If you can't be with the one you love, honey............

[DFW]

With all due respect to Stephen Stills, I will be spending this Valentine's Day without the one i love, period.

My wife had to run up to northern Germany again to attend the changing of the guard for her mom's new caregiver. Germany has a huge industry of importing caregivers from Poland, and her mom can no longer live unattended on her own. At 96, she is nearly blind, nearly deaf, and barely mobile. She is stubborn and vain, and will not move out of her house or wear a hearing aid. My wife has engaged an agency that hires trained caregivers from Poland on a rotating basis. She has to drive up there periodically to help the new caregivers adjust to the whims and needs of her mom. Last evening, the new one was supposed to arrive at her mom's home up north. I got a call at our house in the Rheinland about 8 PM from a number in Poland (0048 prefix), so I answered in Polish. Sure enough, it was the new help announcing that she would be delayed in arriving at my mom-in-law's house until 11 PM. Why she called our house in Düsseldorf, I don't know. She had to have had my wife's mobile number. My Polish isn't good, but a combination of my Polish, her rudimentary German, and some Russian thrown in, got everything straight. How she plans to communicate in Polish and her ten words of German with my mom-in-law, I have no idea. Knowledge of German was a requirement for this job, and everyone knew it.

Anyway, all this meant that my wife will have to stay up there until she gets the new woman as comfortable as possible with her new charge, and familiar with whom to call if there there is a problem. Ghostbusters does not have a local chapter. Ergo, my wife won't be home until this evening.

In the meantime, I got a call yesterday informing me that my presence was requested in Sprout City--frequently referred to as Brussels--today, so I had to be off early this morning to Belgium. I have to be back down in Paris again tomorrow, so I will spend the night in Brussels and run down to Paris in the morning before heading back up to Germany in the evening. I may or may not have to make a quick trip over to Utrecht (NL) on Friday, but even if I do, I will be back by evening, and will still have the whole weekend with the one I love, honey.

It's OK, she's worth waiting for (we're still crazy after all these years).

[elleng]

1. Sprout City! LOL!

Thanks for your attention to the care of your mother in law.

You'll be With the one you Love 'soon,' I'm sure.

P.S., thanks for what you do!

[DFW]

2. "Sprout City" is company slang, and it sorta stuck. I think it started with me, but that would have been 30 years ago.

And I don't do anything--my wife does everything!

I'm just along for the ride. (well, mostly, anyway)

[cachukis]

3. Lot going on over there.

[DFW]

4. Never a dull moment

Never a moment is more like it.

A German colleague warned me that retirement only really comes in our line of work when the last nail is hammered into the coffin. While hoping not, he might be more right than wrong.

[cachukis]

5. My grandfather was a supervisor in the Back Bay

Station Post Office and retired to Brant Rock, MA.
One of his employees, a letter carrier, retired to Ocean Bluff. He was forced to retire at 70. He said he kept working because he would die if he stopped. He lasted less than a year.

You sound excited about your world. A wonderful tell.

[DFW]

6. I was just talking about that with a colleague here in Belgium not an hour ago.

He said that from the outside, it must seem like the most glamorous job in the world, weeks filled with Paris, Barcelona, Zürich, Utrecht, Brussels, and all the etc. that gets crammed into one of my months.

He said this as he was depositing me at an outdoor station on a tiny rural train line, where I was looking at standing outside in the cold rain, with a five to ten minute wait for the rickety train to bring me back into Brussels. Five minutes gets very long on such situations, and ten minutes seems four times as long.

Don't get me wrong, there's no way I'd trade my world for a desk job or retirement. But it's far from being all James Bond or Jason Bourne. I get stuck in lines, left in the lurch by defective trains and planes, or left to fend for myself when a sudden strike leaves me without transportation or a hotel room to be found, and I (optimist that I am) didn't even bring a toothbrush. Do the perks outweigh the crap? Of course they do. Otherwise, I wouldn't do it. But when there is a long string of crap, memories of the fun fade for a while. I've been doing this, as of this August, for forty-nine years now. I'm under no illusion that I'll be doing it for fifteen years more, probably not even ten. Would I die if I stop? Hell if I know, but I don't like my prospects if and when the moment comes. I'd love to groom a successor, but the requirements are a little difficult to fulfill. Work permits for both USA and EU, fluency (or at least conversational level) in: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and at least one Scandinavian language. Catalan preferred, but not a requirement. Ability to distinguish genuine and counterfeit money dating back 2500 years a must. Applicants are not lined up around the block, if you know what I mean. It may seem off the wall, but hey, it got me invited to Havana by the Cuban government in 1982, and not too many other US citizens got asked there by Castro's regime in those days. The pay and job security are pretty solid, and the six weeks of paid vacation are expandable if the work gets done, and I'm reachable during vacation.

Yin and Yang. It'll all change one day. I'm in no hurry.

