We recently took the Transcantábrico, a week long luxury train trip across Northern Spain. It was great! Like a cruise but on a train. We did something similar in India in 2015 and it’s an interesting way to travel. Some photos here.

The Transcantábrico goes across a part of Spain a little off the usual tourist track. From Santiago de Compostela through the mountains south of the coast to Donostia / San Sebastián. Along the way we saw towns I never would have gone to on my own: Gijón, Potes, and Santillana del Mar were particularly memorable. Also some beautiful nature including Cathedral beach in Gallegos and Hermida Gorge in the Picos de Europa. The excursions from the train were well organized with a very nice bus and guides.

The hospitality on the train was terrific. Our “cruise director” Cristina was particularly amazing, friendly and knowledgeable. All the staff were great and very accommodating. Maybe 12 people helping 25 guests. Meals on the train were excellent and comfortable. Most days breakfast and dinner were on the train, lunch was out. The restaurants were all high quality but variable and honestly just too much food. The highlight was El Corral del Indianu.

Living on a train has its limitations. The private shower was very nice with lots of hot water but you’re still washing in a telephone booth. The queen size bed was comfortable but in a very tight space, we wished we’d booked two single beds. And getting around the train was difficult (you have to move sideways in the corridor), particularly when the train was moving. After a week I was ready to be back in a normal hotel. OTOH it was beautifully furnished and it was great being unpacked and taken care of so well.

I’d definitely do another luxury train. But maybe fewer days. The key thing is the itinerary, the places to go. That was amazing in India, a week long trip from Delhi to Mumbai. Spain was beautiful and I appreciated going slowly through a place off the beaten track with knowledgeable local guidance. Rewarding trip!

PS: if you want to see more, Mighty Trains S04E02 is about the Transcantábrico.

Ken and I just got back from a 23 day trip exploring most of Austria. We had a lovely time although we did get a little worn out and ready for home after a couple of weeks. Along the way we stayed in Vienna, Graz, the Wörthersee, Zell am See, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Hallstatt, Linz, and Dürnstein. A nice mix of cities and countryside. I tweeted a bunch of postcards, easily viewed here and here.

My favorite places were the town of Graz and the countryside in the south from the Wörthersee through Zell am See to Innsbruck. The drive over the Grossglockner Alpine Road was a particular highlight and the lush green alpine valleys of Styria, Carinthia, and Tyrol were just a delight. Salzburg was also a very good visit. Linz was an industrial disappointment and Hallstatt was tourist hell; skip it unless you are very interested in the archaeological story.

We ate very well on this trip; Austrian cuisine is more interesting than the schnitzel-and-boiled-beef that was my stereotypical view. Lots of fresh fall ingredients. The pumpkin cream soup was particularly good. Enhanced with Kürbiskernöl, pumpkin seed oil that's deliciously nutty and green tasting. And of course plenty of fantastic sweets; the French call pastry viennoiserie for a reason. The single best meal we ate was at Pfefferschiff in Salzburg.

I went to DC a few weeks ago and visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is an excellent pair of museums, I strongly recommend anyone visiting DC make it a priority. It’s still free and still a hot ticket but easier to get in to than before. If you’re going in summer reserve tickets three months in advance for your best experience. But you can also get same-day tickets and walkups, particularly outside of peak season.

The museum is clearly designed as two separate sections. Downstairs is history, upstairs is culture. The bottom half of the museum is a fantastic history of African Americans from the earliest days of slavery, through slave uprisings, emancipation, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights era. It’s ambitious. It will leave you exhausted at the end with no energy for the other half of the museum, the cultural museum. Which is also fantastic, a celebration of African American cultures. Food, textiles, sports, music, TV. I mean, they have the goddamn P-Funk mothership! It’s a lot of fun. Definitely also worth a visit, but plan a break for lunch or something in the middle.

