Re: European Vacation (Long) - Page 11

 


My trip this year was from here to Phoenix....I don't know if Bobs
favorite restaurant was 5-star, but it wasn't bad food! And I got see
EVERYTHING from HERE to THERE...in TWO directions!


Some of those scenery pictures were pretty premo. I don't have any
real desire to do Europe myself, lately I've been longing for what my
mom has, infinite time and still functioning body parts. I can see
taking any bike I've got and puttering down every back road in the
country, 45 mph, from Key West to Prudhoe.

 


Yeah, I can hear the old age and functioning body parts vision.

But after you've been from the Keyes to the Arctic, it is kind of fun
to try something different and mix in some old world culture and
mountains of an older ilk.  I'd love to ride in Europe again soon, but
it was so f'ing expensive I'll have to consider my honeymoon ride a
special treat.

And don't for get to add Mexico to your list.  That KLR would be
splendid down in Sierra Tarahumara.

 

saddlebag schrieb:


They just pretend because they are uneasy. Barely anybody passes the
German school system without a basic competence in English

What your pronunciation does to our place names, streets etc is quite
another matter... although German pronunciation is actually very easy
compared to English because everything is more or less pronounced
exactly the way it's written, no funny
bough/plough/borough/dough/rough business here, so as soon as you've
figured out the pronunciation of the individual letters and a few
special combinations, you're done.

The vowels go more or less like this:

a - like in car
e - like in celery
i - like in internet
o - like gthe first one in Otto
u - like in unbelievable

vowels with an 'h' behind them (and ie) are long (Very rarely, other
letters than i also get an elongation e, like the town of Soest.
Otherwise, adding an e behind an a, o or u is just another way of
turning it into an Umlaut, only without the funny little dots above
them).

Evil German Umlauts: ä like a in bank, ö like i in girl, ü like oo in
Scottish English ('boot') (that one's typically by far the most
difficult for other English variants' native speakers, an 'ee' will do
in a pinch.)

Diphthongs are eu or äu (oi), au (like in outch), ei (like in I).

Ch is sometimes close to the French j in jour (but with the tongue
farther back against the palate) and sometimes rolled verrry
Scottishly and there is no way to tell when which is which except
knowing it by heart. sch is always sh.


The next chain franchise is usually not far away either, at least not
by American distance standards, seeing that all of Germany is only
about as "large" as Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate NY combined. There
are basically three decent chains:

http://www.louis.de/
http://www.polo-motorrad.de/
http://www.hein-gericke.de/


What do you expect. In the Alps, you may even get snow in Mai.

There *is* some decent weather to be had in Germany - and there are
other very interesting areas beside Berlin and Neuschwanstein,
especially for motorcyclists - but the weather may turn on you at any
time, even in August, sadly.  

Fortunately, there rarely is very much of it, again compared to some
US conditions of late.


Get a satnav. It's a life saver.

And come back some time.

--

Gruß
Radbert

 


Nice reply.  I haven't had much education in German language, but
during my time there with my wife (who is mostly fluent and loved
teaching me how to correctly pronounce everything through the
autocomm) I was able to understand a lot of German after just 10 days
there.  Immersion is the schnitzle.  <grin>

+1 on the Satnav/GPS

And indeed, Bavaria is splendid riding.  I rode the entire
Alpenstrasse from Saltzberg to Lake Constance, with some side trips
off of it, and it was really pleasant.

The roads south of Baden-Baden, and the baths themselves, were also
extraordinary!

 

Vaughn schrieb:


Soy en bolivia ahora <g>


It's called the Schwarzwald (Black Forrest, the one with the highly
fattening cake) and it's one of the definitive top 3 motorcycling
areas of Germany.

Then there is the Eifel, the area around the Nürburgring, although
many backroads are by far not as well maintained there, because in
contrast to Baden-Württemberg, it is in one of the poorest regions of
Germany.

--

Gruß
Radbert