[cachukis]

7. You make my case, with eloquence, no less.

A long time ago, I concluded you didn't have to be happy to enjoy life. All you had to do is appreciate being alive.
I read, in my studies, that boredom was not possible. The mind, when it became tired with one subject, would seek out something else within 3 seconds. That, in itself, is a subject for another time.
When I was nine, I fractured my tibia in a skating accident. Cast, well above the knee.
We lived in the triple decker my grandparents raised their family.
My uncle Bob, SEABEE in the Aleutians in WWII, drove a milk truck for H.P. Hood and Sons out of Charlestown. His route took him near the old homestead. He would come in for a cup of coffee or a lunchbite with my mother once in a while.
One time, aware of my being stuck in the house during the winter, he brought me his Erector Set.
I remember building a drag line in the Green Room, named after Jaqueline Kennedy's penchant for describing rooms in the White House. As I set on the floor assembling the pieces, it dawned on me that all I had to do to escape boredom was to do something. Anything. If I concentrated on finishing a project, I could not be bored.
I have not bee bored since.
When we moved to the suburbs a few years later, I was surprised to find my friend's father, across the street, knitting a sweater on their porch. Didn't seem manly. He said it gave him time to think. It was rote and productive. But he could daydream about what was to come.
Since then, I always have something to come. Even if it is only dinner.

[DFW]

9. When you are married to a gourmet chef

Looking forward to dinner is often a happy prospect!

[Mr.Bill]

8. Before my wife retired as a nurse,

we frequently celebrated many holidays on a day before or after the actual holiday because of her work schedule. No big deal, and sometimes actually better. Restaurants aren't as crowded as they would be on the actual day, especially Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. It always worked out well. Have a great Valentine's Day whenever or however it happens for you.

[DFW]

10. My wife got home later than planned

And it turned out I had more appointments in Belgium than I had when I left this morning (oh, you're in town? In that case), so it's just as well I spent the night here, and won't be going down to Paris until tomorrow morning.

On Tuesday, while still in Germany, I did manage to get in a visit to a local florist, who, for a "modest" fee, managed to have this waiting for my wife when she got home:


From her reaction, I think I can expect a nice welcome when I get home tomorrow night!

[Delmette2.0]

11. Utrecht (NL)...what does NL stand for?

[DFW]

12. Just like each state in the USA has a standard two letter abbreviation

Here in Europe, countries also have a standard abbreviation. They can be one, two, or three letters. Some are obvious, like F for France, or N for Norway. In some cases, they are less obvious. Switzerland is CH, for Confœderatio Helvetica, the Latin name (Helvetic Confederation). Some combinations are necessary to avoid duplication. Since S is for Sweden and F is for France, Finland uses SF, combining the Finnish and Swedish names of the country (Suomi and Finland). Since P is for Portugal, N is for Norway and L is for Luxembourg, NL is used for Nederland ("the Netherlands" ) and PL is used for Poland. Non-European countries that often access Europe by car or truck have their abbreviations, too, such as TR for Turkey or IL for Israel. Ireland uses IRL. Some two letter countries are more obvious, such as BG for Bulgaria or GB for Great Britain. Two or three letters are also used when countries start with the same letters. Slovakia is SK and Slovenia is SLO. Even though Hungary starts with an M in Hungarian, it still uses H, and so Croatia, which starts with an H in Croatian, uses HR. Österreich uses A (for Austria, another Latin name) since most European languages don't have the Ö for Österreich. D, for Deutschland, is used for Germany, which is called by sevaral different names around Europe (Alemania in Spanish, Germania in Italian, Tyskland in the Scandinavian languages, etc.). Denmark, therefore, uses DK. Etc. Etc.

[Delmette2.0]

13. That is impressive and confusing.

I suspected NL was an abbreviation for a country, but I didn't consider language or alphabet differences and historical names. Thank you for explaining this with so many examples.

[DFW]

14. No sweat. It's second nature to me by now.

It’s funny, I often get trashed for saying “the Ukraine,” as if there were some anti-Russian PC rule demanding it. Ukrainian, like all Slavic languages, has no articles. Город (Gorod) therefore translates as city, a city, and the city. Same with украiна. There is no politically correct way to translate something that isn’t there in the first place. It is also why people from places like Russia or Poland have trouble with English. They have no “a” or “the” and they don’t when to use them and when not to. It’s why the depiction of “Natasha” saying, “Look Boris! Is moose and squirrel!” was accurate. If you want to spot a Russian troll, look first for someone who omits articles where they should be, or puts them in where they shouldn't be.

And yet, where we say “the Netherlands,” no one rushes to say that’s politically incorrect even though in the language of the people who live there, it’s just “Nederland,” and not “Het Nederland.” The Germans do say “die Niederlande,” but I don’t hear people whining about German colonial influence. Nor should they. In French, it’s “Les Pays Bas,” and they haven’t had a say in things there since Napoleon was kicked out over 200 years ago.

Slavic trivia: although Kyiv is often considered the cradle of eastern Slavic civilization, since Moscow became the capital, Kyiv and its realm are called Украйна. У (“oo” ) is a preposition usually meaning “out of” or “away from,” and край “krai” means area or district. Sort of a 14th century Slavic version of "flyover country."

[malthaussen]

15. Finian's Rainbow did it first...

-- Mal

[DFW]

16. Wow! Certainly did! Move over, Mr. Stills! n/t