for flying and then consuming over a few years on extremely special occasions or while very, very drunk. This is olive oil for people in the neighbourhood - people who have been consuming amazing olive oil for decades, and know what they are tasting - to buy and to use and enjoy. It is olive oil for people who know what good olive oil tastes like, and let’s face it, people don’t really get good olive oil in America. Olive oil in America is often fake, for starters. Because we have been consuming fake olive oil, we therefore have no idea what olive oil is supposed to taste like; because we have been consuming fake olive oil for decades, we have come to expect that this stuff is what olive oil is supposed to taste like. It’s not our fault – the marketplace has been giving us crap for years, so when we get flavored vegetable oil instead, we think it’s good because that’s what we expect.2

This, though…this is the real stuff, the good stuff, pressed yesterday and delivered this morning to be in your mouth this afternoon. And when you consume it, it’s like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes color. Imagine that moment, in 1939, when the first audience was watching what they thought was a normal film, and then the screen exploded in life; imagine the gasps, the awe, the “anything can happen” astonishment that must have rushed through those watchers’ minds and hearts, and know that that sort of experience is still available - you just have to make your way to Lucchese Vini on delivery day, and make friends with the owner, and get a bottle of the good stuff.

And if this doesn’t count as beauty, as luxury, I don’t know what does.

Experiences

9. Cammarata Sport Palermo Duca della Verdura

Years ago, Patagonia released a short film about a pair of their swim trunks. This wasn’t about a model of swim trunks, or a line of swim trunks; literally, the video was the story of a single pair of swim trunks.

I remember being impressed with their philosophy, their ethos. So when I needed swim trunks for a family reunion in Mauritius, I got a pair of Patagonia ones off eBay for $10. I used them for 12 years; when I tore them swimming off the coast of Wales, I brought them to my tailor in Edinburgh and gave him instructions: repair them, and make sure the repair is visible.

I brought them to Italy, and on our first day in Mondello Bay, they tore again. I guess, after 14 years of heavy use, I can forgive them. I took them to the tailor who said she would repair them with Sicilian cloth and get them back to me in a week.

A week. That’s three beach days with the boys, three long swims. What could I do?

Answer: be grateful for my health.

We can show that gym use is most used by the wealthy. Actually, for anyone who equates luxury with expense, gym use is an exceptional luxury; it can cost a fair amount of money, and is a solid commitment of time. So swimming in crystal, clear waters, under a blazing Mediterranean sun, chasing jellyfish, diving for pearls, dodging boats, floating alone in the water, while everyone else is on land?

And feeling comfortable in one’s own body, one’s own ability to act, to do things, to perform?

That’s better than first class from London to Sydney, a pile of near-flawless diamonds, or a BMW convertible.3

And it is at Cammarata Sport Palermo Duca della Verdura where you can buy the tools that you need to perform.

And, if you are wondering whether to get board shorts, jammers, or briefs, think: when in Rome.

Growing up, we thought that Europeans all wore speedos on the beach. The reality is that most Italians wear board, shorts or trunks; only some wear briefs. But I thought: when else can I do this?

So I got some blue briefs, from an Italian brand called Aquarapid. And cutting through saltwater toward the open sea, diving deep to investigate flashes ten feet below, passing inches from skittish fish that might be dinner for someone in a few hours, bobbing up to watch kids jumping off of the pier, and finding a sand bar a hundred yards out where you can stand with the water just coming up to your knees, completely alone, with everyone on land wondering how you can levitate like that? It’s all more luxurious than an Hermes saddle, a Cucinelli sweater, a Zegna suit, or any Birkin bag you have to kiss ass to buy. Those things may make people feel comfortable in or with them; health, ability, and training helps one feel more comfortable in and with oneself.

And that, of course, is luxury.

Classic Luxury

10. DELL’OGLIO 1890

This is, without a doubt, the closest to a traditional “luxury” store you will see on this list. The stuff here is expensive – like, €30 for a pair of socks, €120 for a T-shirt.

So why include it?

Well, they are not a manufacturer, not a single brand, not a chain. They’re more like a curator of beautiful things – and, in this case, they happen to curate beautiful clothing, and they do an exceptional job.

But I want to talk here about the elevator.

