Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Ich muss Deutsch lernen... Meaning: I must learn German. Why? Because I need to explore the country where my family comes from, of course. My grandmother speaks fluent German -- in fact, she knew it before she knew English, although she was born in America -- but she never really taught it to her children. So my mother isn't fluent, and of course I barely know three words. Kann ich Deutsch sprechen? Nein.

Of course, regular old German might not even be that helpful in the region my family is from. Apparently there are crazy dialects in southwest Germany, most likely because it's so close to Switzerland, and in Switzerland there are an incredible amount of dialects. German, Italian, French, all muddled up in a million different ways for thousands of years. This poster from the region translates to, "We can do anything. Except [speak] Standard German." Ahh the things you find out from Wikipedia.

That's ok though... Though I'm not fluent in any language besides English, I pick things up easily and I'm very good at distinguishing slight differences in pronunciations, even in languages I don't understand, and German is incredibly close to English. I heard some lovely (and very blonde) German girls talking at an ATM yesterday, and though the word I could most understand was, "Sheisse!" (meaning "shit," of course), I could also make things out like, "My pin number isn't working," or "This machine is so stupid." Mostly because of the frustrated tone, and the fact that pronunciation and grammatical structure are so similar to English, I found I could follow their conversation surprisingly well.

Besides learning the language, I want to go to Germany mostly to explore Berkheim, from where the maternal of my family hails - the Baumanns. The town is located in the Baden-Wurttemberg region. The closest I've ever gotten to it is at the Holocaust Museum -- we found the town on a wall where they list all the German towns and all the names of the Jewish families who were from there. It was terribly haunting and it made my mother cry, even though our immediate family had been gone for years by the time that happened. For her, I think, it was just too close for comfort, since she'd visited there in the '60s.

Anyway, as far as where I'll go when I visit... Everyone, myself included, usually thinks of Munich and Berlin and Hamburg when they think of German cities, but the cities in the Baden region are Mannheim and Heidelberg and Stuttgart and Freiberg...and I will visit them! The Black Forest is also right there, which is supposed to be absolutely beautiful. What's more, Zurich is not too far to the southwest, so I have a plan... Fly to Zurich, travel northwest to Freiberg, explore the Naturpark Sudschwarzwald, head east to Berkheim, find my relatives, stay on Jim's farm, head north to Stuttgart, then north again to Frankfurt. Then I guess I could come home. When will I do this? Not a damn clue. But I have it all planned out on Google Maps.

The funny thing is, I just did a little bit of Googling and I found a site where I can trace my mother's family back, but only on her Irish paternal side, not the German Baumanns. I was able to go all the way back to my great-great-great-great-great grandparents, Mary O'Rourke and Patrick Delaney, both born in Ireland in 1770. Perhaps I should visit Ireland instead...