Reactions   Two stories come to mind involving people’s reactions to conversations that dumbfounded me. I'm afraid the stories don't have resolutions, but rather evoke the thought "What on earth were they thinking?!"

We were out to dinner in Pennsylvania with friends David and Jessie. We had a pleasant chat. Beverly at least followed along, and at that stage, may have still been able to participate. What could we have been talking about? Perhaps movies. Theater. Going to Florida. Travel elsewhere, including the Dominican Republic. Probably not much of European travel talk, since Bev and I hadn't been there for a decade. It was just conversation, nothing really special.

Afterwards, Bev and I were returning from the rest rooms to our table in preparation to leave. A young couple stopped us in the restaurant lobby. The gentleman excused himself for coming up to us; they had been sitting alone at the next table; they really didn't wish to eavesdrop; but they couldn't help it. They then thanked us for providing them with one of the most interesting conversations they had ever (over)heard. They really had enjoyed every minute.

I made a few appropriately friendly remarks, but to this day I say to myself: What on earth were they thinking?! Everyone overhears comments in a restaurant, and if it includes some juicy gossip (about someone you don't even know), that could pique one's interest, but that's not what the four of us were talking about, just regular chatter. So, what were they thinking?!

As an adjunct to this story, I’ll say that at a later date, Jessie said something that I appreciated. Keep in mind that she’s lived in both the UK and the US. She said: "Vince is the most European American I know." I didn't take that as a compliment and she didn't mean it as one. I take it simply as a statement of fact, but one that shows a fulfillment of what Bev and I have tried to do for over four decades, keep one foot firmly planted on one side of the Atlantic, with the other one on the other side. I've coined a new word, saying that we have a Euramerican outlook.

This story is more esoteric, and I don't know if I'll succeed in getting the reader into the right mindset to get the point, but I'll try.

1975 to 1980 was our second stretch at Middlebury College, when we both got the Doctorate of Modern Languages after five summers in Vermont at the Deutsche Schule (and a lot more work during those winters). We both chose French as our minor language. After German it was Bev's second and my third, following Spanish. Towards the end of those years there were written exams in both languages. In 1980 we each (separately) had the oral exam in the major language (the "deutsche Inquisition!!!"), before graduation at the end of the summer. That one lasted an hour and a quarter or more, and covered everything. Much of what happened in that time period is a blank now.

I suppose it was the previous year, 1979, that we each took the minor language oral, in French. We had been allowed to audit courses free of charge in the École Française for a couple of summers, and had been given reading lists for over the winter. But the oral exam in the minor language was much simpler, just fifteen minutes. It took place in Le Château, a classroom building built at Middlebury after World War One in the fetching style of a château on the Loire. The oral was before two professors from the French school, and one from the German School who also knew French. You prepared a topic of your choosing. I chose why one should teach French feminine adjectives first, as being more fundamental in form, before teaching masculine adjectives. It's a basic topic in French linguistics, no big deal. That day, I did my thing in French at the chalkboard for five minutes, the three asked me a few questions about the presentation, then a few more general questions, and it was over--back to the Deutsche Schule.

But this narrative takes place immediately before my exam, in the maybe ten minutes leading up to opening the door to the exam room and walking in.

Between our first time at Middlebury in the early 1960's and our second time in the late 1970's there had been a changing of the guard in the Deutsche Schule. Werner Neuse, who lived in Vermont and who had guided the school since at least the 1930's, had retired. The quality of instruction stayed the same, but the new guard was led by Gérard Schneilin, and there were a number of changes to how things were done.

Middlebury professors in the summer schools are of the highest quality, often leaders in their fields, and mostly brought over from Europe. Neuse had people from Germany and Austria. Schneilin, however, taught German during the year at the Sorbonne in Paris, not at the oldest branch on the Left Bank dating from 1215, but at one of the many newer branches, his in Nanterre. He brought professors, not only from Germany and Austria, but also from his German department in the Sorbonne/Nanterre. I assume that many of them, perhaps including himself, were French citizens. Note that his first name is not Gerhard, but Gérard. Thus there was no problem in finding a professor of German who spoke French.

Bev and I had gotten very friendly with Frédéric Hartweg (not Friedrich) from Paris, both having taken courses from him, and also personally. He joked with us that he liked hearing his name properly pronounced at Middlebury (HART-vake), and not how he usually heard it in Paris (art-VEGG).