An elevator may be a strange thing to fixate on in a clothing shop, but it says a lot, because the shop here is, when you first walk in the door, little more than an entryway with a counter with a few things for sale and way too many staff people. At the counter, you can get ties, soft, socks, wallets, and other small goods. There are upper levels, but you can also take the elevator down. The elevator itself is stunning. Stepping in, you feel transported back to the 1920s – art deco, Zoot Suit, big fenders, neon lights, jazz. Maybe that’s not actually, what Palermo was like when this shop first opened, but those are the associations I have just looking at the polished brass – and the brass here is polished.

Polished as a word that deserves closer scrutiny, far more attention than it gets. The act of polishing is itself luxurious; it is not necessary, not critical, but it does indicate that a greater level of care is being taken to maintain something than is strictly necessary. It’s like shining shoes, brushing coats, oiling one’s briefcase – but it is less about maintenance and more about attention to the small details that might matter.

And this elevator is polished.

You can go up, but you can go down, and let’s go down. When the doors open, you are presented with a beautifully lit, gorgeously presented showroom for clothes. Nothing is piled high here; they are not trying to move volume. Instead, they are showing everything in its best light, literally. There are no windows in the basement, so in this environment, it could be any time of the day or night and you wouldn’t be able to tell.

When the elevator doors opened, a short, chisel-jawed man was trying on a tuxedo, and immediately a saleswoman closed the door so he could have privacy. Something about it immediately made me understand why so much of the shop was blocked off from the outside.

If you are even moderately versed in 1990s gangsta rap, you may remember Biggie’s injunction to “never let no one know how much dough you hold.” His advice is striking for how different it is from how most drug dealers and gangsters seem to act; gangsters of all stripes have stereotypically (and probably traditionally) cared deeply about how they looked, and have loved spending money in as conspicuous and manner as possible. (A recent article in the Economist noted that “Colombian drug lords can be spotted driving luxury cars around (Guinea-)Bissau.”) And here, in this subterranean church of clothing, as if through osmosis, the history of these rooms, the thought and care that went into designing them, came through to me.

This, one of the oldest luxury shops in Palermo, was designed for the comfort and security not of men, but of made men.

Men with wads of dirty bills would have found this to have been one of the few places where they could have come without fear of arrest for assassination, where they could have relaxed for an hour, or two, enjoying the rotten fruits of their endeavours, the luxuries that their evil deeds afforded them. Outside of these doors, out in the world, they would never have been able to enjoy anything – I mean, imagine constantly being aware that you could be shot in the stomach whenever you turned a corner, or that a bomb could go off any time you started your car. How, then, would you be able to enjoy your 14,000 lira handkerchief? But here, in this temple of luxury, those with much to fear could have actually enjoyed the softness of their new cashmere boxers, or the stiffness of their benchmade Oxfords, before going back out into the world. One can even imagine the pact made, the terms transmitted through neutral runners, and agreed to instinctively: “right honourable gentleman: DELL’OGLIO is a neutral ground.”

And, in my opinion, the true luxury of the store is the careful, curated, safe atmosphere that is their legacy.

So go. Enjoy it. And if you wind up with a pair of €30 socks or a €2000 blazer, I won’t judge you.

What you won’t walk out of here with, though, is anything by Luis Vuitton.

One definition of Luxury is: “a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense.”

It’s a good start. The thing is, most of the stuff considered “luxuries” today are things that involve great expense, but don’t have anything to do with a state of great comfort or elegance. The street definition of “luxury” is, more often than not, a nicer way of saying, “costs irrationally more than anyone can conceivably justify.”

For example, Louis Vuitton. It’s commonly considered a “luxury” brand. I have talked to maybe 20 of their devotees and one of their actual salespeople about Louis Vuitton products, and nobody has yet been able to explain to me why they are considered luxurious without leaning entirely on the fact that their products cost a lot of money. The most fervent admirer I have ever met, a friend of a friend in London whose family has a small amount of Middle Eastern oil and who owns several of their bags (and books devoted to their history), could only gesticulate with his hands and say, “it’s just…really, really nice.” When I asked what is nice about it, he said, “it just…is.” Then, he gave me that smile that begged to be excused for not thinking.

Anyways, Louis Vuitton seems to make a lot of money by selling very expensive things. For some reason, conspicuous consumers spend millions on consumption just because it is conspicuous.

I don’t like this fact, but I can make money off of these people who like to spend money.

So, a while ago, I bought a few shares of LVMH stock. It’s a pro trick that I recommend: if Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Moncler, Arc’teryx, Gucci, or any other brand makes you want to vomit a bit in your mouth, just become a shareholder. Then, whenever you meet one of their customers, you can be grateful to them for making you just a bit more wealthy. It works really well: now, every time I see people with LV bags, I think: thanks for taking money out of your bag and putting it in mine.

