Here is a price comparison that sends thousands of Americans to the airport every single year with little in their carry-on but a dental X-ray and a treatment plan. A single crown that runs around eighteen hundred dollars at a dentist in Ohio can be had for a small fraction of that at a well-regarded …
Walk into any Spanish bar, from a tiled old taberna in Seville to a chrome-and-glass place in Madrid, and a version of the same short list is waiting behind the counter. The tapas that define Spanish bar culture are not endless or mysterious. There is a core of about nine dishes that turn up almost …
The headlines are irresistible: a Swiss village handing out tens of thousands of francs, an Irish grant worth up to eighty-four thousand euros, Italian towns writing checks to anyone willing to move in. And the remarkable thing is that they are mostly true. All across Europe, depopulating villages and emptying rural regions really are offering …
It may be the poorest soup in Spain, and it is also one of the most loved. Picture the ingredients: garlic, stale bread, paprika, olive oil, water, and an egg. That is very nearly the whole list, pennies in a bowl, and out of it comes something so warming, so savory, so deeply comforting on …
There is a very specific moment that happens to American visitors at a German spa, and it happens right at the door of the sauna, usually about three seconds after they look through the glass. They have showered, they have their towel, they are ready to relax, and then they look through the glass and …
Somewhere in the night, in millions of American bedrooms, the same small war is being fought. One person rolls over and takes the blanket with them. The other wakes up cold, tugs it back, and sets off a slow-motion tug of war that neither of them is fully awake for. One of them is too …
Why This Matters You’re an American woman in Europe, excited to meet a new friend or possible romantic interest for coffee. Simple, right? Then you discover cappuccino after noon is taboo in Italy, or everyone stands at a bar in Portugal for just 5 minutes, or men in Spain offer to pay for everything the …
An American renting an apartment in Europe for the first time often has two small domestic shocks in fairly quick succession. The first is finding the washing machine tucked under the kitchen counter, sitting there between the dishwasher and the fridge as though that were the most natural place in the entire world for it. …
Most cooking is a race against time. You make the thing, you serve the thing, and every hour after that it gets a little worse. Escalivada, the great roasted vegetable dish of Catalonia, quietly breaks that rule. Make it today, and tomorrow it is better. Escalivada is about as simple as a dish can be: …
And what it reveals about trust, tradition, and why European medicine still includes pleasure in its definition of health You’re in a doctor’s office in Florence. It’s late afternoon. The window is open, the shutters half-drawn, and your general practitioner is wrapping up a routine appointment. She’s reviewed your bloodwork, asked how you’re sleeping, and …
There is a form that every single American with a foreign bank account is supposed to file once a year, that most of them have simply never heard of, and and that carries penalties frightening enough to make people go visibly pale the moment they finally learn about it. It is called the FBAR, and …
Walk into almost any bar in Spain, order a caña, and look at the tapas on offer. Somewhere on that list, as reliably as olives and tortilla, will be ensaladilla rusa. Russian salad. A creamy mound of potato, tuna, and peas that Spaniards eat by the ton, in a country not otherwise famous for its …