Using Languages You Know, Everywhere You Go

Although I haven't written about all of my German trips yet, most of the rest start repeating themselves more than they already have.  Instead, it's time to write about the opportunity to use German, even in other countries.

• Domestic Travel.  There are many tourist areas in the States where you are likely to find German tourists as well.  My students have told me about Hawaii (I must admit, I have yet to go... I keep traveling in Europe instead).  The Grand Canyon, DisneyWorld, and Niagra Falls are great places to hear German.  DisneyWorld of course has Epcot, so if you go to Germany there, you can speak German with the native speakers working there and eat real German food. 
• Cruises.  Many cruises will have a very international passenger list, and if you keep your ears open, you're bound to hear German.  There are some cruises that leave from German ports, so those will have the biggest German attendance, but others even in the Caribbean will have German tourists on board.  
• The Mediterranean area countries, especially during colder months.  Okay, I have never experienced this one first hand either, mostly because I don't enjoy warm weather very much.  But several Germans spend winter vacation time in southern areas such as Spain, Mallorca, and Italy, as well as Croatia and Greece.  
• Really anywhere touristy.  I'll include more details below!

My sister and I traveled to Norway and Iceland the summer of 2015.  Our main destination was Haugesund, Norway, where she did a half Ironman.  It's a fairly small city, so besides for the race, there weren't a lot of tourists around.  We took a day trip to Stavanger, which is a much bigger tourist area.  As soon as we got into town, I heard German everywhere.  I looked and saw that at least one of the cruise ships in the port was from Germany.  If I had been traveling alone, I might have spoken with some of them, but as it was I didn't feel the need.  

On our way home, we spent a week in Iceland.  As we arrived and waited for our bags, I heard mostly German.  I noticed that most of the flights arriving around the same time ours did were from Germany: Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt...  all within an hour or so.  While my sister waited for her bike, I waited by the regular baggage claim belt. I remember hearing an elderly German couple complaining about how long the bags were taking.  I turned to them and agreed - I had already been there at least a half an hour by then, and they had just gotten off their plane.  We talked about the inefficiency of the airport, and how that would never exist in Germany.  

We did a lot of tourist activities outside of Reykjavik, but on the excursions, I only remember hearing German on the Into the Glacier tour.  There were two German families on our half of the tour.  It was interesting - if they had a question, they could ask in German.  Since the tours were to be in English, the tour guide responded in English, but he also did a quick translation for them after.  (There were a couple kids involved, so it was really nice that he was able to do that.)

Our tour guide's ability to quickly switch languages prompted me to look up the educational system in Iceland, especially in relation to language learning.  I was intrigued to see that Danish was the first foreign language they learned, followed by English, and then German or French.  Every Icelander I came across spoke English very fluently.  I never heard their Danish, but I would expect it would be at least as good.  Our tour guide's German was really good, but I did hear someone who had trouble with it.  In one of the stores in town, a German woman who spoke very little English was trying to ask questions.  The employee spoke very little German.  I kept an ear open and was about to offer my help translating to English for him, but they were able to understand each other eventually.  

In the past decade, I've made an attempt to learn how to say something in the language of the areas I'm about to travel to.  For Czech, I could say hello and that's about it - though apparently my pronunciation of the town names is still impressive, and that alone gets me by fairly well.  In České Budejovice, I ended up speaking mostly German anyway.  

In Norway and Iceland I had learned enough Norwegian and Danish to dissect words and try to figure out meaning when reading, but not enough to gain confidence to say anything besides "godmorgen" and "takk" and I'm pretty sure I used the Danish pronunciation every time...  At least "takk" is "tak" and pronounced the same. I think my favorite part about Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish is that they are Germanic languages as well, and one can really find the morphological history in it all.