My friends Brad and Amy Feld invited us to Casetta (www.casetta.net) Tuscany back in August 2011 and we came and had an incredible time. We have stayed friendly with the owner Xenia who runs the farm and hotel on her magnificent property.  

After we left in 2011 Xenia had asked me to help allocate her savings and investments and luckily I chose Nike, Underarmor, Apple, Tesla (sold a little too soon), Intuit , all US Dollars and some cash to do things as she needs with her business. So far so good as we have made quarterly changes via email chats. 

This week I returned with Ellen to stay and visit and tour and relax and bike and eat and… The weather is perfect. The sounds are perfect. 

Xenia is Greek and speaks four languages and for dinner last night there were guests and a few friends from Romania, Amsterdam, The UK and rest of Italy. It was amazing how fast the conversation turned to Trump and his outrageous mouth as well as the US guns disaster and the NRA.  

This despite their own massive worries of right wing leaders taking hold of so many countries in Europe and the fact that if Russia was not so broke and the orthodox Greeks not hating the orthodox Russians so much that Greece would already be a Russian state. Thank goodness. 

I don’t do politics but I do like to listen to people that care so much about it and read about it outside of US media which is abysmal.  I like people and I am not hearing about any good people in all the talks and conversations. 

The banks here are a mess and they all know this. Draghi is ex Goldman and so the same socializing of losses happens here in continuum as an epidemic like we started in 2008 in the USA. 

In Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania too many people are hungry for scraps of food. It is sad and historically worrisome. 

I am amazed on this Europe trip how most people under 50 seem to speak English for us. Americans have been lucky that we have not had to learn 4 languages growing up. 

The most global new language other than English may be software/engineering which likely allows us a global ‘pass’ on languages if you learn to work it well.

Third and rising fast in the global language department is that of social marketing/ customer acquisition which should be enough of a skill to get you a job almost anywhere. 

Everyone wants access to more customers once they’ve figured out how to put food on the table. It’s the only subject I can use to change the conversation from politics while travelling and talking to friends and locals.