Entry tags:
US visit & 4th St Fantasy
I'm going home for a few weeks in June, and in the middle I'll be off to Minneapolis for 4th St Fantasy. (I'm a very intelligent person and remembered that I have frequent flyer miles. Turns out it's less than 30k miles from Baltimore to Minneapolis and back!) Am I going to see anyone there?
On the way back, I'm stopping over in Reykjavik and spending 3 days there with my sister. It will be interesting. She hasn't travelled internationally since the early 2000s (maybe even pre-9/11), so I'm making all the spreadsheets and packing lists and all that, because a) it's what I do and b) it'll make her feel better. We're staying in a hostel because it's so much less expensive than a hotel, and that was an interesting conversation to have. (We're getting beds in a 6-bed women only room, which has a private bathroom, rather than one on the hall.) I asked her what she wants to do while we're there, and she was like, "I'll just follow your plans." Which from seasoned travellers would irritate me, but she's not a seasoned traveller, so I hope she likes viking museums. (I've also got swim in the public pools/hot springs/whatever on my list, because everyone says that's the thing to do.)
I've got half a mind to brush up my Old Icelandic, which would be about 75% useful for reading and 10% for speaking or listening (hahahahaha sound change), but everyone there speaks English anyway. (It won't be like when I was in Denmark and Sweden last year, when my Duolingo Norwegian got me through reading signs pretty well. OK, that and the fact that I spent 3 years learning dead Germanic languages and the various sound changes that occurred, so I used my German, English, and Norwegian vocabularies to make an educated guess on the Danish or Swedish signs, with reasonable success. But absolutely failed at pronouncing anything properly or understanding anything spoken.)
On the way back, I'm stopping over in Reykjavik and spending 3 days there with my sister. It will be interesting. She hasn't travelled internationally since the early 2000s (maybe even pre-9/11), so I'm making all the spreadsheets and packing lists and all that, because a) it's what I do and b) it'll make her feel better. We're staying in a hostel because it's so much less expensive than a hotel, and that was an interesting conversation to have. (We're getting beds in a 6-bed women only room, which has a private bathroom, rather than one on the hall.) I asked her what she wants to do while we're there, and she was like, "I'll just follow your plans." Which from seasoned travellers would irritate me, but she's not a seasoned traveller, so I hope she likes viking museums. (I've also got swim in the public pools/hot springs/whatever on my list, because everyone says that's the thing to do.)
I've got half a mind to brush up my Old Icelandic, which would be about 75% useful for reading and 10% for speaking or listening (hahahahaha sound change), but everyone there speaks English anyway. (It won't be like when I was in Denmark and Sweden last year, when my Duolingo Norwegian got me through reading signs pretty well. OK, that and the fact that I spent 3 years learning dead Germanic languages and the various sound changes that occurred, so I used my German, English, and Norwegian vocabularies to make an educated guess on the Danish or Swedish signs, with reasonable success. But absolutely failed at pronouncing anything properly or understanding anything spoken.)
