Sal DeTraglia

You’re driving your Mercedes SUV down a desolate country road in rural Spain. When suddenly…you see the man pictured above–who is a neighbor of yours–zooming down the street like a panther in pursuit of a jack rabbit. Do you:

(a) Honk your horn, pump your fist in the air and bellow a hearty, “Go for it, Fat Sal! Keep it up!!!”

(b) Drive across the median, roll down your car window and grab a heaping handful of cast-iron right buttock?

(c) Stop the car, ask if he needs a ride home, and then act surprised when he tells you, “Thanks, but that would pretty much defeat the whole purpose of my being here in these funny clothes and expensive shoes.”

The answer couldn’t possibly be (c), could it?

I mean…surely (c) could never happen in the real world.

Could it?

Wow! What more can I say about last weekend in Basel, Switzerland?

The Big Finn posted a brilliant summary HERE.

Canadian-Swiss posted an equally brilliant summary HERE.

I’ll do a write-up, as well–but probably not until next week.

See you then. I promise.

But before tugging the chain on the VTB’s neon sign, I want to address all those would-be expats who have sent me the same email time after time after time during these past eight years.

That email being, “Hi! I live in the US and I want to be an expat. I so, soooo want to be an expat. How can I do it?”

Well, my young and idealistic friends, here is the best advice I can give you. And trust me, this the voice of experience talking here.

ADVICE #1: FORGET ABOUT BEING AN EXPAT. JUST BE A TOURIST.
Countries like Spain allow you visit the country for up to three months without a visa. So…if you so desperately want to leave your native land and live somewhere else, then come to Spain for three months and then go back. Trust me…three months will satisfy 90% of your expat fantasies.

But if that’s not good enough, then stay the three months…go back home…do your laundry and water your plants…then come back for another three months. Trust me…a combined six months abroad will satisfy 99.9% of your expat fantasies.

But if you *still* insist that it’s not enough, then you take the next step at your own risk. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

ADVICE #2: THAT NEXT STEP.
If you insist on living abroard for more than (for example) a summer or a college semester, then here’s the important thing to remember.

ALWAYS HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGY!

Know exactly when you will return home for good. And stick to it.

Do *not* move abroad with an open-ended return date–or, worse yet, with the idealistic notion that your move will be permanent.

Have an exit strategy! Know exactly when you will return. And stick to it.

Then–and this is the hard part, but the important part–don’t do anything that would complicate or jeopardize that return.

Don’t ship all your earthly possessions to your new country. Don’t buy a house. Don’t tie-up your savings in local investments that will be difficult to transfer back to your native country. Don’t do any of those “grown-up” things that you would, as a matter of course, do if you lived in your native land. Just think of yourself as a wandering nomad–travelling light. As light as possible.

Why? Because every expat is like a carton of milk. There will be an expiration date stamped on your forehead. And when that date passes, you WILL start to curdle.

I know a lot of expats. I’ve seen it happen a million times. There is this syndrome amongst expats called “The Seven Year Itch.” Few are immune.

You’ll spend the first couple years in your new country being fascinated, charmed, mesmerized by the new culture.

You’ll spend the next few years trying to make that culture your own.

By about year four, all those little cultural quirks that you once found so charming will begin to grate your nerves like an emery board.

By year five, you’ll find yourself watching Fox News on satellite television each night and fantasizing about strolling down the “Lawn & Garden” aisle of Walmart. Any Walmart.

By year seven, you’ll suddenly find yourself standing naked on the roof of your house–cloaked in a dusty coyote pelt–howling at the moon.

Trust me. I’ve seen it a million times.

Now, I’m sure that there are a couple of keyboard warriors out there who are reading this and positively frothing at the mouth. I can just see them–sharpening their talons and ready to pound-out a venomous message telling me how arrogant and wrong I am…and how THEY have been an expat for 897 years and it was the best decision of their lives, and yadda, yadda, yadda.

To those people I say, “Congratulations.” You’ve achieved something that few people I know have managed. I am deeply, sincerely happy for you. So save your email. This VTB is neither a forum for debate nor a democracy. It’s a dictatorship, and I’m Ming the Merciless. Your email will never see the light of day in the VTB Chat Lounge, so save your energy.

And that, my friends, is the best advice I can give on the expat issue.

And that, my friends, is also the end of my Spanish adventure.

