"When I started traveling professionally, I was surprised and delighted to find that I could still make emotional connections to places. I discovered this for the first time in Portugal, where -- after having schlepped around Spain -- I met a young Dutch woman who introduced me to a her friend, a colorful poet, who...

"Live, don't know how long, And die, don't know when; Must go, don't know where; I am astonished I am so cheerful." --Inscribed with chalk (circa 1500) on a cellar wall of Schloss Tratzberg by Maximilian I; quoted in Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts