What to Take

I’m heading out tomorrow on a trip to Germany. I’ve been studying German fairly assiduously since the start of the pandemic and though I grew up in Europe I never went to Germany.

I have some rules about traveling, which overlap a lot with Numenius’s (though not entirely, and in this case we’d have very VERY different itineraries). One is, hand luggage only, whether for a week or a month. Two is, forget cameras; bring minimalist sketching equipment (you know that advice where they tell you to put all the clothes you plan to bring and cut it in half? I had to cut my sketchbooks into a QUARTER). Three, have plenty and diverse things to keep you entertained (I have knitting, audiobooks, and access to whatever films they show us on the 11-hour or so flight in addition to my sketching stuff).

I’ll be seeing friends and exploring different places on my own, all of them in the western third of Germany. An excursion to Bingen to stay in the Benedictine convent for three nights is particularly appealing: I’ve been reading a lot about Hildegard and have to figure out how to say what I’ve learned in German in case a nun sits next to me at breakfast and asks me why I find her so compelling.

I’ll plan to blog here on the usual schedule but it might be brief and very sketch-heavy. Short stay in Copenhagen at the beginning to see some friends from Sweden; hoping for some lingering winter seabirds!