Thank you

we are nearing the end
I have not entered as much on our blog as I might have liked but we have been busy traveling

I did comment on beer
and food
and the sights of our ever changing scenery

we have been in 14 non English speaking countries ( not including Dubai which we visited twice for hours and never left the airport ( it is now however on my 'life list')

This has created a few problems
the first obviously is communication.

The second more embarassingly is, with my advancing years, my ability to remember a few key and/or polite essential words has almost disappeared.

We have succeeded with sign language, and the variable abilty of our hosts to speak English
Leah and my, French has come in occasionally handy although German would have been much more useful.

Remembering the history ( recent and nor so recent) it is impressive how many languages the locals know and /or understand and how different many of these languages are , plus in the case of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian they use different alphabets

So we haven't understood conversations, TV or the newspaper so much of what we have appreciated is by inference and observation and much may be wrong.

When we found English speaking 'friends' we pumped them for their opinion on a number of subjects- but never enough

We had Lonely Planet Phrase books that were virtually useless- but great for pressing flowers.

for example here is the translation of 'Thank You" in the languages of the countries we visited in order ( including Estonian where we will be in 2 days)

Swahili: Asante sana

Turkish: teşekkür ederim

Greek: σε ευχαριστώ

Bulgarian: благодаря

Romanian: mulţumesc

Serbian: хвала ти

Croatian: hvala ti

Hungarian: köszönöm

Solvak: ďakujem ti

Czech: děkuji ti

Polish: dziękuję

Lithuanian: ačiū

Latvian: paldies

Estonian: tänan


How can I remeber those