Lock & Key
I usually don't plan details of my trips in advance. My only goal for this trip was to spend a week in a small isolated place where I had never been before. So I became a temporary fixture in the tiny fishing village of Tobermory on the medium-sized island of Mull off the very long western coast of Scotland. I found out why the ferry's compass always quit working part way across the water; I walked over Macbeth's grave without knowing it, discovered someone speaking from her grave in the present tense, and ate breakfast every morning with Horace the Seagull.

Self-Portrait with Friends
For almost two years I lived in a castle in Bavaria. On one fine spring day I unexpectedly became a father to two baby birds. My attempts to feed them, learn their language and teach them to fly were as challenging to them as to me. My picture of them sitting on my boots has sold well in exhibits; it's included in the chapter.

Angels in Augsburg
What do you do when your car quits running late at night in a strange foreign city and two large strangers confront you on the street? You do anything they say, of course, even if you can't understand them. But what was their real motive? How did they know what we would find in the demolished town square? And how many people does it take to turn over a car? These and many other even more obscure questions are answered in this chapter.

Four Short Scenes
Brief diversions in unusual places— a cottage smaller than your grandmother's attic on Portland Island off the southern coast of England; a week in Lugano, Switzerland, where palm trees and pine trees both sway over the tables at outdoor cafés beside alpine lakes, the shortest day ever spent in Paris, and attending a funeral with a million other people. Among other esoterica, learn why every resident of Portland Island had at least one sewing machine at a time when such machines were still very rare and expensive. And enjoy the mystery (but not solve it) of the Singing Tree.

Tram 27
I spent most of my growing-up years in Germany. One of my trips to Munich awakened many memories of that halcyon childhood on the Rhine River and merged them with adventures in modern Bavaria. Learn how some people avoided traffic jams by driving cars into the river, and exactly when it was permissable — and expected — to bribe an on-duty traffic policeman with liquor.