Brief Explanation


The last time I did a blog, on the Germany trip and while I was traveling with students, each entry reflected one thing – usually a tourist site or a new cultural issue. That seemed to make a nice “unit” about which to write, instead of, “Today I got up, had breakfast, and went to school,” etc., repeated each day for the 40 school days at the Goethe Institute. But on this trip, it seems as if the day is its own unit, as each day – at least so far – has been its own story of discovery.
On this trip, I’ve also realized that writing the blog in the evening keeps me awake, especially if I do it right before I try to go to sleep.  So, I’ve learned to switch the order so that I watch the news last. (The news should keep me awake, but it doesn’t – at least not like blogging.)  I offer this info as an explanation of why there was no blog entry yesterday (5/10). I got in bed, looked at the clock (10:30 PM), and decided not to do either of those things, but instead, to sleep. The raclette (see next entry) kept me out late!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ballenberg (6/10)

Off I went to Ballenberg this morning, after reluctantly checking out of my lovely little room with the great view. I caught a bus at the train station, which took me through a neighborhood – almost a “subdivision” – of chalets (I don’t think of chalets as being in subdivisions, but that’s what this looked like.) on its way to Ballenberg. This is billed as a “living history museum” – and that’s an accurate description.   It is a huge plot of land – I don’t have a way to describe how big it is, but it’s big – maybe Disneyland size. But don’t get the idea of neon and rides and selling things – not at all.   This is a natural environment where great care has been taken to maintain the trees and do farming and plant “typical” vegetables and fruits in gardens on the property. Houses and other buildings from all over Switzerland have been moved to Ballenberg and re-constructed. They are arranged in regions to represent the regions of Switzerland. A great effort...
Read more

Bern and Einstein (6/12)

I had coffee in my PJs and read the “paper” this morning – heaven! My host had a flight to Hamburg and back this morning, so I was alone in the apartment when I woke up. What a delight!   By the time I was showered and dressed, he was back from his flight. The weather looked crummy enough that I carried a raincoat, and went straight to Bern’s history museum, which also has a floor devoted to Albert Einstein, so I could be inside and away from the rain. I decided to start with the Einstein exhibit/museum, which was fascinating! A lot had been donated to the Bern exhibit by Israel – not clear whether it was the government or another museum. The exhibit detailed his life from his birth in Ulm, Germany, to his death in Princeton, New Jersey. The reason it’s in Bern is that Einstein came to Bern to live with another family when his parents moved to Milan after his father’s Munich business failed. He lived here, and did much of his “high school” and higher ed. here ...
Read more

Home (6/15)

I awoke before the alarm and got ready to go. After the standard hostel breakfast, I made my way to the airport. Things moved along in an orderly fashion, as is the case in Germany, and the plane left on time. It was a 3 ½ hour trip to Reykjavik. This time, we arrived in daylight, so I could see a bit of the terrain from the plane window. What I saw was flat and more brown than green – sort of like moonscape, with pools of water in various places. In the airport, there was very little time between planes for everyone on my flight. We had to go through passport control, and someone had arranged a crazy path of lines through the airport to contain the number of people all trying to get their passports stamped at the same time. One person tried to jump the line, and the “authorities” (who looked like teenage boys) set him straight. People were trying to catch flights to cities all over the U.S. and one or two other places, and WOW Air had delivered more than my plane...
Read more