Language Learning I

Learning new languages is completely different to any other academic subject. In almost any other subject, spacing out for a while wont throw you completely off track. If all else fails, you can start pretty much afresh when the class moves into a new area. The opposite is true when learning languages, something which I learned the hard way. Back in England, I started learning French as a compulsory subject. For about a year I actually understood something. However, my studying practices at the time were hardly spectacular, and as time progressed any French I had previously learned began to spiral down into a black hole in some corner of my mind.

I soon found the French teacher had began talking gibberish, and as listening seemed like a waste of time, I thought I would instead do something constructive, such as building small catapults and pellet guns from ball point pens. Most of my diabolical contraptions failed miserably and only resulted in an ever increasing layer of debris at the bottom of my pencil case, not to mention a peculiar shortage of ball point pens.

Once I managed to make a deceptively simple pellet gun (ball point pen casing) which a boy sitting next to me promptly picked up; fired a shot at the class fatty, and thus paused the class for several minutes while the teacher lectured us on matureness. Meanwhile I sat terrified knowing that my tools of violence had made their way into the hands of terrorists, rather than being used to fight for freedom, prosperity, and entertainment.

My only comfort was that upon returning to Finland I would have the option to stop studying French. We returned to Finland and the day of reckoning arrived; I sat with the new school's French teacher and my parents. I told them I want to quit French. They told me that it would be an invaluable future asset, that I would regret quitting it forever, that I would have wasted all my previous French studies. Didn't have the guts to tell them I had already made sure of that. The French teacher said girls like guys who speak French. I would hate to admit that somewhere in my desperate 12 year old mind I actually considered that. Nevertheless, under mounting parental pressure, and perhaps the teacher's corny comment, the obedient little me obliged.

I regretted it, my god I regretted it. I don't think there was a single day, when after an afternoon French lesson I didn't come home complaining what a load of crap it was. After about another two hellish years of French (during which all of the remaining French in my head was sucked into the black hole) I made the decision to end the suffering. I wrote a letter to the principal. One morning, my mother had a phone call from her, asking if I was allowed to quit French. "Ah yeah, I sent a letter to the principal" I said while brushing my teeth. Dazed, my mother agreed. More than anything I felt relief, mixed with the comic foolishness of knowing I could have wrote the letter a year earlier.

When I cycled home an hour early that day, my conscience felt as though I had skipped school. Then I realised I could be in French right now, trying to seem invisible to the senile old teacher. This wasn't very hard, considering her age. I felt sorry that she had to put up with a class where only about half the people were learning anything, while the other half entertained each other by causing chaos and mayhem. I imagine the only thing that kept her going was impending retirement.

Teacher: "Blah blah blah..."
Guy1: "G 2!"
Guy2: "YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP! HAHAHAHA!"
--Repeat from top about 10 times.---
Teacher: "No more sinking battleships! I will kill you!"

Delighted with my success, I made sure to share my joy with everyone else, reminding those poor suckers whenever they shambled to another French class.

So ends the first part of my epic, language learning adventure... almost. This year I started lukio, or senior high school as it is to many of you. Having recovered surprisingly quickly from my French induced trauma, and hoping that the laws of physics might have been at least somewhat flawed, I began French again. I began from the very beginning (For your information "Bonjour!" is officially the first word in the French language.), hoping that perhaps something had not been sucked into the void. Unfortunately the laws of physics held firm, and I had no advantage whatsoever compared to the other first time French learners. However, this time I was armed with experience, not only did I know what not to do, by this time I had studied Japanese for almost a year and in the process had learned many techniques useful to learning a new language. I had also been inspired by how useful even a little language skills could be during our Tour de Europe.

My first French test is next Monday, and I am confident that this time, I will be the victor! Bwahahaa!! Then, I will have one more course of French after which I doubt I will continue, despite having been thoroughly pleased with my success so far. I realised again today what an annoying language it is. "What the hell is that word doing there? I swear it wasn't there before!" This has happened to me several times so far, and I don't think I will be able to take it much longer. Also if the teacher shows us any more of that horrid 80s, epilepsy inducing learning cartoon ("Muse" or something) I may well hang myself before I have a change to learn any more French.