But even if it means my investment returns will suffer, I still have a dream that one day, we will return “great comfort and elegance” to the fore of the definition of luxury, rather than leaving it to the aft.1

And, as part of that effort, I want to write about luxury in Italy, especially Palermo.

I could start this part with, “Luxury and Italy go hand in hand.”

Then, I could ask AI to produce 1,000 filler words about luxury in Italy.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Yes, Palermo has “luxury” shops; they are mostly in the northern center of the city, lining Via della Libertà near the newer, nicer buildings. I could write a piece on these stores, just to draw people in. I might get another 45,000 views that way, and maybe some new subscribers who really want to read about Dolce & Gabbana.

However, I never went in any of these shops, and I’m not writing for fashionistas. I’m writing for thinking people.2

Instead, I want to write about the stores that epitomize, to me, “comfort” and “elegance,” and robustness, excellence, quality, and, in these things, a life of true beauty. Some of these places facilitate spending time in a truly luxurious way - the paper shop in particular, and the book stores, speak of exceptionally elegant pasttimes. Some are luxurious because they make an outstanding product that is ephemeral, that must be consumed and appreciated in Palermo itself. The menswear shop, at least, would meet the traditional definition of luxury, but it has details that make it uniquely luxurious in a way that I’ve never seen in any other shop before - namely, for men who might have otherwise been blown up while trying on a belt.

So here, not in any sort of order, are my Top Ten luxurious shops in Palermo, Italy.

Luxurious Services

“Do you see a man skilled at his work? He will serve kings, not obscure people.” Proverbs 22:29

One of my theories is if skilled labor is more expensive than unskilled labor, and skilled labor produces nicer things, then some perceptions of luxury can be traced to the costs of skilled labor. I suspect that the people who stitch together Hermès and Louis Vuitton bags are at least semi-skilled, and that producing one of these bags involves a lot of work. I also recognize that this suspicion is without any support; recent reports indicate that, actually, luxury handbags are actually really poorly made.

If you are reading this, I think it’s safe to say that we agree with these propositions:

• Things carry stories.

• We tell ourselves stories about things.

• Our things tell people stories about us.

• Things are, inevitably, souvenirs that remind us of something in the past.

• Who we are impacts what we own.

• What we own impacts who we are.

• What we make in turn makes us.

• When we repair things, we interact with them in a deeper way than when we simply use them.

• We like nice things.

• We value our things enough to fix them when they are broken.

• Our things are actually worth fixing, rather than throwing out.

• Actually, if it is something you can just casually toss away, it probably isn’t worth having in the first place.

• We value labor, and the products of labor.

• We value craftsmanship.

• We value artistry, and experience.

• We are willing to maintain our possessions.

• We are willing to maintain our tools.

• We don’t throw away crap because we don’t have it in our lives in the first place.

• We think about what we consume.

• People matter to us.

• We think about our impact on the world.

• We actually think a lot about our lives.

So, based on these assumptions, it is likely I don’t need to go into the value of having a good tailor and cobbler wherever we go. Having them is something that we think of as a true luxury, because it shows that the clothes and shoes we have are already luxurious - they are beautiful, useful, and worth fixing when they break. In this way, having these craftspeople available to us is a reflective luxury; it shows that we already have luxurious items. It also shows, then, that you have solid values and principles, and this is the foundation for a good life - perhaps the greatest luxury of all.

A non-exhaustive list of other services we might consume: watch servicers, knife and razor sharpening (if you don’t do it yourself), butchers, potters, weavers, millers, nib repair.

So: starting from this perspective, the initial two luxurious places to patronize in Palermo are the cobbler and the tailor. (I’m not sure if Lonely Planet et al include recommended cobblers and tailors for all of their locations, but I suspect they do not.)

1. Calzolaio Rapid Shoemaker Da Enzo

Why Enzo? Well, for one, his shop is stunning in the way that a monomaniacal workspace can be. Literally everything in this shop is designed to better fix as many leather goods in as efficient and beautiful a manner as possible. Every countertop has leather tools on it, or is a space to put a broken item for fixing; every cabinet has its designated tools; even his phone, which might be a distraction tool, is instead set up to service customers. It is inspiring to watch him examine something - a shoe, a bag, a belt - and then simply reach behind his back, without looking, to pick up the specific tool that he knows is there, right where it is meant to be, because the workshop is a living, breathing extension of himself.

