The Linguist - language learning should be fun

Er excuse me, excuse me, please, can I just get by, con permiso?

The old town in Seville is just a maze of narrow streets, most of which are just wide enough for one small car. We stayed near the Plaza del Pozo Santo and had to park 20 minutes away by foot. The day we left I had to try to bring the car near our hotel to load our luggage. Suddenly I came upon a street market. The people at the market were none too pleased to see me trying to drive through the market, but all the other streets there were one way, the wrong way. I had only one way to go, through the people.

There was a policeman there and he said that they should have blocked the road off, but because they had not, I had no choice but to drive through the market, slowly, "despacito".

Visiting in the Minho district of Portugal

Here are some pictures mostly of Guimaraes and Braga. A fairy tale visit to the middle ages with friendly people and great food and affordable prices.

We, the two of use, can easily have a full course meal, delicious and more than you can eat, with wine and desert for under 20 Euros. One surprise is the presence of Chinese stores in all these small towns. I was told both by the owner of one such store, and by Portuguese shopkeepers that there are thousands. The Chinese shopkeeper told me that he came too late since so many new Chinese shops are opening up. The Portuguese shopkeepers believe that these shop owners pay no taxes and aside from selling to their clients do not interact with the Portuguese, just sticking to themselves. These stores sell only Chinese produce. Sort of like Micro Wal-Marts.

The last picture was taken on my Blackberry in a wonderful restaurant in Braga, called Centurion, which is part of the Bracara Augusta hotel. Reasonable prices and an awesome decor with granite pillars and arches and the like. Visit the link, and then go to the hotel. We were staying at another hotel, the Albergaria Senhora  A Branca, which was also lovely, but we would probably try the Augusta the next time, not much difference in price, around 55 -60 Euros for a double room.

At the Centurion, not only did they give us free Porto, as an aperitif, and delicious free hors d'oeuvres, but when they found out that it was my birthday (it was the 8th), they gave us a free desert and a free bottle of delicious Portuguese champagne.

I cannot say enough about Portugal. Everyone should visit. And it is not just old towns and food and people. You can also golf, so I will throw in another picture of Carmen teeing off on a hilly golf course near Ponte de Lima, where you walk among pine trees, oak trees, what look like Arbutus trees, and go through local farms and vineyards, while playing golf.

Now it is nine at night here in Vigo, so even though it is early we are going to go out and start eating some tapas in order to get ready for dinner in a few hours or so. When in Rome or Spain....

By the way we are really impressed with Vigo, but that will be another post.

Portugal is great!

We have visited Guimaraes, Braga (where we are staying) and took a short trip to Barcelos. The weather is not great, although it is about to improve.

These little towns are beautiful, and clean. The people are amazingly friendly and helpful. There is an indescribable feeling of comfort here. People are just helpful and in no way aggressive. And languages. I jsut took my laundry to a coin laundry down a narrow street in a non-descript area of Braga. the coin laundry was part of a furniture store. The couple who ran the place looked after getting me set up, all in Portuguese , of course, when a French speaking African client arrived. They addressed him in perfect French and then told me that they also speak English and Spanish.

European travel log part 4: The Holy Roman Empire

I have been busy and have not kept up my travel notes from my recent European trip. So here is the next installment. When I last left off, I had just climbed aboard a train in Verona, destined for Augsburg, near Munich.

As we left Milan and proceeded through Trento, Bolzano, Innsbruck and on to Munich, I realized that I was really going to be touring through the Holy Roman Empire, an area where people speaking mostly German, but also Italian and Czech, as well as other languages, had been ruled by various Kings and Princes, and that here had been may wars fought wars in the name of different royal houses, and in the name of the two great branches of the Western Christendom, Protestantism and Catholicism.

Yet ever since Charlemagne, there had existed an overarching vision of a German mission to unify Europe, or at least a great part of it, as the successor state to the Roman Empire. It was said apparently that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as it was called, was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire. The vision if a unified German speaking state remained a goal, at least for some of the ruling powers. But in reality German speaking Europe remained politically disunited, while other European states established themselves.

When I visited the Medieval squares of Augsburg or Prague or and when I saw the magnificent Cathedral in Cologne, or when I saw the hill just outside Prague where the 30 years war began, I did have a sense of the cultural connection between those cities.

Of course it was left to Prussia, with its capitol in Berlin, to finally unite much of the German speaking part of Europe. Austria, and therefore Prague (at the time under Austria)  were left out of this united German state. And after World War I a new Czechoslovakian state was created, but its capitol Prague, now the capitol of the Czech Republic, retains plenty of evidence of German cultural influence, in its buildings and in some of its most famous literary figures like Kafka.I gather that ever since the Middle Ages Prague has been the scene rivalry between Czech speakers and German speakers. But most of history consists struggles of on kind or another.

I enjoyed all the cities for different reasons, but Prague, with its pedestrian streets and Medieval atmosphere, is the most unique and probably the one that I would most recommend to visitors. Munich and Berlin would be close seconds, for different reasons.

