Travelogue, Day 15 (I think), Part I: Wuppertal to Brussels

Ok, so trying to write this thing every day only means I tend to leave
interesting things out and blather about whatever mundane things have happened, yesterday excepted. Also, I find I’m writing a bunch of entries at once, because I haven’t finished the previous day’s before I am due to write the next one, and they start to pile up (hence the executive summary of Sweden, which was fine anyway, because I was really just enjoying being with family and the peaceful, pretty surroundings and didn’t really care about writing about it.

Practically, though, this means I’m not going to try to write every day for the next couple of weeks, especially since I’ll be so busy while I’m in London.

Anyway, so the update for today:

This morning I did something I’ve never done before – left Torsten behind
knowing I would not and could not see him tonight. Christian already had to go through this last month, but I’ve never spent 24 hours away from my baby, and I am basically gone for a week starting this morning. I think it’s even harder now than it would have been coming directly from Denver, because the three of us have been physicaly together so much in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve had so much snuggletime with Mr. T (especially at night, since depending on where we’ve stayed he’s slept with one or both of us most nights), that it feels like leaving a limb behind. He’s slept on us, crawled on us, snuggled with us, and played with us for days almost without break halfway around the world.

It’d feel uncomfortable and sad anyway, but there was something almost physically painful about leaving meine Männer behind this morning that I haven’t experienced before, even during the stressful days of the CELTA. I kissed the big one goodbye while he slept at about 4:30 this morning, and I stared at the little one (he was too low to kiss, but I did stroke his little head gently before I took off downstairs – I love his warm little fuzzy head) for a good while before I headed downstairs to finish getting ready. I was out the door by 5:00 am, and on a train to Cologne by twenty to six, and now I’m sitting in Aachen, on the way to Brussels for the day.

I am loathe to admit this, but this is probably my last big overseas travel-shebang, given the quasi-apocalyptic world environment/energy view my husband and I share (ok, his view is entirely apocalyptic, but I can’t dwell on it without feeling sick to my stomach, so I think a bit of conscious denial from someone who already chooses to live in the US without a car as a result of these things is allowed) – if nothing else, it’s probably not that far out of the mainstream to say I suspect overseas travel will become nearly unaffordable in the near future, and in any event, travel is much harder now anyway. I’ll be happy to be pleasantly surprised to be wrong about this, however, so I can totally take being wrong here.

That Christian was willing to give me a few days of rest, travel and research while he and Torsten visit the grandparents is already asking a lot on my part (and really awesome on his), so Christian, in case you are reading this, I love you!!!!.

Ok, so anyhow… after a typical evening of German debate and argument in the living room while I packed and did laundry last night (I find it really
stressful to participate, mostly because trying to argue in – um, let’s see… in sequence it’s my fifth or sixth language, although it’s moved up to my second language in terms of how well I speak it, I guess… So trying to argue in a second language, especially one that gives me headaches from time to time, sucks. I hate it. And arguing is a cultural thing here. Not that I blame them entirely (though I’d imagine they’d have an interesting time having such discussions in English with someone who didn’t speak German), but I don’t think my in-laws have a real appreciation for how difficult it is to participate in such discussions, especially since I avoid having needless arguments, even in my first language.

Too much stress. Too little benefit.

So it was good to be busy with something else and leave the German family to their pastime. (Note: I’m not criticizing them for arguing – I just don’t enjoy taking part, which is totally my prerogative ) Otherwise, although we were bloody exhausted by the time we got to Wuppertal, it was a nice evening, and except for some rather surprising reluctance on Torsten’s part to greet and play with his grandparents at first (he was tired and hungry – he got over it, believe me!) involving totally
uncharacteristic crying, it went well. Torsten was crawling and grinning and wiggling for Oma and Opa by night’s end, and he was really tired out by bedtime.