So Enzo is…well, he is an intense guy. In the half-hour that we spent together just on Daniel’s broken brogue, I learned that he works alone; that his workshop is exceptionally well-organized, even if it is extremely dirty; and that he takes his art very, very seriously. His main gripe in life - among many smaller ones, of which I only got the briefest glimpse - is that the cobbler a few doors down the street very willingly takes in customers looking for his services. Then, when she does a poor job, Google seems not to care that the reviews that are left for his shop are actually for the other woman, not for Enzo. This is why he has so many signs outside of his shop, and why he is constantly looking outside for people who might need his services. He does not have a website because he does not trust the internet; he trusts shoes, his hands, his labor, and that’s about it.

And he does an excellent job. He fixed Daniel’s shoe with the sort of care and attention that he would have paid to Meloni if she’d come in with her Blahnik’s (and, considering politics in the region, perhaps more).

It is a great luxury to be able to depend on someone in Palermo to fix your shoes, so for all of your cobbling needs, go to Enzo.

Just make sure that you don’t go to the woman down the street; she can’t be trusted.

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2. Sartoria Tagli e Cuci

Similarly, having a tailor is now, unfortunately, a luxury. Even in Palermo, they are few and far between.

The shop is around the corner from the train station and the central bus station. This is decidedly not the tourist center of the city; trash litters the streets, pedestrian crossings are few, and the shops and restaurants are low-key, selling cheap sandwiches and essentials for students and workers who commute in from the countryside.

The shop itself is…well, tailors fit a mold. There’s a counter, piled high with clothes; rotating hangers; bolts of fabric on specially-built shelves. The area around the sewing machines is extraordinarily well-lit from different angles. There’s a paper-and-carbon-copy receipt book in the middle of the counter which occasionally is hidden by a dress or a pair of jeans; you will get the yellow copy, and they will attach the white one to your garment. Tags are clipped to clothes with brief notes scribbled in code to remind whoever picks up the garment exactly what needs to be done to it. There are plants which look underwatered, a bank note in a frame (the first one they earned), and a porcelain blue-and-white teapot. No matter when you visit, there will be at least one customer at the counter with something to be mended; before you leave, someone else will have come in behind you, and will smile at you when you turn to walk out. You should, upon first greeting the tailor, comment on how much work they have; this can be done with words or with a large, open-handed gesture taking it all in. Then you should listen as they first complain about being busy and also express gratitude for the work. Only after they have given a sigh and asked “what can I do for you?” should you present your request. You should be very specific about what you want; the tailor will likely have an idea of what they think they should do, so unless it matches up exactly, let them know your desires. Agree on the job and the price and the date when you will come back, thank them, and then wish them luck with all of the rest of their work, and return their resigned smile with one of hope. When you do return, greet them, and make sure you comment on how the piles haven’t actually gone down; then, listen again as they complain and yet are grateful for the work. This time, they should remember you and the garment, and will bring it out; you don’t actually have to present the ticket. They will present your item in a plastic garment bag, and then lift the bag for your inspection. Let them show it off and then admire the work, touching and prodding it - there must be the touching and prodding. They will flip the plastic bag down again and then you will pay. Generally, they prefer cash, but a card is fine. Leave, wishing them well and promising to see them soon.

These are the international etiquette rules of visiting a tailor which Debrett’s will never tell you about because they deal in publishing, not people.

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Luxurious Things

3. Mondo Cuoio

Italy might be known for luxury leather goods, but…well, it’s well-known that “Made in Italy” generally means “Made (by underpaid Chinese people who have been smuggled into the country to work illegally in sweatshops that are technically located) in Italy.”

I was hoping to find a actual traditional leatherworker, though. Mondo Cuoio is next door to two really cheap toy shops where you can, for a few Euros, get sand toys that will occupy rambunctious children for hours and hours. While Nick and Daniel dreamed about using butterfly nets to catch fish in the sea, I descended a few steps into this cool, dark oasis of leather. It is a simple shop, and anything that isn’t designed to It is run by two women who sit in their workshop - two tables covered in hides and tools - and create wallets, belts, purses, and all sorts of small leather goods. If you give them a sample paper notebook, and say that you would like a custom-made notebook cover, they will produce one for you in about four days, allowing you to select the leather, the color, and the stitching from their samples. When you pick it up, they will both explain how they made it together, and show you the details, of which there are not many, because they are artisans, not charlatans, and don’t throw a perfume on the violet. They will have anticipated, of course, that when you said you wanted a cover for “a” notebook you would eventually mean “six” notebooks, so that, over the next few weeks, as your needs expand, you can add notebooks into it for a variety of uses. They are smart like that and, to me, that sort of attention to detail creates a comfort that is an exceptional luxury.

