Folly of the Faithful Canine

Yet again, travel has left me sleep-deprived, but this time not to the point that I had to wait five days to write about my trip. Just as well that it was only one week, meaning both less exhaustion and less to summarize (didn't take notes for once).

( Cut for length )

There, that ought to satisfy my itchy feet for a while. Next time I go to Europe, I'm thinking Switzerland or Portugal. Maybe Denmark in the summer.

This week, I’m off to Kenya and Uganda for a trek
To see some live gorillas, so I’d better double-check
That everything’s in order; there’s a lot that could go wrong.
To hike with stuff for 16 days is apt to make me strong.
I’ve had my vaccinations, and I’ve printed things I’ll need.
The COVID cautions make it even harder to succeed.
So why spend all this money on a perilous ordeal?
I’m tired of going nowhere, and I hate the cold I feel.
I want to see a continent I’ve never seen before.
The danger spells adventure, so I want it all the more.
I thought of backing out, but no, I’m going on safari.
That means I’ll post no poetry till late next month, so sorry.

I’m off to Patagonia; I’m gonna be aboard
A cruise ship! No, my comic strip’s not “pining for the fjords.”
I’ll just be taking photos of Chilean fjords this trip.
November 26 is when you’ll see another strip.

Peru has a caiman named Coco,
A mother, herself kind of small.
I saw her by flashlight one evening.
My tour group was having a ball.

What stood out to me was her method
Of making herself disappear:
She’d turn her head upward while sinking
So only her mouth was left clear

Of the water, if just for a moment.
That mouth has a permanent smile.
I deemed her a Cheshire Cat likeness,
Which made the whole trek worth my while.

For the first time since college, I don’t have Mom here
To celebrate Mother’s Day. Oh, don’t you fear:
She’s fully alive on vacation in Greece.
We’ve spoken online, and she’ll soon read this piece.
It’s merely too bad I can’t hug her or kiss her
Till more than a week from today, so I miss her.
Adulthood’s done zip to reduce my affection.
I add this with love to our poem collection.

Does this post seem somewhat late,
Consid’ring my vacation dates?
There’s more at work than mere jet lag
Or waiting for a missing bag,
Arriving at my first hotel,
I soon found out not all was well:
My lanyard pouch was left ajar,
My passport lost! I’d traveled far.
It must have fallen on the ground.
I checked the airport lost-and-found,
To no avail. At least I’d brought
My visa letter; I would not
Be turned away but spend the night
At that hotel, tho all affright.
To make things worse, it’s hard to get
Good service in the week of Tet
In Vietnam: The embassy
And consulate were closed to me.
My tour involved domestic flights,
But once I took the bus all night.
Mercifully, some kindly sort
Did submit my pass-a-port.
The bad news: I was in Hanoi;
It had to ship from Saigon. Oy!
I’d have to spend another day
Or two before I flew away,
And when I did, the different route
Was many hours longer. Shoot!
I paid a lot for one mistake.
The thought can cause my head to shake.
Some ten if-onlys fill my head
Whenever I reflect. That said,
I try to see the brighter side.
For instance, what a nice bus ride.
It made a conversation piece
With others on the tour at least.
I also got to visit two
More countries’ airports; that was new.
The trip had felt a little brief;
A longer stay meant some relief.
Despite the waits, I felt less bored.
The prices, I could still afford.
A different airline would provide
More shows and movies on my ride.
In short, I’d say I’m almost glad
I made an error just so bad.

I'm pleased to say that Before Sunrise did not exaggerate the presence of English in Vienna. This presence continues about equally in Hallstadt, Salzburg, and Berchtesgaden (yes, we briefly forayed into Germany!). Only one person we talked to, a waiter, required a compromise language; luckily, the first one he suggested was Spanish. Funny, it's more common to find French and Italian on signs. Oh, and Wikipedia threw me off: We never encountered Austro-Bavarian or Alemmanic, supposedly the second and third main languages.

Nevertheless, the pocket dictionary I bought paid off every day. As stylish as English appears to be in shopping centers, lots of text remains only in German. On one of the first days, for instance, I stopped my sister from opening an emergency exit, or Notausgang. (From what I saw, a given German term or sentence has about a 50% chance of being shorter than its English equivalent.) I made a point never to leave a hotel without the dictionary, often delving into it every minute or so. To me, it was kind of a source of comfort, a linguist's constructive diversion to cope with dull times. Not that the language got any prettier with exposure; sometimes it made my scalp itch.

