“Il y a un porte-bagages dessus it has a roof rack on top,” the old man across from me in the grass replies with a smile when I ask him how to recognize a Moroccan plane. August 30, 2024. It wasn't until five o'clock this afternoon that Heidi and I finally managed to leave Antequera, heading a thousand kilometers north toward the storage unit we're renting in the Catalan village of Roses, near which we still lived only three months ago. After leaving Catalonia, we traveled t

It’s warm. Dry, warm, pleasantly warm. The spicy scent of the surroundings. The clear blue sky. The sun, low on the horizon. Black dots in the vast fields we overlook. Toros bravos! Some twenty meters in front of us, six enormous specimens drank water from stone troughs. Motionless, they now stare at us, seemingly menacing. They are beautifully proportioned, heavily armed, and muscular and dry, like bodybuilders in competition. Relics from the days when life was still life. I

It’s strange to see Heidi sitting alone on a stone bench, writing in her diary, in these medieval surroundings. For twelve years, Moos the German shepherd sat beside her in similar situations. Moos died a few months ago, and eh... Heidi without a dog, I realize with a pang, is only half a Heidi. “Well?” she asks as I sit down next to her. I glance up at what I know is called the Tour César, rummage through my backpack for what I need to make tea and coffee, and answer, “We

At two hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, we race through the night. We race north, and in the passenger seat of a large Mercedes with a powerful engine, I feel as I felt in a previous life in the back of an American Humvee—I’m Dutch, by the way—that carried me across the Afghan province of Uruzgan. The Americans who had taken me under their wings in Uruzgan usually drove as fast as the terrain and the situation allowed—never faster than about sixty kilometers per hour—

The mood in the car is tense as Heidi and I pass through the village of Le Perthus in Catalonia, on the border with France. Moos the German shepherd died a few weeks ago. For twelve years, Moos accompanied us on our travels through Europe. Now, her kennel in the back of our Berlingo is empty, and it feels as if we’re leaving her behind in Catalonia. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Heidi crying, and I fight back my own tears. Time heals all wounds. With that as a guiding pr

Twice before, I followed the steep path to the ruins of the castle of San Salvador in the north of Catalonia. Twice before, the wind around those ruins was so strong that I gladly descended all five hundred meters of elevation back to Palau-saverdera, where all hikes started and where there was no wind to speak of.   Mild wind today and my heart is pounding in my throat as I sit on the weathered stones of a castle wall and take our Stanley thermos from my backpack. I fill t

My heart skips a beat when my phone rings, and I realize I couldn’t have been more engrossed in translating The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order, the latest book by Glenn Diesen. Under some notes on my desk, I find my phone, a Spanish number lighting up on the screen, and the thing keeps ringing as I tap and tap a green button on the screen. Anger assails me, and … bogger! I should know by now that when there’s a phone number lighting up on the screen, I’m getting a reg

For a moment, I wonder why nostalgia tries to grab power here, in the Catalan village of Sant Pere Pescador. Then, I surrender to that power grab, and I’m no longer a frustrated dwarf who just left a surf shop, but I’m a nine-year-old standing through the rolled-open roof of a Citroën 2CV—my eyes darting—as it passes through French villages so different from the half-built housing estate in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where I’m growing up.

The doorbell! It’s the first time it rings since we moved into this house. Heidi, sitting behind the dining table opposite my desk, editing a video on her laptop, is startled out of her work. I’m not startled out of mine. Something warned me that at least two people were sneaking through our garage toward our front door—which is exactly what I’ve been hoping for since yesterday.