4. I Papiri

On Via Gaetano Daita, a side street north of the city center, is I Papiri. There are only rarely customers in here now; the only other person I saw in the shop over seven visits was a friend of the owners, who continued talking to them as I shopped. It is, really, a shrine to the art of handwriting. I almost wrote “lost art” - I have younger friends now who say they haven’t written something down by hand in years - but, as I have at least eight pen pals with whom I regularly exchange hand-written letters, I can’t really say that this art is lost.

I challenge you to find me someone who says that hand-written letters are not luxurious, or who would argue they are not elegant. They are, of course, very costly - in time and, increasingly, in postage fees.

A man and two women work here. They are all well past middle-age, and they know every pen and scrap of paper in their shop. There are pens on display behind the glass counter, and they also have several which are not on display, and, if you ask if they have any Omas pens, this is an excellent way to show that you are knowledgeable about Italian pen brands and deserve to see the ones that they don’t display. They also have a selection of outstanding sealing wax on the lower level of the shop which will only add to the cost - and, to some people, the luxury - of your letters.

5. Libreria Zacco - Maurizio

In an almost mediaeval way, Palermo is trades still seem to congregate around certain areas. The bookseller area is just around the corner from the cathedral, and it does a vibrant trade.

The luxury of a society is support for the arts. Arts, really, are a supreme luxury. Personally, I am a fan of literary arts. I don’t know whether this is by nature or nurture, but I believe the books are one of the most beautiful adornments in any situation. I am glad to have good company in this feeling – there is a story that when John F. Kennedy was giving advice to his brother Teddy, his top tip was to always carry a book around with him, partly so he could read it but also so he looked smart. John Waters also advised that if you go home with someone and they don’t have books, you should not sleep with them. Books say a huge amount about us - as individuals, as a culture, as a people. You can tell a lot about a person if, for example, they love Becky Chambers or Robert Caro or Dostoevsky. You can also tell about the values that a group of people have when they place books in the centre of their city, and when they place the bookseller quarter close to the cathedral. It tells you that they are worth a visit, worth getting to know, that they are kind, peaceful, interesting, have good food, laugh, dance, enjoy music, support theatre, and, generally, have good lives that are worth studying and emulating. Perhaps it is these lives that have more to do with their longevity than simply their diet, but it is hard for hard scientists to study the liberal art of good living.

I have zero evidence for this, but I would bet that a culture that places low values on books correlates with bad food, uninteresting conversations, poor dental health, early death, relatively few contributions to scientific progress, fewer patents, fewer miles travelled per person, fewer passports issued per person, more violence, and greater levels of alcohol abuse.

Anyways, generally, books - real books - are the culmination of centuries of art and science, the descendents of tablets and papyrus and illuminated manuscripts, now printed by the millions and made cheap now when once they were worth far more than their weight in gold. They speak of leisure, a mind in search, of intelligent choices. To engage in one, to consume it, is often luxurious; it will probably take hours of your life, hours you will never get back, but also hours which you will willingly trade to engage with the written word. They are, by dint of beauty and only sometimes monetary cost, luxurious, and it’s worth visiting Zacco to celebrate this modern luxury, because it is a great little store with a wonderfully friendly proprietor; it is always buzzing, with people and ideas, and shows how exciting a small space can be when a community values books and ideas. Also, Zacco puts on the book festival, La Via dei Librai, and it is committed to spreading ideas throughout Palermo; go, if you get a chance, and live a more luxurious life.

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I walked down the main aisle. A man was setting out his arancini, whistling as his hands placed them delicately down, treating each as if it was a burning newborn kitten. The square was surrounded by tall buildings, none taller than the church in the western corner, and I went to the east, to the back, behind some of the market stalls. Here, nobody was setting up for the show that would soon start; this is where everyone parked, where they left their equipment for the day to pick up later if they remembered, where nobody was supposed to go. It felt like being behind the scenes of a festival - filthy ropes in a pile, a broken table, two unemptied metal-barrel trash cans, and the real life of the party happening on the other side, the pretty side.

I preferred being behind the scenes.

