Somewhere Between Monday and Tuesday

One of life's modern pleasures, quite different from the almost immediate gratification of the internet and other entertainment forms we currently have, is waiting for the delivery of furniture to your home. I am supposed to be getting a desk in the mail -- and according to the tracking information, it should arrive "between Monday and Tuesday". Well, it's Wednesday. Someone has to be home to sign for it when it arrives, so here I am.

And as I opened the window to let some of the morning air in, even though it feels like it will be quite a warm day outside, there was that definite crispness in the air, a scent that -- well, can something smell 'cold'? I feel like that makes no sense, but it smells like cold and autumn. I suppose I'm back in a place with real seasons. I can't wait!

And yesterday, I had quite the interesting experience. I've been looking for some part-time work here in Mainz and though I have been looking primarily for math tutoring (one of my favorite things) I've also found quite a few families who would like to have English-speaking babysitters for their children. I haven't babysat (if you don't count living with the youngsters this summer or with my ((second? Once removed?)) cousins the summer before) in years, but I thought I'd give it a try. So, last night, I met two adorable youngsters - one 4, one 7 - daughters of two nice German parents in a suburb of Mainz. But here's the interesting part. I was asked not to let the children know that I spoke any German. The parents told them I would only understand English (which they have already started to learn, to various extents) -- and let me tell you, it was an interesting experience.

First of all, I watched the older girl do something pretty neat for a person new to a language. She really believed I spoke absolutely no German and knew that her sister couldn't help her if she couldn't come up with a word in English, so she had to explain what she meant when she didn't know exactly what something was called. For example, at one point, her sister was looking around desperately for (what turned out to be) her stuffed rabbit, but when the youngest one was running around and saying the words for exactly that in German, I asked the older one what she was looking for and she stood the, puzzled, and then finally said "Her going to bed teddy bear rabbit", which is a fairly fantastic description. I have a lot of respect for this particular kind of speaking, as it's something that I also have to deal with.  I was having a discussion about this recently with C. The thing is, as a native English speaker, I can be incredibly, incredibly lazy. Well, I could have been so lazy as to never have learned a second language at all, but even though I have gone to the lengths to learn German, I still get to be lazy in ways people with a different first language can never be -- i.e. when I come across a word in the German sentence I want to say that I don't know how to say, I can just casually say the English word instead and most of the time, I will be understood.

I do this less than I used to (because my German has gotten better) but it still happens. In my own defense, I don't do it necessarily out of laziness -- more because I don't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation by saying 'huh' or something equally eloquent. Anyways. It's a hard thing to do and a very interesting thing to do from a learning standpoint - to be able to describe something even if you don't know how to say it exactly, and this seven-year-old was pretty damn good at it.

And the other hard part for me yesterday was when the youngest had trouble falling asleep and wanted to know when her mother would be home, and I had to speak to her in English even though I know she couldn't understand everything I said. She got a lot of it, though, and eventually, did fall asleep. But it was very hard to not just switch to German, which I am sure would have been more comforting to her.

Well, still no desk. I guess I'll keep waiting.

Just a little bit more.

These were the signs that marked the WHW - after every junction and maybe every few miles along the path, we would find them.

An astounding amount of water in Scotland. This was the day after a heavy rain.

And quite striking plants. The spirals on this kind really intrigued me.

Another fantastic aspect of the trail was the abundance of blackberry bushes. In the strangest places and (as the week went on) in the prime ripe season, we would find these bushes. After miles and miles and weary feet, nothing like some freshly picked blackberries washed by the rain or dew to make you feel like you could keep on walking. :)

Fort William, at the end of the Way.

Intrepid travelers. 

The West Highland Way, Abridged

On a train from Fort William to Glasgow at the moment, with what's come to be familiar Scottish highland scenery sliding past the windows.

We started what feels like ages ago at the smallish town of Milngavie (pronounced Mull-guy), but already by the morning of the second day, a cold that had been threatening me the last week in California took hold and then after trying to push through it until day four, I had a mild fever, a cough, and there was simply no way we could walk the last two days.

Let me recap briefly. The whole West Highland Way (hereafter referred to as the WHW) is around 96 miles in its entirety, from Milngavie to Fort William. There are various towns and villages spaced out along the way that allow for places to stay at night or places to get some lunch, so you don't have to carry everything on your back. We decided to book our nights along the WHW with a company that suggested you walk the way in a minimum of 5 days, and the maximum that they offered was 9 days. Due to financial reasons, we went with the 6 day plan - this means every day was on average about 14 miles of walking, with two outlier days (19 and 21 miles). Some days have convenient halfway points  along the way, and maybe buses that could take you to the next stop if need be (which we eventually did need) but not every part of the way has a convenient alternative to walking.

When you are staying in B&Bs in towns practically designed and maintained for people walking the WHW, eating dinners in pubs surrounded by other walkers (it's actually quite a fun type of community- you see some folks setting out with you at breakfast, lose track of them because everyone walks at different speeds during the day, but if you end up staying at the same town for the next night, you find those folks at dinner again) - - it's hard not to bury yourself in disappointment if you cannot walk.

Let me tell you, the disappointment hurts. Presently, we are sitting on the train two rows behind several groups of people who just completed the WHW in Fort William and who have been talking non-stop for the last two hours (I kid you not) about the beautiful last day of the hike. But I can't blame them. If we'd finished, we'd be talking about it, too.

So, bad timing of sickness really took a toll on the trip, but we did end up walking a little more than 40 miles, so it's not to say we didn't do it! And we talked to lots of other walkers and didn't run into any other people who were attempting the walk in six days -- always a minimum of eight. Lessons learned for the next time!

But still, this has been an amazing, amazing trip. I have always wanted to walk from one town to another -- it's crazy that I live in a time where we do that for a "fun, exciting vacation" instead of out of necessity - and the first four days of walking were truly, truly beautiful.

Forty miles on foot. Mountains, lochs, sheep, cows, fields, and that beautiful silence you find only in nature. Rainbows and sunsets and a  newfound love of 'walking holidays'. This one won't be the last.