And I do recommend traveling with a Eurailpass and staying in inexpensive hotels in the old Holy Roman Empire.

Northern Alberta

I am a little behind in my European travelogue but I will catch up next week. I want to talk about Prague and Munich and Berlin and the other cities I visited during my two week Eurailpass tour of Europe.

But I am busy now visiting our sawmill in Manning, Alberta, near 60 degrees North. It takes almost as long to get to Manning from Vancouver as it takes to get to Europe. Up at 5.00 am to catch a 7.00 am flight to Calgary, then another flight to Grande Prairie. From there by 4WD vehicle (just in case we run into any deer or moose on the road) to the little town of Manning (1,500 people), the moose capital of Canada, as it calls itself.

It was mild in Grande Prairie, about 2 degres above zero, but as we drove North it got colder and it reached 25 degrees below in Manning yesterday night. It was a warm 7 below zero today, but it is supposed to be going back down to 30 below on the weekend, so I am happy to leave tomorrow.

However, this is great wide open country, fields, forests, the broad Peace River and very few people. (Lots of wildlife).

The mill was running fine. We held a modest (reflecting difficult market conditions) Christmas meal with our  employees and handed out various awards.Tomorrow I will be back in Vancouver.

European journey part 3

On Friday my Canadian companions left to return home, and I started out on the next leg of my journey, my language journey. The first thing I did was visit Milan's largest book store, to buy a few Italian books and audio books.

It was raining. I took the subway to the Piazza del Duomo, where two major book stores are located. I took time out from my shopping to admire, from the outside and from the inside, the magnificent Duomo, a startling and recently cleaned expression of the religious devotion, artistic genius and craftmanship of Medieval Lombardy. It was awe inspiring, and kind of slowed me down a bit. But then I went off to buy some books.

The next morning, on November 1, I started using my Eurail pass, which was to prove a wonderful way to travel around Europe. Once the train fare is paid for, you just hop aboard any train, and move. Although some train require a reservation and in Italy, some trains are not included, so you have to be a little careful.

My first destination was Zovencedo, a small hill town just outside of Vicenza. Zovencedo is the home of Maurizio Falghera, his wife Cristiana and their two young children. The high speed Italian train took me to Vicenza where I was met by Cristiana who drove me to their home.

Maurizio has a vibrant voice and has devoted himself to recording the major works of  Italian literature.  Hence Il Narratore audiolibri, a great source of audio books in Italian. Maurizio believes in the art of the story teller, and the power of story telling to improve literacy. I heartily support him.

After a pleasant mean and wine, and congenial discussion, I went to bed. Early the next morning I went for a run in the hills overlooking Vicenza, amid the sound of gunfire. The local hunting season was in full swing. The roads were deserted, and I just hoped that none of the hunters would mistake me for a bird or a wild boar, or whatever they were shooting at.

Later in the morning I was driven to the Vicenza train station, where I discovered that the train schedule on the Internet may not correspond to the schedule that the trains actually run by. But I did not care. I had the luxury of having time. I took a slow train to Verona, and then waited for the train that would take me through the mountain passes, through the Dolomites and the Alps, past Tyrol, and into Germany.

I climbed aboard and entered my compartment, where for the next 6 hours I would have the company of a talkative American and equally talkative, and beer drinking, Dane.

My European trip part 2

The old part of Brescia was pleasant to stroll around, older buildings sprinkled with small bars and restaurants. There were mainly younger people about, enjoying the Sunday evening. Dinner is not until 8.00 in Italy, so we began with a drink and snacks at a bar. Our waitress was delighted to practice her English on us, and of course was immediately introduced to LingQ and given a card.

We then moved on to dinner, at a small restaurant which the hotel had recommended. The food was a little disappointing, a little heavy, too much butter. My preference is for that kind of Italian food which uses more olive oil. However, our head waiter made up for the deficiencies of the cuisine by his dramatic and theatrical presentation of the menu. In fact the whole atmosphere in the restaurant reminded me of a theatre play. We were the first to arrive for dinner and we caught the restaurant staff finishing their meal, sort of like catching actors on the stage in final preparation for the night's show. Soon after we arrived and sat down, more customers came in. Our head waiter took his oratory from table to table, and the guests soon started playing their assigned roles of talking with a great deal of animation and doing a lot of gesturing and gesticulating.

The next morning we went to visit the company which manufactures the equipment that we were interested in. The founder and president of the company had developed the technology over 20 years and had at times thought of giving up. Finally in 2000 his fortunes improved as the interest in small scale power generation from biomass received more attention and support from various European governments. Since then his sales and staff had grown dramatically. This gave me some encouragement for LingQ, where we have been working for a long time and hopefully a breakthrough awaits us.