On one side is the large church; on the other, the oratorio. On the oratorio steps were three bodies, sprawled out - not awkwardly, but they hadn’t moved since they fell, or had fallen: two men and a woman. Within a few seconds I could hear that the woman was English, one man was French, the other African/Italian. Their muscles were so relaxed that the bodies seemed to have taken on the rough shape of the steps, rising and falling as they cascaded down, and I was sure that, if they were to get up and strip off their clothes, lines would have formed across their backs and legs at regular intervals. Their mouths were mumbling and their chests were shaking with shallow laughter. I immediately became extremely self-conscious in that way when everyone around me is doing something - wearing football jerseys when I am in a suit, eating hamburgers when all I have are cucumber sticks, mumbling along to Kanye or Drake when all I know is music. I looked at them as they looked at me. I could see that they were having trouble focusing, but they knew someone was near them.

“Hey bro,” one of the men said in a rough aproximation of a 1970s movie Mexican accent, “you wan some weeeeeeed?”

The woman burst into a fit of laughter, and the men followed.

It was suddenly 1995, between third and fourth period. I’d just come out of Mr. Hedberg’s biology class and there, lying on the sharp drought-resistant grass between the last row of classrooms of Granite Hills High School, were Kate, Wendy, and Angela. The sun was high, and yellow in that California way, so it must have been the springtime; it wasn’t hot enough to force the administration to give us a half-day. As I walked toward them, Angela jumped up and lunged at me while Kate and Wendy laughed. Angela looked up, her eyes unfocused saucers, and said, too loudly, “WE ARE ON AHHHHHHHHHCID.” She then danced as if she was at Woodstock - peace-signed fingers flowing past her eyes, then go-go dancing to some silent song, and, standing stock still, I felt a chasm open between us. I knew I would never feel what she was feeling at that moment, see what she saw, be who she was becoming; we had, in that one moment, in her simple decision, taken completely different paths, and I would never be able to travel the one she had chosen. I felt neither sadness or gratitude; there was just a sense of distance as Kate and Wendy fell backwards, consumed by the hilarity of whatever it was they were imagining in their world and I stayed in mine.

And I turned and walked away as the laughter got quieter, then stopped.

(Pritesh and Jörgen, this one is for you!)

The markets in Palermo are both legendary and ruined. The famous food streets - La Vucciria and Bancarella Del Polpottavio in particular - are not really even markets anymore; markets imply that sellers set up stalls with the intent to sell and customers go there with the intent to buy. Here, the buyers consume the experience, but very rarely the products; this has turned the markets into open-air theaters. Tourists wander between close-packed stalls in slow, steady lines, stopping whenever someone in front of them takes a photo of a swordfish beak sticking out of a pack of ice or a vendor draws their attention to a particularly attractive pile of tomatoes. The restaurants - which are, admittedly, often packed - all serve stereotypical Italian staples; there are no experimental chefs on the streets of Palermo. As far as customers go, the only locals are behind the tables and in the kitchens; I often wondered if the food on display was plastic, as it was hard to imagine the crowds doing anything other than taking photos of it.

Take La Vucciria, for example. There are many food stalls, most of which serve Sicilian staples - pasta, fried food, sandwiches. One man in the middle, though, sells the famous spleen sandwiches, pani câ meusa. These are traditional Jewish-Sicilian sandwiches made from an organ that is not usually celebrated in the culinary arts, and holds a hallowed place in the island’s story. The story, though, seems to mainly be told in English; the only Sicilians who stopped at his stall were other food vendors, coming by for a chat. The customers, coming at regular intervals, were food tour groups. Twenty people would crowd around his stand, with twenty phones at varying angles all searching for a cooking shot; then, phones would be traded as people got action shots of them eating the spleen, with appropriate shocked, amazed, and awed expressions on their faces to let viewers back home know how extraordinary it was that they were being so daring and adventurous. Then, sandwiches would be quietly disposed of in the bins provided, there would be twenty grazies, the group would move on to wash their mouths out with Aperol Spritzes, and quiet would descend once more on his coals. A few minutes later, his friends would appear to talk about the weather or the football or the politics while he casually started the next batch of spleens; as soon as another tour group appeared at the outskirts, the friends would melt away and he’d be left alone, to all appearances diligently cooking the offal to perfection with the apparent attention and dedication of an old master.

The seafood market, Bancarella Del Polpottavio, was similar. The one food market we came across, Mercato Ballarò, was better, at least in the early morning: people actually bought raw ingredients for cooking. Around 9 a.m., though, the performances start. These are all Instagram spaces; they say little about Sicilian culture and more about the desires of tourists to see a performance of stereotypes. One suspects that they may have paid extra to see a group of toughs loitering at the edges.

