Through the travels of my wife and myself, only in a few spots have we really the eponymous "blonde giants". In Copenhagen and Rotterdam, we were actually dwarfed by the locals.
The title really refers to trips to Asia and Central America, where it was an apt way to describe us.
In any case, this blog will feature the adventures that we've gone on and how the history of the places visited has shaped our understanding of ourselves, the world in general, and not least of all, those actual places.
We'll be discussing history--both cultural and political; architecture; and food and drink. In a sense this kind of endeavor may prove to be boring...if only because at an age when our cohorts travel in a drunken or otherwise clouded stupor, we tried to ingratiate ourselves into locals' lives, tried to get a sense of their daily world.
Most people on Earth have limited daily lives, and there's nothing wrong with that. We try to come through tiny villages and use body language to present ourselves as non-threatening and respectful in order to get a feeling for how their days go.
And it works.
So, a series of visceral anecdotes will start appearing here shortly; some will be funny (me floating around a museum in Vienna for an entire afternoon on a powerful sauerkraut fuel), and some will be scary (an idiot opening fire on the street for no reason in Honduras), but they should all be enlightening and entertaining.