The most important time to dig out the dictionary was when we rented a surprisingly large, high-tech Volvo. The manual was dense but restricted to German. Some answers were so hard to find that Dad would try to do without them for quite a while, as by leaving the rear windshield wiper on. Alas, it's only a pocket dictionary, albeit good at noting Austria-specific terms. Sometimes a word would appear in a definition without turning up in the opposite section, and I'm not talking about issues of conjugation.

The one time that we truly felt left behind by not knowing German was when we attended Strauss's Die Fledermaus. We could enjoy the singing and deduce a few plot points, but the spoken comedy segments largely went over us. At least we could enjoy two men trying to pass for French, especially when one said, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?" (It was a modernized production for sure.) I think I also picked up on a pun that would work in English: When a man sings in jail, another makes a crack about Sing Sing.

Oddly enough, sometimes we were unfamiliar with an English term in a translation, tho it was no less valid for that. Ever heard of a chough? I had no idea which of five ways to pronounce it until I finally looked online; it's "chuff." A fairly charming bird, BTW.

Austrian German names and words did not amuse me as much as Dutch, but I noted a few. Frey Wille is a jewelry maker, not an orca knockoff. Spittelberg does not sound like a good place to eat out. If you see "Quark" on a menu, it's curd, not in an especially small portion. Lots of towns start with "Bad," meaning bath; but when we saw signs for Bad Aussee, my sister took a picture for her Australian friends and I automatically added, "No biscuit!"

I don't recommend that you take English-speaking kids under a certain age to Austria. Only when I got to Vienna did I realize the origin of our "wiener." OTOH, "Schmuck" must have a very different origin, as it turns out to mean jewelry. Throw in the frequent use of "Fahrt" in talks of travel, and you've got quite a juvenile snickerfest.

Not much to laugh at in English, but I did find "white hot chocolate" deliciously ambiguous. "Motel One" seems a misnomer; by American standards, the multi-floor building is much more of a hotel. Oh, and one example of odd English from the U.S. airport: "If you're 12 and under..."

Finally on the subject of communication, if you see red with a white horizontal stripe, it's not necessarily a do-not-enter sign. It could be the national flag.

I downloaded the free version of Wie Geht's, a German language course on Chrome. Having seen nearly all the free features, I'm thinking of buying a Pangaea Passport. Maybe I won't get much out of it -- I won't master German in less than a month -- but it's only ten bucks, doesn't require renewal, and counts for other lessons as well.

The trouble is, you can buy it only via Google Wallet, which I never used before...and which doesn't recognize my credit card information. For some reason, it says, "Your current payment method is not valid." My account does not appear to be suspended or anything. I could enter my debit card info, but I shouldn't have to. What gives?

OK, it’s been more than a month; time to finish my New Zealand report.

( Hope you like the photos )

Gosh, after all that procrastination, the task of reporting turned out pretty painless.

So much for my prediction that an island nation would rely heavily on seafood. Sure, fish and chips was perhaps the most frequently offered entree, but restaurants generally didn't list many other aquatic options. Nor were there many lamb dishes that I noticed, and nothin' labeled "mutton."

( Details )

A few notes (NPI) on the music: I shouldn't have expected much music from New Zealand in light of its population of 4.4 million. Very few songs were unfamiliar to me; the most notable exceptions were a couple of Maori tunes and Evermore's "Hey Boys and Girls," which our guides made their sort of trademark by playing on almost every ride. I will not link to that one, because it's frankly mediocre and you don't want to risk the earworm.

The oddest experience regarding music was that I didn't hear any nearly up-to-date songs on any radio until I got to the south island. The bus played from different iPods, but even those had mostly numbers from between 1963 and 1998. You name ten artists with hits from that period, and there's a fair chance I heard one of them or a cover thereof while in New Zealand.

ADDENDUM: On our last day together, the guides arranged a TV theme song identification game, with teams divided according to which side of the bus we happened to be sitting on then. Whether or not I had advantages as a 30-year-old American, I was the Michael Jordan of my side. Not bad for someone who's long used his TV only for DVDs and video games. We still tied in the end, so they improvised a sort of scavenger hunt as a tiebreaker; with my frugal packing, I was no help there.