This blog will continue (and it will continue to be funny), so keep checking in. But its focus is going to shift to other areas.

Spain was a great muse for a long time. But you know what what happens when a man gets the seven year itch.

He goes out and finds a new muse.

What can I say? Some men collect stamps.

Hey! Since we’re on the topic, I have an important announcement to make. My official BBQ name shall heretofore be…”Fat Sal.”

And if/when I should form a competition BBQ team, the team name shall be…”A Smoke & A Twelve-Pack.”

As you might suspect, there’s a story behind that team name. But as for today, at least…I ain’t talkin’.

So…you’re probably wondering if there’s a good reason why I haven’t blogged lately.

Yep, there is.

Now that we’ve resolved that…let’s dip a pewter flagon into my stream of consciousness and take a little drink, shall we?

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

Happy Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday.

CHICKEN KIEV:

I can’t say I was looking forward to my recent business trip to Kiev, Ukraine. I envisioned it as being a drab, dour place–much like East Berlin when I visited it in 1988. Or K-Mart when I visited it in 2005.

Beyond that, I really didn’t know what to expect–except that the trip would end with my lifeless body being stuffed into a industrial drum and tossed into the Black Sea by a neckless, hairy ogre purporting to be my taxi driver.

Well, I was a bit hasty in my pessimism. Kiev is actually a very nice town–even if my taxi driver (who, in fact, had a neck) did point down-river as we passed over a bridge and said, “Cherynobl.”

Kiev’s buildings were clean and brightly painted. Golden minarets shimmered. Highways were lined with old growth white birch trees. And the women?

O! M! G!

Guys, come closer and listen carefully. If your life’s “To Do” list has an entry that says, “Find a tall, thin, ridiculously beautiful eastern European-ish babe,” then go buy yourself a ticket on the first available flight to Kiev.

She’s there. In fact, she’s everywhere.

AND FINALLY…PUTTING THE “EX-” IN “EXPAT”:

Yeah, it’s true. More on that later…

I’ve never understood why nobody in Spain makes or sells pies.

Adding to my confusion is the fact that the good people of France–a nation that borders Spain to the north–will dump just about anything into a pie shell, bake it and snarf it.

Having meditated on this curiosity for nearly eight years, I can only assume that the Spanish don’t bake pies because they’re using all of their pie plates to make paella.

Determined to lead the Spanish populace by example, I bought two Pyrex glass pie plates during my last trip to Chicago and brought them back here. My assumption, however, was that they would sit unused in my cabinet until such time as I moved back to the US or my home was burgled by a Frenchman–whichever came first.

But then I got a call from my neighbors yesterday suggesting that my daughter and I join them to pick wild blackberries.

Whoa! I saw an opportunity. Having recently picked MacIntosh apples with friends in Michigan, I was feeling quite in touch with my inner Grizzly Adams. Plus, I knew that six cups of blackberries would be enough to make a blackberry pie. So Pumpkin and I accepted the offer.

Little did I know, however, that picking six cups of blackberries is a task requiring six hours’ labor and two pints of blood loss.

But we did, in fact, return with six cups of blackberries and today set about baking a pie–the first pie that either my daughter or I had ever attempted.

Now, I consider myself a pretty above average cook–especially when the menu is heavily skewed in the direction of dead animals. But baking has always been the weakest link in my armour. And today’s project was a fitting example.

I used the pie crust recipe of a Polish-American grandmother whose baking skills I can vouch for–from third helpings of first hand experience. She makes a pretty mean czernina, as well.

But, unfortunately, her recipe was for one layer of pie crust and I needed two.

Simple enough, one would assume. Just double it.

Yes…but for me, doubling a recipe is a form of math. And for a lawyer who really wanted to be a gym teacher, math of any kind is fraught with danger.

And so it was that in the process of doubling this kindly Polish-American grandmother’s cherished pie crust recipe, I remembered to double most of the ingredients–but not quite all of them. And to make matters worse, the ingredient that I forgot to double was milk.

Our end product was a gorgeous, gooey, deep-purple berry filling encased in…a sand castle.

Oh well. As I’ve so often told my niece and nephew, you have to screw up a recipe three times before getting it right. I’ve got two more shots at this pie crust before I’ll get it right.

And when I finally get it right, who knows? Maybe I’ll just dump a bunch of czernina into it, bake it and snarf it.