Auf Deutch

I got to use my german this morning (or yesterday evening depending on your time zone). I had to schedule a taxi for the horrid hour of 5:00am and after frantic morning packing rushed out to find my italian cab driver struggling to talk to genial old woman. He called out to me to ask if I was his fare and asked if I might help with the woman. She looks upset and says, "bitte, sprechts du Deutch?". I finally got to use my underdeveloped language skills! So she spoke in hastey german which I translated to simple english and italian for the cab driver, after a little confusion we got things sorted and were off to the airport. Problem was - not really a problem I suppose - that this woman had been in italy for two weeks and hadn't really been able to speak to anyone so my continuing caveat that I only spoke a little german was lost on her. She started off telling me about all of her children (understood most of that) then about the town she was from (got that) then about something called S.K.A.T which I initially thought was the local mafia but turns out to be a play (I don't even want to guess what about). She then went off into something about the 30 years war and I was left to just nod along politely. Still a pretty cool afair.

British Airways was as always very accomodating - they gave me a seat exactly where I wanted even though my travel agent hadn't been able to book it months ago. Both flights were fairly nice though the second one had me sitting next to an infant. That was the quietest, most well behaved child I've ever seen on a plane! didn't even cry when the pressure rose as we descended. The 5 hours in london was fairly uneventful save for a woman constantly peppering people with questions about their airport shopping experience and the revelation that brittons are pretty well screwed over pricewise when it comes to, well, anything. Example, my digital camera was 100 "currency units" more there than here and their currency is valued at nearly twice ours. I like my camera and all, but it isn't worth $900.

Got home, found out my credit card had been shut off so had to pay for parking with cash (thankfully had some on hand) and came home to fine not a bit of interesting mail. Oh well.

The trip itself was fantastic. I got to see my favorite places again, got to see Chrissy again, got to see the pope, slept in what could generously be called a large tupperware container, and discovered my new favorite gellato flavor combination. Now I just need to find the cable for my digital camera so I can see how the pictures turned out.

Now what day is it again?