Where the hills were alive with the sound of my coughing

30 November 2009

Tuesday to Friday morning last week I was in Salzburg. It was good. We hit a couple of the Christmas markets in the dark, going to the Residenzplatz one evening and to Hellbrunn the next, where H bought me a star decoration for our tree, a musical carousel, hot apple juice that burned my tongue and made me eat a variety of pastries. The first one was my favourite, a light doughnut-like pastry with sugar and raisins, called a Something-Zimt-Golatsche. And if you think it’s not driving me insane not being able to remember all of its name, clearly you’re new here.

Incidentally, the carousel? I took it home in my crammed rucksack, wrapped in bubble wrap, flying about 630 miles across Europe at 30,000 feet above the ground and it did just fine. I took it wrapped in bubble wrap in my shoulder bag about 5 miles in the car to Suzy’s and back and consequently had to glue one of the horse’s legs back on.

I learned a couple more mountains while I was in Salzburg. I think I am able to identify the Untersberg now without needing to be where I was first told its name. Stauffen is the pointy one, which I might get next time and Watzmann is the huge one that you can see from outside the computer shop. And probably from some other places too.

I managed a bit of German here and there, but it’s difficult to dare to venture into the world of der, die, das, den, dem when everyone else around you is speaking great English. I’m pretty sure I didn’t start any diplomatic incidents though. Unless of course I offended the pastry guys by only saying goodbye to one of them with “Pfiat Di”, instead of all of them with “Pfiat Euch”. I always got into the right side of the car and I didn’t get wanded at airport security this time, so there was no opportunity for me to proudly proclaim “BH!” as the officer’s wand beeped over my underwire. Not that I’ve done that before or anything.

This two language business is totally confusing though and I’m finding more and more that I’m losing the ability to speak English. H’s daughter got some candy floss and I was asked what it was called – cotton candy? “No, that’s American; we call it candy floss” … Ten minutes later: “what do you call it again?” Me: *blank stare* *panic*. And I swore blind to H there wasn’t a verb for doing reconnaissance. But reconnoitre is a stupid word und darf mich ruhig am Arsch lecken.

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Comments

One Response to “Where the hills were alive with the sound of my coughing”

bethany actually
30th November 2009 @ 11:32 pm

I’ve always loved the word “reconnoiter.” But then I’m weird like that.

I know exactly what you mean about language confusion. I studied Russian and Spanish at the same time in high school and even though I was passably fluent in both (y’know, for a high-school student) I did that blank stare thing all the time. I’d be in Russian class, trying to think of the word for “wristwatch” and all I could think was “reloj.”

I hope your cough is going away!