I approached this museum from the background of having visited a lot of German museums about Nazi history. I was wondering how the Smithsonian would deal with America’s enormous crime against humanity. Thoroughly and honestly, but very differently from the German museums. The Nazi memorials tend to a direct documentation of how the genocide and other crimes were conducted. They are focussed on a recent history in living memory, and one that is meticulously documented in precise bureaucratic detail. By contrast formal American slavery is 150+ years old and there’s precious few direct records of, say, individual slaveholders and their daily abuses. The historical distance demands a different telling. Also the Smithsonian has made a decision to tell as uplifting a history as possible; in every room details of African American resistance, strength, and heroism are highlighted. I think that’s admirable but it doesn’t leave a lot of room for documenting the horrible abuses. Those are documented, but only as one facet of the whole museum.

So I was a little conflicted. Honestly I think America needs a fully uncomfortable museum about slavery where the abuses are the focus. How American people and government worked to subjugate other Americans, to keep them and their children in slavery. Far too many people still think that slavery wasn’t really that bad, or wasn’t really Americans’ faults, or that slavery is over so what’s the big deal now? The German museums exist to ensure that no German can be at all confused about what happened in the Nazi regime and could never consider even slightly lionizing that era. Plenty of Americans still celebrate Confederate "heroes" and do not admit to the horrible abuses of slavery, not just in its time but the echoes of it today. I fear in softening the message the Smithsonian does not do enough to communicate how horrible American slavery was. There are a couple of museums that are more focussed on the mechanisms of abuse which I need to visit; the Whitney Plantation near New Orleans and the Lynching Memorial in Montgomery.

One other thing I can’t let go… Nazi memorials in Germany are in no way museums of Jewish culture. They are museums of German history. The Smithsonian has chosen to put museums of both Culture and History together in one place. I think they’ve done an excellent job of it. The separation of floors makes for a separation of concerns. And I like the uplifting message in the history section, the story of how African Americans shall overcome. So the combination works, but it still makes me uneasy.

Mexico City is famous right now for its food culture. From the temples of fine dining like Pujol to casual street tacos people love to eat well in CDMX. I made thorough notes on all the places we ate on a short trip. My favorite places were Carmela y Sal, Corazón de Maguey, and Taqueria Califa.

Cafe Tacuba for lunch. Our tour guide suggested this as something near the Cathedral. I really liked it, a funky throwback cafe with a nearly ossified traditional Mexican menu. Honestly the service was a bit off and slow, but that was offset by the place being so retro and comfortable. I liked my chile rellenos quite a bit although I would have traded one of the two enormous chiles for a more complex sauce. Ken’s enchiladas tapatías were good.

Carmela y Sal for dinner. We told some of the hotel staff we were going here and they were all very excited; apparently chef Gabriela Lugo has made quite an impression in town. Us too, this felt like the exciting, trendy, yet comfortable kind of place that everyone says Mexico City is great for. The highlight dish for us was the "liar’s tostadas", a vegan preparation of coconut doctored up to taste like crab pork. Delicious on their own merits even without the hilarious cooking trick. My Poc Chuc was also fantastic, as was Ken’s creamy canneloni. Great wine list too. This restaurant was where we figured out Mexican portions are huge, we ordered way too much food. As dining mistakes go that’s not so bad.

Corazón de Maguey. Our tour guide took us here for a mezcal tasting; they are serious about mezcal here. Which was great, it’s interesting to taste a bunch of mezcals against each other. Nice restaurant too, good basic Mexican vibe with a leaning towards Oaxacan cuisine. I loved the Coyoacán neighborhood this is located in, the restaurant is right on the lively main park / square that defines the neighborhood.

Capital Grille. We decided we might want some familiar American food one night, and who doesn’t like a good steak? They delivered well here, although other than a couple of Mexican cocktails we could just as easily have been in Duluth or Miami or Toronto. Was nearly empty on Saturday night other than a lunch party that’d started 7 hours before; I suspect this is a businessman’s dinner kind of place. If you want a US steak at US prices go here, otherwise go somewhere Mexican!

Taqueria Califa. Casual and fast tacos but in a nice well lit place with table service. Certainly a good choice for gringos who want street food but are nervous about it. My favorite here was the classic tacos al pastor; with fresh onion, cilantro, and pineapple setting off the roast pork so well. Great place for a quick snack or casual full meal.