(If my in-laws are reading this: thanks for taking care of us tired folks
last night, and I’m sorry I wasn’t better company – I just had a lot of packing to do, was very tired (und deswegen könnte ich kaum Deutsch sprechen – kann ich jetzt auch nicht so ganz richtig, aber dass muss ich auch für eine ganze Woche nicht mehr ), and as I said, culturally the level of arguing grates of me when I’m tired, so I left you Germans to it! )

Anyhow (time passes when you’re having fun), I’ll be in Brussels in an hour to begin a whole week by myself, which feels really strange. Tomorrow I’m off to London for four jam-packed days, and then I’m back to Belgium for a few hours in Brugge before I come back to Wuppertal for a day before Torsten and I take off for a couple of days before the three of us are reunited for more travel before we go back to Denver.

It’s sort of funny – Europeans (and Germans in particular, I think) have this view of Americans as people who come to Europe and try to see everything in a month, hoping from city to city without every stopping to get to know any place. This is mostly true, though given the expense and distance (and how different it is from our huge landmass with (sort of) one language and (ostensibly) one culture (which it’s not, but anyhow)) it’s pretty easy to explain. People here tend to laugh at
it, in fact, and my husband is laughing at the fact that totally
unintentionally, this trip looks like I’m making a similar tour, though I am in fact not:

• We were in Finland for a week because that’s where Christian’s conference was.
• We were in Sweden for 3-4 days because that’s all the time we had to visit relatives there, and it was on the way to our actual goal, Germany.
• We were in Denmark only because we needed to break our train trip back to Germany up because of the baby (and apparently, unbeknownst to us, to participate in weird Danish performance art).
• I left the next day for my little trip to England and Belgium because I have to be back for our trip to have Torsten baptized.
• As for me visiting Belgium for a day before Britain, that’s basically financial – it’s cheaper for me to sleep in Brussels and take the Eurostar to London early in the morning than to stay in Britain and pay in pounds in London to sleep the night before.
• My time in Brugge (Bruges, for you non-Dutch-speaking Francophones) on the way back is just a way of taking advantage of the way back to Wuppertal.
• When I return from my trip, Torsten and I will take a day in Holland (which reminds me, I need to email my au pair host family this morning to see if they’re up for us stopping by to say hello), mostly because I love Amsterdam, have a train pass, and it’s close. (Also, I am at least familiar with some kid-friendly stuff there…)
• We’ll have Torsten baptized in the town where his aunt and grandmother live, so that’s a trip to Hessen for us. The last Sunday of our trip was the best fit for the baptism, since the place he’s being baptized is fairly near Frankfurt, the airport we decided to leave from.
• There are probably trips to other German cities in between, as Christian’s giving some talks and little guy and I may choose to tag along

So laugh all you want, Europeans, but there is a method to my madness.

Bah, so much blather, so little content. I’m tired, though, so I think it’s
forgiveable.

In other news, it occurred to me that the more languages you learn to at least passively understand, the more travel in Europe is like what it might be to be able to read people’s minds – you get an absolute earful of everyone’s quasi-private opinions, and I, at least, can only shut some of them out. (I can shut out the French about half the time, Spanish maybe a quarter of the time, Dutch every so often, and German about, um, never. Argh. This is not entirely the order I would choose is all I’m going to say.)

Americans are so monolingual that I think people often think they’re speaking a secret language when they speak their native tongues, and it’s kind of creepy to hear people expound on your culture as if they know it all. In general, I’ve always sort of enjoyed it, but given the order of things listed above, it becomes sort of annoying. Don’t get me wrong – I think Americans are even stupider and louder about it (note to
travelling Americans: people understand your obnoxious trash-talk, so shut up, eh? You give the rest of us a bad name, as if we weren’t already seen worldwide as completely ridiculous at the moment…), regardless of where they are, but it’s interesting to hear people’s actual opinions in multiple other languages at the same time when people don’t realize where you’re from and what you understand. (Though you’d think that on the Thalys, which already has three languages associated with it, people would think about it – if they actually cared, which of course they have no responsibility to…)

Ok, enough blabber for now. I’m tired and need to finish yesterday’s entry, if I don’t decide to pass on it for now because there’s no power outlet on this train for my laptop, and I may want some power for quick WiFi access in Brussels if I can find it (and if my laptop cooperates – I’m having WiFi issues for some unknown reason with my little laptop toy. Grrrr.). I’m going to stare at the lovely scenery around Liège and not think too much.