Traveling

With a little heaviness in my heart, I left Germany yesterday afternoon. Goodbye to my new friends.

I boarded a 6 hour train to Munich. Then a 5.5 hour train to Verona.  Then had a 2.5 hour layover in Verona (not the most comfortable time at 3:30am in winter)…and boarded a 1.5 hour train to Venice hungry, cold and unnerved.  While in Verona though, I met two friendly American girls and a nice Italian woman from Florence who invited us all to dinner later this week.

I find myself now speaking German out of habit.  It took me almost a week to be able to pronounce the language. Read and Understand: easy. Read and Pronounce: not so easy.

Now I’ll be trading in my Danke, for Gratzi!  Italian will be much easier to pick up because it is a romance language – and I’m familiar with those.

After all those hours traveling, I was extra glad to see the sun rise in the beautiful city of Venice.

Some last thoughts on Germany & general traveling stuff before we move on:

1. Berlin was a party city, and apparently I should have known this.
2. All of Germany is under construction right now
3. Colorful 4-letter words transcend the language barrier and are universal
4. Don’t plan a layover in the Verona Train station in the middle of the night.