Porfirios. Dinner at a hilariously trendy / fancy restaurant. I think every single table had at least one tableside preparation, whether molcajete or something set on fire or the lady wheeling around a street corn sign. Great looking grilled steaks and shrimp, but we stuck with simpler chiles rellenos (good) and enchiladas mole (too sweet). This seems to be a place wealthy locals go to celebrate. The lighting in the restaurant is tragic though; so dark all the waiters have flashlights handy for reading menus but then also a super bright TV in the bar annoying everyone having dinner. On the balance I think the theater of it overcame the quality of the food. It was fine, but I wouldn’t go back.

Restaurante Meztli. Not in CDMX but rather right next to the pyramids at Teotihuacán, a good spot for thirsty tourists. Margaritas, micheladas, good guacamole and enchiladas. I can’t say it’s anything special but for the middle of a tourist zone it was quite good. The owner was super friendly, too.

Zanaya restaurant at the Four Seasons. Traditional Mexican, not great. Dinner felt more like an obligatory hotel restaurant than a place someone was running with love. Absolutely beautiful outdoor patio in the hotel’s magnificent garden courtyard. Sadly we had to sit inside which is not nearly as nice, despite the cool retro tile. Good cocktail list but the food seemed a bit ordinary, certainly not elevated. Definitely would not make a trip to dine here. (Breakfast here was good, but is a whole different thing.)

So those are all the places we dined. In addition I polled friends for places to go, here’s a list sorted by popularity: Pujol, Azul, Lardo, Tetetlan, La Clandestina, Alba in Roma Norte, Quintonil, Casa Hevia, Brassi, Dulce Patria, Casa Virginia, La Docena, Chureria El Moros, Rokai, Elilsito, La Capital, Lucerna Comedor, Rosetta, Masala y Maiz, Contramar, Maximo Bistro.

For my birthday this year we visited Mexico City in early March. It was great! I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who’s interested in going to a big city that’s vibrant and has a long great cultural history. Also relatively inexpensive for American wallets. We went for four days and that was a good taste of the city. But there’s so much to do and enjoy I could see spending much longer, particularly if you start getting into neighborhoods and enjoying daily life.

There’s some photos here on Twitter. I didn’t do as good a job taking pictures this trip as I usually do.

I have to confess this trip was a bit of an education for me. I grew up in Houston with severe prejudice, so much that "Mexican" sounds like a slur to me, not a description of nationality. I think I’ve grown past the outright bigotry but my brief tourist jaunts across the border and on the coast didn’t really cure me of the idea that Mexico was somehow lesser. Mexico City is a whole different thing, a sophisticated international city bustling with life and excitement. Sure some taxis will rip you off and as a visitor you probably shouldn’t drink the tap water. But it’s a home to 21M people, fully modern, and full of excitement and modern culture and history and great food. Also people seemed very friendly, relaxed, and welcoming. I’m looking forward to going back.

We stayed at the Four Seasons which treated us very well. This hotel’s rooms all front on an enormous central courtyard so it’s quiet and beautiful. Service was excellent. Didn’t love their casual Mexican restaurant for dinner although breakfasts were great.

We booked this trip with a tour guide and driver via Journey Mexico for four full days. It was great; we saw a lot more than we would have on our own and understood more about what we saw. It was also exhausting and I think next time we’ll probably plan half days, stop at lunch. It’s an expensive way to travel but you can get a lot of the same value by hiring tour guides day by day and taking Uber everywhere. Here’s what we did:

Day 1: City Centre. The Templo Mayor museum, the Diego Garcia mural at the National Palace, and a quick visit to the San Juan Market. (We were supposed to see the Cathedral and the Palacio de Bellas Artes too, but skipped them). The museum offered us a remarkable view of historical Mexico City, the way the new city was built right on top of the old Aztec temple center. And the Diego Garcia mural is phenomenal, you can get something of a view of it here. I wish we’d spent more time just walking around the streets and less at the Templo Mayor, but we were moving slow. Fun retro lunch at Cafe Tacuba.

