Bad things happen in threes.  The first time I went to Palermo I was thoroughly creeped out by its small, dark allies and dirty complexion.  The second time I went to Palermo I spend 36 hours in bed after eating a likely e-coli rich cookie in Syracuse.  The third time I went to Palermo I got mugged. 

Finally, a purple bus arrived at maybe 7:40pm (not surprisingly late), but the bus turned out to be bound for Syracuse, rather than Catania, which didn’t make sense since a bus going to Syracuse would pass through Catania and probably make a stop… but that is what we were told.  It delighted the faction of tourists who were Syracuse-bound, but angered the red-haired Italian who seemed to be the most vocal about his feelings about the bus.  He repeatedly yelled at the bus attendant, telling him to do his job and get us another bus.  We decided that when we started our new lives in Acireale, the ginger Italian would be our leader.

“If you got it, flaunt it, boy, I know you want it…”

An appropriate (or hilariously inappropriate) way to introduce how I stripped naked in front of a Czech “nurse” (heavy on the scare quotes here) before my mint infused mineral bath at a “spa” (same).  We were staying in Karlovy Vary, a quaint resort town at the western edge of Bohemia that was the closest city to our ancestral villages.  Prior to our eventful - or uneventful NYE, depending on how you look at it (below) - I had decided that we should experience the reason that made Karlovy Vary famous – its healing spas.