The Fix

Today I made the kind of linguistic journey you come to accept in Europe. I started out at home in English, spoke French on the first train, and German on the second. In Zürich I encountered Swiss German (yikes!) and had a funny conversation with  a woman in a store about that. Although we determined that we both spoke English, for some reason we had our conversation in High German. Then, more German on the train back (fellow passenger; we were both about to miss our connecting trains but we didn’t! ), gently transitioned back through French  (train conductor, neighbours) to English at home, but later tonight had to call a hotel in Locarno where they spoke Italian to me. I did my best but I don’t know much Italian outside of the kind of phrases you need in a restaurant. Now Markus is watching  a German talk show.