To the jenth power ...

I read the books. I watched the show. I unflinchingly wore a sunbonnet to second grade. What started as a childhood obsession has developed into .. well, an adult obsession. I'm going to visit some of the sites depicted in the Little House series of books. Go west, (not-so-) young woman, indeed.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Deutsche Post

Achtung!

Yeah. That's me, practicing my rusty German. I began my high-school language studies with lofty aspirations - namely, Honors Latin I. Which was followed up by its breathtaking, thrill-a-minute sequel, Honors Latin II, Decline Harder. Despite the white-knuckle Ablative-O-Rama that that class was, I dropped the Latin pursuit and switched to German. See? I can't even nerd consistently.

Now, my German teacher, upon hearing my surname, was thrilled to have me join the group. He seemed to believe that I had German in my very soul, that I'd be spouting forth jewels of Teutonic poetry in no time. The man was a singer (and not a bad one, either), and he'd sing out my last name to demonstrate the sound of "o" without its common umlaut tophat. I didn't have the heart to tell him that my name's really shortened Polish. Or that I was taking German for far more shady purposes than a search for my ancestry.

You see, I was powerless against the umlauts.

No, I kid. I initially took German because I was preparing to spend a year in the Netherlands. I had a keen desire to avoid the "dumb, unworldly American" tag, so I hoped to get a small grip on a language that might be a bit useful. Since Dutch is a derivation of German, I also thought it couldn't hurt to get my hooks into the basic sentence structure and pronunciation. So, German it was. And, upon my return to American shores, I continued the German, throughout the rest of High School and into college. Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it), I'm pretty decent with Dutch to this day, but my German? Ha! Beer steins and German Shepherds the world over snicker in my wake. It's that bad.

At any rate, I've been ruminating about Deutsch since I made a hotel reservation in New Ulm, Minnesota for the first night of my trip. It looks like such a nifty little town, and I'm incredibly drawn to it for some reason. I'd like to say that it's my interest in German coming full circle, but I suspect I'm especially attracted by the brewery and the promise of Bratwurst und Wienerschnitzel. And there's a Glockenspiel! Who could resist a Glockenspiel?! Not me, I'll tell you that much.

So the first two days of my adventure are shaping up pretty nicely. I'll be in Minneapolis rather early Wednesday morning. I'll grab my rental car, and trek to the Spam Museum. After an informative afternoon of canned meat product and kitsch, I'll scoot on over to New Ulm, where I'll spend the first night of my journey. I'd like to spend most of Thursday bumming around New Ulm, and then I'll head westward to the next night's reservations in Tracy, Minnesota.

And Tracy, my friends, is where the Little House Odyssey begins. Wunderschön!

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Days until trip: 49
Money saved: $460.00

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