MOTORAZR Maxx!

It's 23:34, my current phone is on its deathbed, almost on its way to mobile heaven, and I am searching for its successor, the coolest, most expensive phone I can find. Then in search of anything worthy of being design, I trip and fall into the deep dark abyss that is Motorola's website... a hellish a labyrinth of loading bars, 3D women in rubber and insanely cool product names such as the wicked MOTOKRZR K1, the somewhat feeble MOTOPEBL, and the confusing MOTORAZR² V8. All designed to allow you to run your perfect... what? household?


Believe me, I do not jest, follow to link to see the video and be convinced that this is truly the greatest piece of engineering the average housewife could ever lay her hands on.

Once you have watched it, you will experience a sudden yet very powerful urge to slaughter the CEO of Motorola with a nuclear chainsaw, whatever that is.

By the way, if anyone can recommend me a decent phone, please go ahead, although if it results in me having to watch anything akin to that video your fate will be the same as that of the CEO.

Tour De Europe - Days 9 - 11

We woke up to enjoy the regularly superior croissants we were now used to having for breakfast. Indeed, I was worried weather I would ever again be able to cope without chocolate spread. There's one thing I really liked about Germany, no stupid 0% fat 0% sugar junk. Just good ol' fatty food. Yoghurts especially put our Finnish diet foods to shame.

Back in Montreux, we were again itching to move on, and so we sped off from another beautiful city. The ride to the French border once again featured unique scenery. In fact, all of the scenery we saw was completely different in feel. Every forest was different to each other, no mountainous valley the same. Very near the border we rode to a large inn by a river in the forest, where using a system of archaic sign language and primitive sounds, we were able to order a whopping great sandwich from the French speaking natives.

It was really quite an idyllic little place, with an old dog, a younger dog, and a cat milling around and lounging in the sun amidst the people sitting outside at the tables. The owner of the house came to talk to us, luckily using English, and it turned out that he too had visited Finland! It was incredibly relaxing to enjoy the surroundings and watch the cats and dogs play with each other and beg for food from the guests.

Well fed and content, we rode a short way to the border and crossed it with once again only a sign to bid us welcome into yet another country, this time France. The difference between the various countries was far greater than you would expect. France felt surprisingly French, and all the villages and countryside we rode through felt completely different to any places we had been before. They weren't just variations of German villages, but had a complete feel of their own.


Me getting slightly annoyed that I always have to be in the picture -_- Whole village looked a bit like Disneyland to be honest.


That's better.

Although we considered staying the night in France, I thought it would be nice to return to Germany, which actually felt like home after all the other countries we had been to. We decided to return to the scenic black forest, this time riding high up on the hills.

Our once again randomly picked destination, Schapbach, turned out to be quite a charming German village, built along a river running through a valley in the black forest. We found a pleasant guest house for the night and treated ourselves to some schnitzels. The following morning our gracious hosts gave us (my dad) the resources required for us (my dad) to wash the bike.

We bid farewell to our gracious hosts and made our way back to Wiesbaden, where we were to spend the evening and the next day with our relatives. Despite the lack of constantly changing scenery, It was great wandering around the city, buying soft Weathers toffees (which I had been deprived of since England) and enjoying the great company.

With initial plans laid for a proper family get together for Christmas, we began our journey back home. Despite our greatest adventures being behind us, it was still great to get moving again. Thanks to my stubbornly waterproof gear not even the heavy rain could damped my spirits. In fact I often find the freshness of rain to positively invigorate my spirits. We later took it upon ourselves to experience a traditional German roadside kebab. A kebab my dad successfully predicted would wreak havoc in his stomach.

The riding that day was, despite the heavy rain, enjoyable once again. Even my dad was undeterred by his cold and soaked crotch, the unfortunate result of a leaking rain suit. Our riding for the day was finished at Soltau, a town reasonably close to Travemund, and also the home of a large amusement park. Once again we found ourselves a great place for the night, a small guest house run by a friendly married couple. The evening was completed by a culinary culmination at a Brewery restaurant, where I ate a delicious double layered schnitzel with mozzarella and pesto accompanied by pasta in tomato sauce. As if that wasn't enough, I then had a whopping portion of apfel strudel with ice cream and strawberry sauce... phew! Oh, don't forget the beer, it was a brewery after all.