The Sunday Mercato Antico is a bit better. It’s a weekly market that happens in the streets and plazas around Giardino Garibaldi. Sellers set up early and, although the market officially opens at 8 a.m., browsing really starts around 8:30 or 9 - it’s a relaxed affair. The sellers in the piazza across from the gardens are mostly antique sellers; here, as in the antique market, you can find some extraordinary stuff sold by people who know its value. On the sidewalks around the garden, you can find tables with everything from textiles to antique watches, a lot of keys, Zippos, the obligatory man selling LPs (and blaring Miles Davis over an amp on repeat, week after week), an artist who makes sculptures out of junk, garden tools, bags, shoes, and books. There are only a few stalls where people sell assorted goods - everyone here seems to specialize in something, and they return to the same spots every week, making it seem less like a flea market (as it is described on Google Maps) than a club of people who sell together.

Better yet is the cloth street, which I could find on foot without any problems but can’t, for the life of me, locate on Google Maps - I believe it could have been Vicolo dello Zingaro. In the UK, some streets are named after what was previously sold there - Grassmarket, Haymarket, Fleshmarket. Now, these streets no longer have any association to their former occupants. However, in Palermo, trades still concentrate in particular areas. The antique market is one; there’s a stretch near the Cathedral where book stores abound, and on the fabric street, there are blocks of fabric stores, bolts of colors and patterns spilling out of open doorways.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that textile tourism is a major contributor to the Sicilian economy, and AI…well, it has hallucinated a few too many times for me to be comfortable asking it. I therefore have to believe that there is a large amount of local support for clothing stores, and that sewing is still common here - common enough to support numerous businesses and families. In any case, the textile shops have tons of interesting fabrics and patterns that one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Indeed, some patters appear to be unique to individual shops, leading one to believe that the owners are also designers. We walked away with several yards of intricately-patterned cloth, which ended up on lampshades and napkins and sewn over a rip in some swimming trunks.

So: if you want to go home with something that is actually Sicilian, stop one might be the fabric lane opposite the Cathedral’s main entrance.

But for a much more interesting experience, you have to work a bit at your luck.

First, it helps to be up at 6 a.m., with all of your wits about you. Second, go out into the streets with a bag, scissors, and a camera. The scissors are for plant cuttings; the plan is to get cuttings of various plants in order to propagate them at home. The camera is for street photos, and the bag is to hold the scissors and camera and cuttings without being too conspicuous.

Pro tip: you don’t need the scissors. There are tons of succulents in the streets, literally falling out of planters and littering the ground; you can just pick up runners and put them in water for planting when you get home. At this hour, the streets are quiet, for the most part. But then you’ll get towards Piazza San Francisco Saverio, down near the museum. From here, stretching out into the surrounding streets, is an informal street market. It does not appear to be organized; maybe fifty or a hundred people have set out their wares, usually on the concrete sidewalks, sometimes on sheets or tarps, and they take over blocks as necessary. Like the sellers in the antique market, these sellers mostly know the value of what they are selling; unlike the antique market, though, these sellers are hawking things that are nearly worthless. Here you will find used kitchen utensils, old kids clothes, toys, working landline telephones, radios, well-used shoes, formerly non-stick pans, mugs, half-used bottles of shampoo, and anything else people no longer need that may fetch a Euro or two from someone similarly hard-up. Some sellers seem to be regulars; others are just desperate.

The truly beautiful thing is that here, you can see the things that Sicilian people actually have used in the past, and things other Sicilian people may use in the very near future. Next to a volcano erupting and burying the area in ash, then returning in 2,000 years, this is perhaps the single easiest way to get a look into fifty different houses, to see what the people have valued in the past and what others value today.

I came here three times, and every time, the market was running. I wasn’t smart enough to keep track of the days and times I visited, but my suspicion is that this market runs whenever anyone has something to put out, and this means that it operates every single day. It doesn’t seem to have specific hours – I was there at 6:30 am and noon, and sellers had their stuff spread out on the ground at all times.

Why do I love this market so much? Besides the fact that the wares here are true reflections of modern Sicilian culture, I also love bargains. At any flea market, the bargains are not found in well-organized stalls, carefully laid out and curated. The bargains are found when a seller has cardboard boxes full of disorganized debris, and you have to pick your way through everything. Treasure doesn’t just sit out, waiting to be picked up; it must be found. The seller should have some idea of what they are actually selling, but they should not be emotionally invested in it.

