Becca Jane St Clair

I’m so excited.

When I was 11 and I walked into my first quarter of German with Frau R (the district I went to divided the year into quarters and we took one quarter each of German, French, and Spanish to give us a “taste” to help us decide what foreign language to study), a GIANT poster of Neuschwanstein was hanging on the wall above the blackboard. I spent a good amount of time that quarter looking up at that poster – if there was a quiz and I needed to think, I’d glance up at it. If Frau R was talking to another student and it wasn’t relevant to German, I’d look up at it. I wound up picking German as my foreign language largely because I wanted to some day visit that castle and be able to speak the language.

When we moved on to HHS, I continued with German. I loved the language, loved the country, loved the food….I didn’t want to stop talking German. And guess what poster was once again, hanging up above the blackboard? Yep. Neuschwanstein. I studied German at HHS all four years, and even took the AP class/test testing myself out of 2 semesters of collegiate level German.

My Love for German didn’t end there. When I went away to college, it was harder to stick with German, as Penn State York didn’t have a German class at my level. But I still loved the language, and read my German books.

When I moved into a dormitory, my uncle gave me a poster that came with a puzzle of his. The puzzle? You guessed it. Neuschwanstein. That poster hung in all of my dorm rooms, reminding me of how much I loved German and wanted to go to Germany. At one point, I had even switched my major into International Business, with the intentions on doing IB/German so I could work in Germany. I didn’t stick with it, but only because once again, being at the “wrong” campus gave me no options for higher language courses, and it would have taken me an additional 2 years to complete my degree.

Tim has always known about my love for Germany, German, and Castles, particularly Neuschwanstein. He wanted to take me there for our honeymoon, but with all the other costs involved with the move (visa, shipping stuff, airfare) we decided to put it off and do it at a later point, hoping for Spring 2010 or even Fall 2010 to be for our anniversary.

When we got Tim’s schedule for 2010, he found out that his summer fortnight was actually in September. Our canal boating plans had to be put on hold until 2011, but we decided we are going to head to Germany instead!

We’re going to mostly be in Baden-Württemberg and Bayern (Bavaria). At this point, I don’t think we have any plans to go farther North, and we’ll have to plan a Northern Germany trip for another year, as there is a TON I want to see in Germany. Of course, a trip to Neuschwanstein is in our plans.

…..Now to brush up on my German, as I haven’t spoken it in…oh….10 years? Tim’s got audio CDs, and I found a book I’d like to order. Hopefully it will all come back!