Our trip to the amusement park was accompanied by a constant drizzle, which unfortunately did not fend off the schools visiting the park. Nevertheless, we had a few face distortingly fast rides, one of them being the steepest wooden roller-coaster in the world. Several high speed experiences later we returned to the city where, fuelled by a craving for Chinese food, I took it upon myself to locate a restaurant with the bike's navigator. Indeed I found one, and my craving was well satisfied. I also made the most of the fact that practically every restaurant in Germany seemed to have an assortment of ice cream portions. A banana split was clearly in order.

Later we rode to Travemund through random patches of rain and sunshine. Worried that we hadn't eaten nearly enough on our trip, we decided to do what we could at a seaside marine restaurant. My dad treated himself to a herring dish, while I stuffed myself with more apfel strudel.
_____

It was that our journey came to an end. Even as I write I feel the same tinge of sadness I felt on the boat back home. Our amazing journey was over, and it had gone by so fast, yet we had seen so much and experienced so many things...

Gaijin Smash!

As my hordes of imaginary readers will have noticed, I've added a new RSS feed to the site. I was just surfing one night through some blogs, stumbled upon an article on kancho, and then before I knew it I was on this site (keh?). It really is a hilarious site, written by a black American living and working in Japan.

Enough of my rambling, let it speak for itself, check out this editorial on how the site got it's name.

Marine Catcher

"Look mum! I won!" "Yes dea... WTF Jimmy??"

Tour de Europe - Days 7 - 8

Braving the Italian traffic for the better half of the day was indeed tiring. Things got worse when our hungry party couldn't find a restaurant, resorting to spewing obscenities in hopes that one would turn up. When we finally found a place, we were reminded of the local custom of "siesta", that is, going for an afternoon nap in the middle of the day. This of course meant that no restaurants were serving food.

After a slight rest and a coke our morale improved in the face of such adversity. We saddled our bikes and made way to leave this traffic ridden, afternoon napping country for good. It was also time to part with Kari and his wife, who headed back home to Wiesbaden while we continued towards Lugano, Switzerland.

Crossing the border to Switzerland was as simple as riding past a welcome sing, but the clean surroundings, well maintained roads and an absence of mad traffic truly told us we were no longer in Italy. Lugano was an incredibly beautiful city cradled by mountains and set beside a lake. Incidentally we happened to stumble upon a jazz festival, and after a comically difficult search for a hotel, we walked down town for an enjoyable evening. We sat for a brilliant meal outside an Italian restaurant and soaked in the atmosphere as we watched the passers by head towards the concert square. By the time we had finished, the square was utterly packed with people. We walked around admiring the city and lake, then realised tired we were and headed back to collapse into our hotel beds.




The following morning we spent doing some shopping around the city, among then a Swiss army knife key ring and a stylish Swatch watch for mum, who when she received it commented several times amusingly on how much like cardboard it looked. Walking along the sunny lakeside, we began itching for new scenery, and hurried to the hotel to continue our journey towards the city of Montreux. Once again we ascended, this time to the Alps of Switzerland. This was one of the most spectacular and enjoyable legs of our journey, with mind blowing scenery and refreshingly cool weather.




We stopped at a small alpine cabin built into the side of the mountain. Inside was a small room decorated with all sorts of motorcycle memorabilia, and a kitchen from which were greeted. Our alpine lunch of local sausage and cheese could not have tasted better, and as we talked with the cabin's owner we discovered, he had been to Finland, twice!


One of the most amazing moments of our journey surprised us as we came out of a small tunnel in the mountains. Directly in front of us opened a huge scenic valley, and down the mountain on our left was a magnificent glacier, completely free of any tourist build up.

Waiting for us at Montreux was another jazz festival which ensured us another challenge in finding an affordable hotel. Finding one was difficult, and we had to settle for one of a higher quality than originally planned. Although our plan was to see what this jazz festival was like, after our bounty full dinner we found ourselves far too tired for such exploration.