Day 2: Rivera/Kahlo/Trotsky and Coyoacán. The highlight here was visiting the Casa Azul, a privately run museum about Frida Kahlo at her home. The exhibitions were quite good and personal. Huge line to get in, even with advance tickets. We also visited the Rivera and Kahlo studio which was interesting architecturally but the exhibits are not so exciting. OTOH the Trotsky museum was fascinating; I had no idea Trotsky lived in exile in Mexico City and met a dismal end with an ice axe stuck in his head by a Soviet assassin. All these sites are near each other in the southern part of the city in the absolutely charming Coyoacán neighborhood where we had a great lunch and mezcal tasting at the Corazón de Maguey.

Day 3: Chapultepec Castle and the Anthropology Museum. The castle is a walk up a big hill but the views and exhibits are worth the effort. A preserved vestige of Hapsburg and French meddling in Mexican politics, the brief-lived Emperor of Mexico. Unfortunately that left us without enough energy for the anthropology museum, one of the best in the world and the very best for Mesoamerican history. I want to go back to Mexico City just to spend a couple of days slowly working through its treasures. For lunch I had the best tacos al pastor of my life at Taqueria Califa.

Day 4: Teotihuacan. An hour drive NE of the city, Teotihuacan is an enormous archaeological site of a city that lived from 150 BC to 600 AD. At its height it had some 200,000 residents, making it one of the largest cities in the world. It’s totally worth the drive to visit, particularly to see the reconstruction of the 2.5 mile long Avenue of the Dead and the scale of the Pyramids and Temples built alongside it. There’s also a lot of beautifully preserved original carving and painting on-site to see and a small museum of artifacts. If you want some companion reading this recent museum exhibition catalog is very up to date and has both great text and photographs. Lunch was nearby at the surprisingly good Restaurante Meztli.

In the evenings we went out mostly to fancy restaurants. See my companion blog post for more, but our favorite was Carmela y Sal. Our trip was a nice mix of ancient history and recent. If I had to pick three highlights off the list, I’d say the Diego Garcia mural, the Casa Azul, and the anthropology museum. What I wish we’d done more of was just getting into the town, walking around and enjoying neighborhoods and cafes. But that takes more time and local knowledge (not to mention language) than we had this first visit. But I’m sure Mexico City is a place I will happily return to, enjoy and experience more.

One of the conveniences of Berlin city life is the Späti or Spätkauf, the local convenience store. It’s like your corner bodega in New York, a little market that sells essentials and is nearby and open late. Beer, newspapers, fresh baked goods, condoms, a couple of cooked meals, some minimal groceries. There’s one on nearly every block.

It’s particularly useful in Germany because laws and customs strictly limit how late stores can be open. For instance almost no one is open on Sundays, including grocery stores, without special exceptions. But somehow the neighborhood Späti is open every day, often 6am to 11pm or some even longer. The name literally means "late store".

In nice weather the Späti often have a couple of tables outside. And there’s no rule against drinking beer outside so they become a low cost alternative to going to a bar. There’s even Späticrawls where people spend the evening wandering between their favorite Spätis drinking beer on the way.

One other handy thing about the Späti, they often double as a formal package receiving service. My local has a deal with Hermes where a package can be delivered to them and they’ll hold it for a week. Fairly serious system for pickups too, an ID check and a signature and a record made. Amazon is happy to deliver to these so it’s easy to buy things from them in Berlin.

I had a nice two week visit to Portland. I have fantasies about moving back there so I indulged that for a couple of weeks renting a house like I dreamed about when I was in college right near Hawthorne & 39th (now Cesar Chavez). My Wanderings app captured where I went.

Mostly a lot of hanging out in SE, with a couple of trips to downtown and once out to NE. A lot of the activity is dining. Some of the best places I went were Teote for beer in the back garden, Pok Pok for fantastic Thai, and Coquine for fine dining out by Mt Tabor. Also nice experiences at Xico, Afuri, Tasty ‘n’ Alder, Han Oak, The Imperial, and of course the Rum Club. The food and beverage situation in Portland is really great and has been for a few years now. The economics are such that restaurants can do interesting things without having to charge outrageous amounts for it. Lower risk for everyone = more interesting food and drink.

