I was born in the early ’50s so that means I was brought up believing that the U.S was the greatest country in the world. Not just a little bit better but miles and miles out in front of the second best country. Other than a trip to Tijauna, when I was eighteen, I hadn’t been outside the U.S. until I was a forty-two years old. After that I took several trips to Europe; not one of those nine-countries-in-seven-days tours either: Germany several times once for three months, several trips to France one trip lasted six weeks and many week long road trips to Austria, Switzerland and Italy.

What changed everything was I met a babe from Germany who became my second wife and we made a bunch of money with a dot-com in the last half of the ninties. She grew up in Germany and came to the U.S. when she was twenty as an aupair. When we met she was twenty-nine and I was forty-one.