Other Countries

Pretzels and beer at the Bratwursthausle in Nurnberg, Germany. Trying out the local cuisine is probably one of my favorite things about traveling.
Pretzels and beer at the Bratwursthausle in Nürnberg, Germany. Trying out the local cuisine is probably one of my favorite things about traveling.

Perhaps one of the nicest perks about living anywhere in Europe is that it’s so easy to visit many other countries.  No exhausting, eight-our flight across the Atlantic and into another time zone that demands a day of downtime just to recuperate.  And the diversity that can be experienced over short distances is astounding.

As an American, I’m used to traveling thousands of miles across the U.S. without experiencing much change, other than the landscape.  We all speak the same language (albeit with subtly nuanced accents … okay, some more so than others.)  And we share the same melting-pot pop culture.  Sometimes it’s just a wee bit boring.

My mom enjoys her first trip to Europe during our Girl's Weekend in Paris this past September.
My mom enjoys her first trip to Europe during our Girl’s Weekend in Paris this past September.

But in Europe, an hour-long flight can take you into a completely different realm, with unusual customs, startling architecture, and totally different languages.  Come to think of it, you’ll encounter this in just an hour’s drive out of Oslo, since Norway has 19 different provinces with 19 different dialects.  What’s not to love about that?  (Don’t worry, most everyone speaks English here.)

But no matter where we’ve jaunted off to in Europe, we’ve never been unable to find a way to communicate with the locals, whatever the language.  So don’t let being a monoglot hold you back from traveling.  Here are a few tales from our excursions to other countries:

Finland

Malta

Switzerland

Hungary

Italy

Netherlands

Turkey

Belgium

Austria

France

Portugal

Sweden

Denmark

Germany

 

 

Learning to Live in the Land of the Midnight Sun