What keeps us going back to Europe? Obviously it’s not the euro and pound exchange rates. Is it the centuries of history and tradition? Always. But what really makes the exorbitant, not altogether America-loving, polyglot continent continually compelling is what the people are doing. They’re updating, redesigning, and reinventing the traditional, admittedly not always for the better but often to spectacular effect. In our first special Europe issue, we focus on how Europeans are reshaping their cultures. We go to Spain—arguably the country that kicked off this decade’s obsession with museums in brag buildings (Bilbao)—and tour Valencia, a city whose people love dressing up for parades with extremely loud fireworks and arguing about paella but who are also evolving at the rate of knots (that’s an Americas Cup reference— they brought the prestigious race back to Europe last year). In Madrid, meanwhile, we enter the psyche of the defiant underdog fans of the city’s second-tier soccer team— which opens a window onto what makes the entire capital tick. In Austria and Italy, we visit two astonishing, little-known institutions that open windows not on the cultures they inhabit but on the people who inhabit them. Near Torino, a visionary built (over 10 years, totally in secret) huge, elaborate tunnel networks under the Piedmontese hills for his Damanhurians (just read it). Then, by the Vienna Woods, our writer visits a colony of artists slated by their director to become stars. The catch: They’re insane. Are we all insane to go on squandering our dollars? Nah. Just call it spring fever. —Kate Sekules

The "May/June 2008 Editor's Letter" originally appeared in the May/June 2008 issue of Culture+Travel. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Culture+Travel's May/June 2008 Table of Contents.