Travelling with Cultural Baggage

One of the challenges of travel is having to bring myself with me. If the trip is going to be more than passive entertainment, I have to try to erode my preconceived notions, prejudices, blindspots, and cultural programming.

This week I felt shock when I first saw the scene pictured at the top of this post. I had to remind myself I was in southern Spain, and not South Carolina.

Maybe this is just bad taste fancy dress. Then I saw whole families dressed up.

Snapshots: Hiking the Rota Vicentina, Southwest Portugal

The Rota Vicentina is a 450 km trail system in southwest Portugal. It includes the Fishermen's Trail along the rugged Atlantic coastline, the Historical Way that heads inland through rolling countryside, and loop trails that connect both worlds.

The system is good for point-to-point hiking where we moved to a different place each day, and hub-and-spoke hiking where we stayed in one place for a couple days.

The Emptiness of Social Media

Our explorations of Lisbon were enhanced by @RickSteves informative audio tour:https://t.co/f6SyieFh5v pic.twitter.com/1GjFxoVyV2

— Tom Wilson (@TomPhase3) March 18, 2018

In the past couple days there have been over 13,000 views of the above post in my microblog. Thirty-nine strangers have "liked" it.

The Time I Visited a Moonie Commune

San Francisco, March 1977. I had just finished my first business trip to the USA, and was now spending a few days walking around San Francisco. I loved the place to the point that I had changed a flight so I could stay an extra two days.

At Fisherman's Wharf I chatted with a couple. They were about my age, and extremely pleasant.

I quickly figured out they were Moonies,. Their cult was notorious for brainwashing young people, estranging them from their families, then marrying them off in mass weddings

I had read about Divine Deception a Moonie principle that justifies lying to serve the greater purpose. I had fun saying things that I knew would be counter to their beliefs, and only getting smiles and affirmations in return.

Eventually, one said: "Hey, would you like to come to our commune?"

How could I refuse? I was 26 and invincible.

An Incoming Snowstorm

Yesterday, with a big snowstorm promised, I rushed to get through some errands. It was starting to snow, the gritty sort that stings your face.

When the temperature hovers around freezing, we get the gritty kind. This is sometimes preceded by freezing rain then sloppy snow as the temperature drops. As the temperature continues to fall, the snow becomes drier and lighter. Towards 0°F we get the fluffy, dry kind that squeaks underfoot.

I'd read that indigenous people in the far north have over fifty words for snow. These days I tend to mistrust everything I read, so I started Googling on my phone. A Washington Post headline shouted "There really are 50 Eskimo words for ‘snow’." This got me suspicious as "Eskimo" is a controversial term, best avoided.