We're going on vacation to Spain at the end of April. This will actually be the first new country for me since my first visit to France in 1969!--assuming you don't count airports. If you do count airports, then Barbados and St. Lucia are the latest, which we hit on the way to Martinique a couple years ago. (Martinique doesn't count, as it's a full-fledged "department" (state) of France.)
Though my wife can speak some Spanish, I don't speak much at all, not beyond "por favor," "gracias," "hola," "adios," and, I think, "hasta la vista." I don't even know how to ask where the restroom is. I really need a traveler's phrase book.
Hopefully I'll be able to blog a bit when I get there. Hopefully it will be a better situation than when we were in Martinique. I was only able to get online once during the week or so we were there--the public computer in the lobby of our hotel was broken when I got around to trying it. I did once manage to find another one--in a laundromat of all places! But that kind of makes sense: get on the net while your clothes are washing.
1 hour ago
2 comments:
The trouble I run into with languages I don't know well is that I may be able to ask a question, but the answer remains indecipherable.
I asked a lady in Austria once how to get somewhere - and I was very proud of being able to ask in German - but I couldn't understand her response even slightly, and wandered around lost for another half hour.
:)
This sort of was Woody Allen's problem when he took his Dixieland band on a concert tour of France. At the end of each concert he'd make a nice short speech in reasonably good French, and then he'd have a Q&A with the audience--except he couldn't understand the questions.
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