Germany, Day 3 Part 2.
Apr. 11th, 2006 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselking
Friday, March 10th. 11:20AM
On the road again, this time to Bonn. There's a few stops along the way, but we'll be on the bus travelling for a good 8 hours. Laptop is working beautifully - apparently the wireless-induced BSODs were something that was produced only in the village last night.
Sad state of affairs: I've never formally taken German. I literally know maybe a hundred words, and can form only the simplest of sentences.
I'm probably the strongest non-native speaker on the trip. Most, not all, of the students have several years of German classes under their belts. My laughable (but still comparatively strong) prowess stems mostly from my willingness to try to talk to the Germans, and I'm happy to admit "Ich verstehe nicht", "Mein Deutsch ist shrecklich", and make liberal use of "Sprechen sie Englisch?" and its Franzosicht compatriot. That, combines with a basic grasp of sentence structure, and how to use bitte, danke, einshuldigung, and auf wiedersehen means that I can have simple coversations in shops and the like without ever reverting to English or French. I get stuck, but not flustered, if something goes wrong, and I ask for a translation at that point.
Most of the students can't manage this.
I weep.
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11:45AM
When it comes to drivers, apparently Quebec and France have one whole hell of a lot in common.
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3:15PM
Rothenburg (Pronounced "Wotanbourg", but you roll the "W" somehow) is billed as a town that hasn't built any new buildings in the last nine centuries.
That's not quite true, but the original city walls, battlements, and a truly gargantuan cathedral are still there.
They show their age - the Cathedral of St Jackob has stone steps worn round and thin with the passage of a millenium's worth of pilgrims. The streets are narrow and cobblestoned. The doorways are small, the archways carved, and even the smallest openings are filled with thick, iron-banded, weather-beaten doors that wouldn't look out of place in a stage production of Dracula.
And they have the first open, working post office that I've been able to find in Germany.
And they had a payphone that SEES THROUGH TIME and enabled me to finally reach somebody at home.
Now all I need is an internet connection. While I'm familiar with the premise of driving around an urban centre until you find an unsecured wireless connection, it somehow doesn't scale nearly as well to driving cross-country on the Autobahn at 100km/h.
I can't ever imagine why.
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10:45 PM.
Finally have internet connection. Wireless network will not talk to laptop. can't find out why - they see each other just fine, handshake keys nicely, and then it just won't give me an IP. Managed to check email anyway, using a separate PC already working on that network.
Will have to update this to internet later. You must wait for my wisdom. WAIT, I SAY!
[And now, pictures of Rothenburg]
City walls
Street scenes
das Judengasse - "the small street of Jews"
St Jackob's. Yes, that IS a road going underneath it.
The only picture that came out from inside. Too bad, really.
A large building.
GIANT TEDDY BEAR OF DOOOOOOOOOM!
Bad Mergentheim, No Donut
Date: 2006-04-12 03:23 am (UTC)