It's great fun to visit Portland and see all my old and new friends. I'm amazed how many people have moved there; only about ⅓ of the folks I know in Portland were from my college days. I still can’t really move back to Portland, too many roots in California. But I like the idea of visiting and staying in AirBnBs in SE more frequently. Particularly in the four months of the year the weather doesn’t suck.

The big surprise from the German elections was how bad Merkel and the ruling CDU did, and how well the deplorable far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party did.

Berlin is a lovely city, very optimistic and international. It also has little patience for AfD bullshit; I saw no AfD signs anywhere until two days before the election, and those only way up high out of reach on poles. There was a big demonstration last night in Alexanderplatz after the election; the AfD were having their party there so a few thousand Berliners turned up to, um, help them celebrate.

• Detailed result maps in English, from the FT. Search google for "Germany’s election results in charts and maps" to bypass the paywall. Here's a direct link to AfD support
• Very detailed result map for Berlin
• Germany's two part ballot, an explanation of Germany's clever implementation for proportional representation
• Fascism is not to be debated…, a first-person account of being assaulted Trump-style at an AfD meeting
• A funny election poster spoof. (Bad translation: Elderly poor people? Not with me! Vote for Death, the top scythe candidate from the Alternative for Everyone party.) Links to this page.

Now for the coalition negotiations. It's not clear to me if the SPD saying they won't join one with the CDU a negotiating tactic or if they mean it.

Ken and I are in Berlin for a few weeks, sort of working vacation. Been here about ten days now and have some impressions.

I’m really liking daily life in Berlin. We have an apartment in Prenzlauer Berg near Kollwitzplatz, a bougie neighborhood in former East Berlin. It’s all leafy streets and 1920s buildings and is totally charming. The nearby streets are full of cafés and restaurants and Kollwitzplatz itself is home to a terrific weekly farmer’s market. It feels worlds away from the inhuman scale 1960+s architecture you see in so much of central Berlin.

One thing I particularly enjoy in Prenzl’berg is how international it is. New York bagels, French cheese shops, English laundry, Vietnamese restaurants, Russian cafés, yesterday I had an Argentinian empanada in a repurposed 19th century brewery. I mean it’s still Germany, there’s a 100 year old kneipe just across the street from us serving Rinderouladen and Pils. But it’s also global and progressive. Which not only makes it easy for an American to get by but also makes it fun and not a historical museum like sometimes Paris can feel like.

I also appreciate being in a city with working public transit. And without thousands of dangerously insane people living on the streets. Having a bit of insulation from Trumpism helps calm the nerves. Big parts of life function better in Europe.

I’m also feeling a little unsettled, a phase I go through every time we do these long visits. A struggle between the feeling I should go out and be a tourist every day, consume the city in the short time I have. Against my desire to sit at home on my comfortable laptop and do my regular daily routine just like I would at home. Of course the happy medium is in the middle, some of each.

One goal I set myself for this time in Berlin was to learn more about older history. So much of Berlin is dominated by 20th century history, the Nazis and the Soviets. And that stuff is important and well represented. But I feel like I understand it from previous visits, so this time I’m looking for traces of 19th century Germany, of Prussia’s great gay king from the 18th century, of the very old city back when Cölln was a separate town. Learning the city from the time the waterways were the travel routes, not the U-bahn lines.

A new “urban art” museum just opened in Berlin: Urban Nation. Judging by their opening weekend show it is a fantastic collection of modern street art. I put a few photos of the works I saw on Flickr.

The event had an “art mile” with some temporary sculpture installations. Also some magnificent large scale street art works on Bülowstrasse itself, hopefully those will last awhile. I particularly liked Zezão’s alien calligraphy forms. Also liked some of the wildcat street art, I think a few lesser-known artists got some unauthorized paint up.

The museum show had a really thoughtfully selected overview of the best of modern streetart. C215, Deih XLF, Dalek, the obligatory representations by Banksy and Invader and Fairey. It’s terrific a museum is collecting these from all over the world; whoever is curating seems very plugged in. I wonder who’s funding the building and collection; the website only mentions some city of Berlin funding.