It was time for my French oral. Hartweg and I started walking down the hill from the Deutsche Schule in Pearsons Hall to Le Château. Chatter-chatter-chatter. Talk-talk-talk. In German, of course, as had been the case between us for years. We got closer to Le Château, and it occurred to me, since I was about to not only be tested in French, but had to start with my own French presentation, weren't we in the wrong language? Shouldn't we be doing some French?

But still: talk-talk-talk. In German. We entered Le Château. German. We approached the room. German. Honestly, I really didn't mind. I knew I could do it. But still....

We got to the door of the exam room. I can see Hartweg on my right, reaching his right hand down to the doorknob, turning slightly towards me. It was at that point that I just had to say something. I said:

A very simple sentence that even a beginner could come up with: "I think we should start speaking French now."

Granted he had never heard me say a word in French before. But that still doesn't explain how his face absolutely froze with his hand still on the doorknob. After a moment he opened the door without another word and we went in to the exam.

I still ask this: WHAT WAS HE THINKING??!!

He never commented on that moment. After the exam it was back to German, and back up the hill to Pearsons Hall. But what kind of French did he think I spoke? After all, I was about to take a doctoral exam in the subject. Why did he look so shocked? What was he thinking? He never said, and I'll never know.

Let me put an adjunct to this story as well, which also takes place during the Schneilin time. Bev and I also became friendly with Heinz Vater from Germany, both through his courses and personally. I always remember that he had been one of the East German soldiers who was able to suddenly jump over the rubble where they were starting to put up the Berlin Wall and make it to the West.

His name Vater means Father. He was not in charge of our doctoral work, but he told us that in Germany, someone who does guide a student through his doctoral studies is called a Doktor Vater, sort of the "Father (Figure) of the Doctorate". He enjoyed the fact that whenever one of his students introduced him to someone, they were in a position to say:

Sea Voyages   For years, since people started asking how many "cruises" we'd been on, I've kept track of our sea (and river) voyages. I rarely call them cruises, because I use the definition that any time you sleep even one night in a cabin on a ship, that trip is a sea (or river) voyage. On that basis, I can't and won't include day trips on the Rhine and Danube, hydrofoiling the Strait of Gibraltar, ferry crossings on Lake Michigan, the Irish Sea and English Channel, and to the Channel Islands, also to Malta, and others.

But I do include auto ferry crossings of even one night in a ship's cabin on the Bay of Newfoundland, Bay of Fundy, the North Sea, the Baltic (two nights); coastal or river voyages in Alaska, the Columbia River, the Intracoastal Waterway from Jacksonville to Charleston, the New England coast, the Moselle River; cruises on the Norwegian coast, across the Mediterranean on the Bilu, in the Caribbean on the Nieuw Amsterdam, to Bermuda on the Nordic Empress, around South America on the Caronia; I crossed the Atlantic on the original Queen Elizabeth in 1957; Bev had crossed on the Ryndam. Since then we've crossed together on the Liberté, Tuhobić (freighter), France, Deutschland, and multiple times on the Queen Elizabeth 2 and Queen Mary 2.

Using the above definition, both Bev and I have made 31 sea voyages up through the QM2 this past summer. As of December on the Deutschland, I brought my total up to 32.

Nights Away from Home   Knowing we've done a great deal of travel in 2004, I got curious, so I spent several hours figuring something out. From the beginning, Bev has maintained travel diaries, which I now continue to keep up. We have 18 of them from 1961 to 2004. I went through each one to figure total nights away per year. Mostly it was a major summer vacation, with a few odd nights, or a week, added here and there.

I now have to modify my statement that "we didn't travel in the 1990's". What I should have said is that we didn't go to Europe in that decade. For many of those years we were away for days totaling in the 40's, up to 55 in 1994. But it was in the 1960's and 1970's where totals regularly hit in the 50's and 60's. In the current decade we hit the 60's and 70's.

But these are our records as to nights away from home. When we studied in Germany in 1961-2, we were gone most of a year, 308 days to be exact. I always thought the two travel years of our common sabbatical had European trips equal in length, about four months each, but I was wrong. In 1971 we were away 170 days, but in 1972 it was just less than half that, 81.

So, in 2004, adding up South America, Europe, the DR, Minnesota, the Deutschland trip, even one day in Georgia, I have been away 118 days, one day short of 19 weeks. It’s my third longest total of nights away.