Aside from their great skin and astonishing bone structure, the people of Iceland possess another beautiful quality: nearly all of them speak perfect English. This of course did not stop Dave Sawicki from learning Icelandic for fun, which amused the linguistics major to no small end. As much as I wished for some delightfully confounding miscommunications in London, I left England without such pitfall. And though we were in Amsterdam for but a day, the Dutch seem to take after Scandinavians in their mastery of English. In Luxembourg the gears of French began to turn. I grew frustrated as it would take me a good five minutes to construct a grammatically unblemished sentence only to lapse into Chinese if my conversation continued any further. But even with my tongue and my mind on different continents, I survived easily.
Our stay in Saarland put the spotlight on Dave once again. From song intros at concerts to disgruntled cab drivers on the side of the road, Dave handled all our official German business While our English song introductions fall of ears deaf to English, Dave's German humor had the Saarland audiences calling for two or three encores every night. No language can stop Dave, and I cannot imagine us surviving Germany without him. That is, until I had to. On our last night, which we spent in Saarlouis, the Dins split up into six different homestays, all organized by German-American friendship groups. Although we had the comfort of meeting in the town square with several bilingual members, not every host family could speak English.
Kirk and I stayed with one such family. Their teenage daughter Susanna spoke conversational English, but she soon had to leave for a theater rehearsal, leaving Kirk and me at home with a vocabulary of "Danke schön," "Auf Wiedersehen," and "Weis bier." Using hand signals, we decided to eat a quick bite before our evening concert. Yet, the time did not pass idly, and our host made jokes about the inferiority of French sausage. An untainted happiness lingered about her, as she laughed after most every one of her sentences. Maybe she was thinking of the fact that we could not understand a word of what she said. Still, I used a map to show her where Kirk and I live, as well as Boston and our tour itinerary. She then made it clear she wanted to come along with us in Kirk's gargantuan suitcase, which during the easyJet crisis was nicknamed "The Star Destroyer." After our concert, our party met up with Lee and Justin at their homestay for a delicious meal in the cool summer night. Our host mom let us know that she would speak English the next time we came to Saarlouis. We reciprocated the offer, vowing to learn German before our next visit.
In Strasbourg, I could feel my French improving. Still, anything close to rapid fire would send my mind into Mandarin mode, as I blabbered mutant sentences that have confused grammar and a collusion of vocabularies. What a mess. After our expedition to the top of the gothic cathedral, we headed to a small café for lunch in the shade. I did my best to help our table order, but I cannot recall the name of this delicious vegetarian dish I ordered. It did taste divine, though.
After leaving the café, I heard a tongue all to familiar. "哈佛?" A Chinese-speaker had read the text on my crimson t-shirt, which is a translation for Harvard. The man, leader of a Taiwanese tour group, soon struck up conversation with me as well as Sam Galler, who has impeccable Mandarin. As the tour group slowly coagulated around us, we heard calls for a song, as Sam never wastes the opportunity to mention we are members of an a cappella group. Defying convention, we gave an impromptu curbside performance. Exactly half of us had no idea what was going on, as our group of eight included all four Mandarin-speaking Dins. After the 3:30 minute song, we endured what seemed like several hours of picture-taking.
In the end, the tour guide exchanged business cards with us and invited us to Taiwan, offering to pay for all our accommodations. But soon it was back to choppy French, and now in Berlin I am once again at a loss for how to say anything at all. But these stories would mean nothing if we all understood each other perfectly. And so, while I may work towards improving my powers of communication, I am deeply thankful for the colorful shortcomings.
2 comments:
Vegetarian for DP? Seriously? Now that's an alien tongue I didn't expect from the family carnivore.
You guys are going to be a hit in Shanghai, can't wait to see you there!
Do you know where/when you'll be performing in HK? I've had requests for information.
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