If we are valuing markets, based on their reflection, of how the people in a place and culture actually live – which, come to think of it, maybe a great definition of the overused term “authenticity” – then there is no better place than the unofficial market.

I want to try to paint a picture of this place, as I didn’t take any photos of it - I was too busy shopping. Parts of the neighbourhood seem to have been destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II and never rebuilt. The streets and sidewalks are intact, though, and people lay out blankets and clothes on the ground and put their stuff down. There aren’t designated pitches or spaces – sellers take up as much space as they need. Virtually everything here is used household detritus. The electronics cannot be guaranteed to work; sometimes it appears that people have gone through the trash to find anything that could be sold for €1 or more, and they have not been overly selective. Many sellers are poor; that’s why they are here. Many buyers are poor; that’s why they are here. You come here to search for bargains. And, if JFK was right and it’s not the kill but the hunt, these are wonderful hunting grounds.

Most of the times we walked through, I was with Daniel and Nicholas. This was not ideal. First, they wanted toys. Second, the toys were all very cheap. Third, the toys were also invariably filthy, or broken, and usually both. So I never stopped long with them - I would glance at the piles, and hustle them through the streets with promises of watermelon or cornettos on the other side.

But on the penultimate morning, at 6:30 am, I went on my own. I had my scissors, bag and camera; I wanted to get a few plant clippings from public planters – purpleheart, succulents, jade, anything I could find – and to see if the market had anything for me.

So I did, and it was glorious. Planters in Palermo, generally overflow with plants that can be propagated with cuttings, and I didn’t need the scissors – most planters had dropped “volunteers,” or branches that had dropped off into the street, the mother plant hoping that they would root somewhere new (and Edinburgh is certainly such a new place for these plants).

When I got to the market, it was wonderful. I joined the other hunters in the search. There is no organisation here, you just have to dig in piles of crap for something you may want. I kept a close eye on my watch – not because I was worried it would be stolen, but because this is the sort of place where I could lose track of time and end up spending an hour looking for things and two hours talking to people.

And the people are wonderful to talk to. Some sellers are pure hustlers. They may hustle you, but it is because they love hustling – there’s no animosity, no desire to screw you over. It is nothing personal, and if it turns out that you aren’t there to be hustled, they are perfectly happy to be friends until another mark appears. There’s nothing one can say to express one’s invulnerability to hustling – it’s unconsciously and subtly communicated, an understanding, a characteristic of one’s personality, an intangible that comes out in your posture, the way you talk, and the amused look on your face when you see everything they say as a sort of cosmic joke between you. With that, there is a game of laughing chicken – you escalate the interaction until one of you laughs, and the laughing is not a sign of losing, but of love of the game. This also isn’t a gendered thing; I generally find that these hustlers amen, but the best hustler I ever knew, is my friend Mary, who I have known since first grade and seems, in my experience, genetically predisposed to hustle everyone she meets.

Anyway, there are some wonderful hustlers at the informal market in Palermo.

I left one hustler space and kept walking. He had an okay selection. Then there was a half a block taken up by a couple, a man and a woman who were clearly both married and hated each other. They were engaged in some low-level, quiet dispute when I started looking, and everyone else but me seemed to have gotten a memo to avoid them. Me, though, I jumped into their piles, ignoring the quiet recriminations and sudden movements that easily could have turned criminal.

Their life accumulations – for this was clearly a place where they were selling their own unwanted stuff – were mostly uninteresting.

Then, my hand closed around a wooden cylinder, and I knew I’d struck gold.

It was a rolling pin, with an even, wooden surface and tapered ends. It was twice as long as any rolling pin I’ve ever seen, and I held it up like Excalibur, and the woman stopped muttering at her husband and looked at me, obviously surprised that, of all the things, this is what had caught the eye of the only foreigner in sight. I looked at her and gently tipped it towards her – from 20 meters away, the international sign for, “how much?”

She looked at it with a resigned expression and held up three fingers.

I smiled, leaned my head to the right a few degrees, lifted my eyebrows, pursed my lips, and held up two.

She dipped her head.

She muttered something to the man as I walked towards her and dropped a €2 coin in her palm. We Grazied at the same time, and I turned and walked away, giddy at my find and now faced with the very real possibility that it might not fit in my backpack. It did, though, and now, every time we make pizzas, cookies, cinnamon, rolls, and especially pasta, I think of Cassidy, and the vagaries of culture, and the evolution of tools, and that morning hunting in the streets of Palermo, and I’m grateful for the friends and cultures that have brought this souvenir to me.

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