Frankfurt Airport

After wandering around the Frankfurt airport looking for information about our connecting flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan (no ‘fense to the Germans but … very user unfriendly airport, Frankfurt is), I’m sitting at our gate looking at the little Russian phrase book I brought with a sinking feeling. All of my cocky plans for becoming fluent during our next flight (based on nothing actually, I’m terrible with languages) are dying a quick death. By no means do I assume that all things relate back to America, but seriously, Russian reads like a practical joke on Americans. Or possibly like military code during wartime. Or like a practical joke masquerading as military code. The Cyrillic alphabet uses some letters that are identical to English letters, but with different pronunciations: “c” is pronounced as an “s”, “p” is pronounced as “r”, “B” is pronounced as “v”, “r” pronounced like “g”, and something that looks like the number “3” that’s pronounced like our “z”. And there are also a bunch of hieroglyphics thrown in for good measure. All the words have about 14 syllables in them and I have to concentrate really hard to even sound out the phonetic pronunciations much less the actual Russian words. I haven’t felt this stupid and clumsy since I clomped around a YMCA gym floor during a ballroom dance experiment. Zac sums it up aptly: “We’re sunk.”

BTW, the gate is filling up with slick, well-dressed people. Zac and I look like Dumpy and Shlumpy compared to the other passengers.

p.s. sara-email zac at his home (comcast) address. thanks (zac)