"unless you’ve neglected to empty the refrigerator"
HaHaHa! Heh! huh ... excuse me while I go look ...
"You’re in a foreign country. It’s not their job to speak our language; it’s our job to speak theirs."
Absolutely! And that brings up two stories ...
I was in Europe (Germany) for a couple of years, working for an uncle (Uncle Sam). I was the ranking member of a group of 4 -- 5 guys heading from Frankfurt to Bitburg on the train. Well, I'd had two whole years of German in high school, so I was the obvious choice to go up to the conductors and ask about the train. There was a group of them standing off to one side, and so I marched proudly up to them, opened my mouth ...
... and couldn't remember a word of German.
So I pointed at the train and meekly asked, "Bitburg?"
Many years later, I had this job that involved a LOT of travel; as in 45,000 air miles a year. So I saved up my miles and got a free roundtrip ticket from San Francisco (where I was living at the time) to Tahiti.
Well, back in those days and before I did this thing (without any intention) of automatically -- and very credibly! -- immitating the accent and inflection of whom ever it was I might be talking to. So I come down in the morning for breakfast, and the woman at the cafe says "bon jour!" I say "bon jour" in return, and I'm handed a menu and shown a seat at a table. Well, the menu is all in French, and I'm satisfied that this is as it should be; it is, after all, French Polynesia. Well this goes on for a couple of days, but around the third time out when I request my breakfast (I tried something different every day) the wait person had to ask me a question. In French, of course. Well, after "bon jour" the onle French I know is "merde," which I did *not* say. I did, however, look completely dumbfounded.
The wait person did as well. She then gently took the menu out of my hand, turned it over to the English side, and handed it back to me. To my credit, at least, I said "bon jour" so well that they assumed I was French.
All of that said, from the time I was stationed in Germany, I've never cared much for the classical "tour". In the Army, American Express would offer "tours," but these were simply a bulk rate ticket to-and-from, which might include accomodation if it was overnight. But after that, you were on your own. (If it was a concert, then it would include the ticket, but where you sat was your business.)
I've always preferred to go by myself, then land in one place and spend as much as a week exploring it. The columnist Art Buchwald had a famous satirical piece about the 15 minute tour of the Louvre. I spent a week in Paris, 3 days of which were in the basement of the Louvre in the otherwise unvisited Egyptian collection, just staring at things that were staring back at me.
The day after I defended my dissertation, I was on a plane to Ireland to deliver a paper at a conference there. (My dissertation chair had to squeeze everyone else on the committee by their squishy bits to agree that hear my defense that day, as everyone was just "too busy." Defended 05/05/05.) The thing is, I scheduled a 14 day trip, but the conference itself was only 2 days. I spent the rest of the time walking Dublin.
If you REALLY want to experience the terror AND joy of off-the-cuff travel, you could've tried pre-war Syria. In the countryside, NO ONE spoke English, EVERYONE was terrified of the secret police, and you never knew when the water you weren't supposed to drink was called that for a damned good reason. Soldiers and police with high-powered weapons and itchy trigger fingers. Taxi drivers with no sense of traffic laws or even the laws of physics. Man, Syria, had it all, and it was a blast. Now it's just a fucking mess. :-(
"unless you’ve neglected to empty the refrigerator"
HaHaHa! Heh! huh ... excuse me while I go look ...
"You’re in a foreign country. It’s not their job to speak our language; it’s our job to speak theirs."
Absolutely! And that brings up two stories ...
I was in Europe (Germany) for a couple of years, working for an uncle (Uncle Sam). I was the ranking member of a group of 4 -- 5 guys heading from Frankfurt to Bitburg on the train. Well, I'd had two whole years of German in high school, so I was the obvious choice to go up to the conductors and ask about the train. There was a group of them standing off to one side, and so I marched proudly up to them, opened my mouth ...
... and couldn't remember a word of German.
So I pointed at the train and meekly asked, "Bitburg?"
Many years later, I had this job that involved a LOT of travel; as in 45,000 air miles a year. So I saved up my miles and got a free roundtrip ticket from San Francisco (where I was living at the time) to Tahiti.
Well, back in those days and before I did this thing (without any intention) of automatically -- and very credibly! -- immitating the accent and inflection of whom ever it was I might be talking to. So I come down in the morning for breakfast, and the woman at the cafe says "bon jour!" I say "bon jour" in return, and I'm handed a menu and shown a seat at a table. Well, the menu is all in French, and I'm satisfied that this is as it should be; it is, after all, French Polynesia. Well this goes on for a couple of days, but around the third time out when I request my breakfast (I tried something different every day) the wait person had to ask me a question. In French, of course. Well, after "bon jour" the onle French I know is "merde," which I did *not* say. I did, however, look completely dumbfounded.
The wait person did as well. She then gently took the menu out of my hand, turned it over to the English side, and handed it back to me. To my credit, at least, I said "bon jour" so well that they assumed I was French.
All of that said, from the time I was stationed in Germany, I've never cared much for the classical "tour". In the Army, American Express would offer "tours," but these were simply a bulk rate ticket to-and-from, which might include accomodation if it was overnight. But after that, you were on your own. (If it was a concert, then it would include the ticket, but where you sat was your business.)
I've always preferred to go by myself, then land in one place and spend as much as a week exploring it. The columnist Art Buchwald had a famous satirical piece about the 15 minute tour of the Louvre. I spent a week in Paris, 3 days of which were in the basement of the Louvre in the otherwise unvisited Egyptian collection, just staring at things that were staring back at me.
The day after I defended my dissertation, I was on a plane to Ireland to deliver a paper at a conference there. (My dissertation chair had to squeeze everyone else on the committee by their squishy bits to agree that hear my defense that day, as everyone was just "too busy." Defended 05/05/05.) The thing is, I scheduled a 14 day trip, but the conference itself was only 2 days. I spent the rest of the time walking Dublin.
This is a wonderful, informative and wildly funny post. And that first photo of your adopted village is stunning!
If you REALLY want to experience the terror AND joy of off-the-cuff travel, you could've tried pre-war Syria. In the countryside, NO ONE spoke English, EVERYONE was terrified of the secret police, and you never knew when the water you weren't supposed to drink was called that for a damned good reason. Soldiers and police with high-powered weapons and itchy trigger fingers. Taxi drivers with no sense of traffic laws or even the laws of physics. Man, Syria, had it all, and it was a blast. Now it's just a fucking mess. :-(