Germany, the Netherlands, and Thoughts on the English Language

Greetings from Germany! At the moment I am using a German keyboard, and not all the letters are in the same place. The spot where normally the letter 'y' is for me the letter 'z' is, so if you see me referring to the mountains in Germanz, it's not a new country, it's just because I didn't catch my typing mistakes.

So anyway, Spring Break '07 had a couple of things in common with Spring Break '06, in that there was a lot of walking and hiking involved. The main difference was that '06 was in North Carolina and Virginia and '07 was in two different countries - Germany and the Netherlands. I took my shortest plane flight yet to get to Dortmand (about an hour - I only got to listen to three songs on the iPod before we were told to prepare for landing and to shut off all electronic equipment), and Julie's friend Jens met us at the airport. It was our first car ride since we left the States in January. I refuse to count the van ride from the airport in Prague to our hostel the first night.

We traveled to the Netherlands on Thursday (I get to cross another country off the list of places I've visited), and we went to Burger's Zoo. It was in some respects like the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, or at least the indoor parts were like the Aviary and the African Pavillion. They even had a section for the Sonora Desert, so I got to see some familiar faces. We walked around the city the zoo was near afterwards which had a pretty lively street scene. There was a guy playing guitar on the street singing the song 'Torn' from a couple of years ago, and I prefered his version to the original. On Friday and Saturday we hiked in the German countryside and saw the Rhine and some castle ruins that were really fun to climb. Needless to say, this has all left me very tired and not looking forward to waking up at 6:30 to get to the airport in time tomorrow morning.

I think being in countries where you don't speak the native language, or when people are asking you what you call things in English makes you more aware of the idiosyncrasies of the English language. For example, when I was standing on the bus at the Prague airport, I realized that we say get on a bus, or on a plan, or on a train, but get in a car. In reality, you are getting inside all of those modes of transportation, but you never say 'I'm getting in a plane.' I was relating these thoughts to Julie and she informed me that I should find some better way to spend my time, or at least keep such thoughts to myself.