6 Days to Stuttgart

The ten day forecast over at Weather.com portents some really nasty weather for my arrival into Stuttgart. Visions of Heidi and Peter on a warm, sunny, pastoral hill just receded into the dark recesses of my brain. Yeah, it's crazy to go to Germany in the winter, actually the beginning of winter, but it is just the time for me to go.

Oddly my last three trips to the EU have all been in November. My birthday to Paris? Late November and early December. Last year's impromptu (read: whirlwind) trip to Italy? Mid November. And this trip? Late November to early December once again.

Two of the trips, Paris and the immediate one, are happening in November because of the convenience of leveraging the rather lengthy period that starts on Thanksgiving day and stretches to the weekend after my birthday (29 Nov). I can usually eek out a good 10 day holiday for the price of 5 business days. Sort of like "buy one vacation day, get one free!" on some level.

The last few nights I've been utterly preoccupied with figuring out where I should eat, what I should buy, train schedules, and day trips whilst in Stuttgart. You think I'd be more obsessed with learning the language seeing that I don't speak a lick of German. I'm not sure why I'm procrastinating but I suspect that my brain is sending out "full" messages after three years of studying French. I am also secretly hoping that since the French border is so close that I might be able to get by with French if need be. At least it helped me in Italy; more than my three years of Spanish did.

Another part of me feels that learning the German language is akin to learning Romulan. It's not an easy language no matter how often you hear that the English language finds it roots in German. Bullshit. English is 65% bastardized French and that is why it's so damned easy to learn. German? Gosh, it's like talking with a mouthful of chewed up crackers. Despite my two phrase, and 1 grammar book, I don't think that this is going to set up residence in my brain too well.