I can't believe summer vacation is over! I hope that you had a good one--with interesting experiences and plenty of rest and relaxation. If you're a Japanese English Department student, I hope you did something with English sometimes.
As for me, my wife and I visited Central Europe for eleven days from the end of August to the beginning of September: Budapest in Hungary, Vienna in Austria, and Chesky Krumlov and Prague in the Czech Republic. We had been to other European countries (England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Belgium), but never to the ones we visited this time, so it was very interesting to see a different kind of Europe than before. It felt more Slavic, more ethnic, more medieval (in Hungary and Czech) and more Empire-ish (in Vienna). We ate delicious food: goulash, cold cherry and cinnamon soup, honey cake, roast duck, German wine, Czech beer, and Hungarian tokay, etc. And saw so much rich history and culture, castles, palaces, towers, cathedrals, gardens, paintings, statues, furniture, organ recitals, folk dances, puppet show operas, and string orchestra classical performances, gardens, and so on. We took lots of public transportation: street cars, subways, and buses. And walked a lot every day (I got big blisters on my toes...). We got a strong sense of history, how, for example, the Habsburg Empire dominated Bohemia (Czeck) and Hungary until after World War II, when the USSR dominated them, until 1989. And in Vienna I touched the wall (only a small part of it remains) that kept out the Ottoman Turkish armies more than once over the centuries. People were generally very nice and helpful and communicated with us in English. We usually felt very safe. Before traveling I don't look forward to it at all! After traveling I need a week or more to recover! But during traveling I really enjoy seeing and learning and hearing and tasting and smelling and touching new things... ANYWAY, now the second school semester begins the day after tomorrow, and it will be difficult to get back into the teaching routine--I'll try to continue posting things each Saturday here.
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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