What do a dowser in rural America and a conference on “remigration” in Porto have in common? At first glance, not much. One spends his weekends walking fields with a metal rod searching for underground water. The other gathers politicians, activists and ideologues to discuss race, identity and the future of Europe. The connection, I…
Give us this day our daily bread, but just make sure it’s Portuguese. A stale item makes a return this week in the Camino a Ítacain the latest additions to a series of articlesI have written on bread.A recent headline read that bread consumption has fallen 70% (!) in the region over the past 20…
“Heading west again as you pass through Valencia de Alcántara, leaving the last remaining Spanish villages behind, a jagged dorsal fin rises out of the surrounding green patches that cluster around courses of water that feed into the river. Like some sort of prehistoric Border Wall, this granite fence signals that the border is near…”
A place close to my heart, just north of here where the scorched summer earth becomes green once again. Cool water runs off the sierra and where the wines are meant to enjoyed, not examined. Writing in Roads and Kingdoms about a toast to an old friend.
Late night food truck blues in Baixa. #portugal #burger #sagres #beer #burgerlove #latenighteats #cerveja #afterthegig #egghamburger #coldbeer #foodtruck #nonotfar Una publicación compartida por Troy Nahumko (@troynahumko) el Dic 24, 2017 at 2:42 PST
Perched high above a patchwork of olive groves and cork forests, a holy mountain juts 758 meters (2486 feet) from the surrounding plain. It’s a sacred playground overlooking neighboring villages where naughty gods once used huge granite boulders as their croquet pieces, and left them scattered, forgetting to clean up after themselves. Over the centuries…
Around these parts the border is porous and exactly where Portuguese villages become Spanish is lost among the cork tree forests (and in today’s Europe so is the point). Sometimes the little white houses are fringed with blue sometimes yellow but walk through the immense walls and past the Visigothic church and into a bar and the confusion ends.…
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs. Once upon a time, long before the giant Shanghai Bazaars arrived with their low-cost, low-quality plasticy imitation rags, legend has it that Cacereños would drive…
The Shock Doctrine is oozing and has slimed Portugal…Are things so different over here right across the border? Blogging again in El Pais.
The good people over at Trazzler have given me even more reason to practice what I preach and travel deeper rather than further. I’ve been assigned a 10 piece series, exploring my adopted homeland of Extremadura, Spain and her sister region across the now non-existent border with Portugal. First stop Alcantara! Second Caceres Moving on…