Over the next few days we traveled by car and plane to different sawmills in Austria and Germany to see the equipment in use. I was impressed with how thoroughly these German sawmills are extracting every last bit of energy out of wood waste that we are far from fully utilizing in Canada. Of course, none of this activity would be economically feasible without support and subsidy from government. Our role will be to convince our government to provide a similar level of support for us to the same thing. Wood is CO2 neutral, and utilizing wood waste can contribute to less dependency on oil and gas for energy.

On Friday my companions left to return to Canada, and I started out on the next leg of my journey, my language journey. The first thing I did was visit Milan's largest book store.

My European trip part 1

I intend to spend the next many posts talking about two subjects, my trip through Europe and the book Lernen by Manfred Spitzer. I will just alternate the two subjects.

Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage

Happy is he who has, like Ulysses, made a wonderful journey

du Bellay  16th century French poet.

Travel enriches us, or at least has the potential to do so. Just as in du Bellay's poem, we return home happier and renewed. We rediscover the joys of the home and hearth, yet we are changed by what we have seen. Some trips give us more than others. My most recent trip was wonderful. I feel like Ulysses.

Between October 25 and November 22 I was in Milan, Brescia, Leoben in Austria, Zovencedo (just outside Vicenza), Augsburg, Munich, Prague, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Heide (north of Hamburg), Berlin, Stockholm,and finally Karlstad (Sweden) before returning home.  I spent a good deal of the time in cars, trains, subways, and just plain walking. I was not on the beach, nor in the mountains. I did not stay at resorts, nor visit cathedrals and museums. I traveled though countrysides, visited cities, and experienced different histories, cultures and languages.

The first week I was with three traveling companions from our sawmill, Real, Robert and Steve (another Steve). We were looking at Italian equipment that would enable us to produce electric power using our wood waste, which consists mostly of bark. We are only utilizing a portion of our waste, or biomass, to dry our lumber, and wanted to see if we could somehow justify a small scale electric power station. An Italian company had develop a technique which uses high temperature oil, rather than steam, to drive the turbines. This would be easier for use to manage than the conventional approach using steam. This company, Turboden, was located in Brescia.

Our flight from Calgary to Frankfurt was late, so we missed our connecting flight to Milan. However, there was another flight a few hours later. From Milan's Malpensa airport we took a bus into the central train station. Sitting in front of me on the bus was an Asian looking gentleman, whom I took to be Japanese or Korean. Then I noticed that he was reading a Russian newspaper. I was curious, and of course always keen to practice my Russian. I struck up a conversation in Russian and discovered that he was Kazakh. We had a pleasant conversation about Kazakhstan and other subjects and I gave him a LingQ card. He was not going to be the last one to get a LingQ card on this trip.

From Milan we took a train to Brescia, and a quick taxi ride took us to our hotel. It was still early afternoon so we decided to rest a little and then go into town.

Rain in Karlstad Sweden, rail travel in Europe and the high cost of books

I am in Karlstad for the annual Swedish lumber marketing conference. It is raining and it is cold. I have completed my two weeks of wandering around Germany (with side trips to Prague, Paris, Brussels and Antwerp). My two weeks of travel on the magic carpet of a Eurail pass was wonderful. Once the ticket was paid for, the train travel was "free" for as much as I wanted to use it. I think I spent over 30 hours on trains. Most of the time I was very comfortable, reading, and listening, mostly in German, and watching the scenery go by. I will describe all of this in more detail in a report on my travels later. Let me just say that the German cities were a delight, and I really recommend Berlin, where I stayed on the Friedrichstrasse near Check Point Charlie. I walked for many hours in Berlin and would like to go back, with my wife, stay for a week and take in all of what the city has to offer.

Getting back to Karlstad, my lumber meetings begin after lunch. So went to a book store. I bought another book and audio book by my favourite Swedish writer, Hermann Lindquist, who writes about history. I bought his book and CD on Madame Pompadour. I looked at the section on books for language learning. There was a series on learning English. I cannot remember the name but the store only had books 5 and 6 in the series. Each one cost $100 Canadian, although only $80 for students. There was a book for learning Swedish as a second language by the same company and in the same price range. Who would buy these books? If you bought all 6 of the English books, you would spend $480 to $600, and where would you be? I imagine some people will even buy the books and hardly even use them.

At LingQ you pay $10 a month, and you get a chance to see if you like the system first. And for $40 a month or so you get a personal tutor who talks to you and corrects your writing. Once we get our much much delayed new version out, and we are very close, ( I have seen it and it looks great), we really have to make more people aware of who we are and what we have. That is my resolution for the new year, to promote, promote and promote.

Importing lists of terms

I have been doing a lot of reading in German while sitting on trains. I have a Eurail pass so the travel is all paid for. Yesterday I traveled from Koeln to Heide via Hamburg. The first train was late getting in to Hamburg so I missed my connection and had to hang around the train station.

When I read in German there are words I do not understand, quite a few per page. I import them into LingQ as a list of terms. Then I get them emailed to me. I can review them on the computer, or even sitting on the train,where I can read them again on my Blackberry. Very useful!