From the Alps to Antwerp

Romance (n.): a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

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MDR*, I have completely overlooked this page and started on the “Adieu Cleveland” page while at the airport instead. Time to correct that oversight.

We’re on the road again–sans the road.

For me, it’s Trip #2 to Europe this year–with #3 in the wings…but that’s a different travel blog! We’ve been anticipating this adventure for close to a year and it’s a little anti-climactic finally finding myself on this journey after all these months.

Interestingly, I’ve spent many hours over two separate time periods trying to learn conversational German (of a sorts) through the Duolingo online language program. Starting before my Jane Austen trip in the spring–there was no need for me to brush up my English language skills–I got very deep into the program, learning a ton of completely useless words and phrases that will have absolutely no germaneness (perfect word!) while traveling (i.e. jobs, parents, Heart Cookies, school, etc.) interspersed with more pertinent ones like eating, drinking, Oktoberfest, directions and hotel rooms. However, the relevant was entirely outweighed by the immaterial overall.

And then I went England.

Upon my return, I found my mind had vacated all the previous German I had supposedly “learned”. Short of “Ja und Nein”, my mind was a Germanic desert. I found it easier, and more successful, to start from scratch, wiped my Duolingo history clean and started anew. We will see if any of the renewed knowledge will serve me better as we traverse the Fatherland. Or, and more likely, I will freeze up again as I do when I try to tap into my many years of classroom French, and begin spewing out an incomprehensible gibberish of French/Spanish/German composite words until I eventually resort to the English equivalent.

So join us, won’t you, as our intrepid Trio hop-scotches from one Rhineland country to another.

*My Dear Readers