© 2010 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In the first installment, I introduced the general topic and posed some questions to get you in the "What is Normal" mindset. In this part, I'll deal with writing systems. These days, as most of my travel is international the most obvious deviation from my normal routine is being surrounded by written communication in a foreign language, and sometimes with a writing system quite different from my own. [Should that be "different to my own"? British and American English vary.]

I started writing this article in a hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. [And I proofread it in a hotel in Helsinki, Finland, three months later.] Prior to that time, I had been to Sweden once, for three hours one winter's afternoon in Helsingborg after a short ferry ride from Elsinore, Denmark. I know absolutely no Swedish, and have had very little exposure to Swedish people or culture. [I do have some CDs by ABBA and I'm familiar with the Swedish Chef from The Muppets TV show. So that probably qualifies me to be an armchair expert on Sweden on the talk-show circuit.]

From the moment I stepped off the plane at the airport, I saw Swedish writing all around me. Fortunately, some important signs were in English, but as Swedish is a Germanic language—and I have some basic competency in that—I could also understand or figure out some basics. And the fact that quite a few signs used international symbols for things like toilets, money changing, train station, luggage lockers, and such made it all straight forward (unlike when I arrived in Israel [Hebrew] and Jordan [Arabic] last November).

I've been interested in natural languages for many years, and have made a stab at Spanish, German, and Japanese. And I've picked up some basic vocabulary in a few other languages as well. Then I got into formal computer languages, and that led me to formal grammars. Along the way, I worked on specifications for computing environments to support different linguistic and cultural customs. And some years after I started writing for publication, I even managed to get a decent grasp on my first language, English. So let's just say that I'm an occasionally enthusiastic self-taught amateur linguist.

Introduction

To be literate one must be able to read, write, and comprehend what one has read or written. And in the general understanding, this is extended to include numeracy, the ability to understand numbers and basic arithmetic. So when you hear that a person is illiterate that typically means they lack these capabilities. However, they may well be able to speak and comprehend, and even have an extended vocabulary. In short, they aren't stupid! [Unfortunately, here in the US, we've had more than a few instances of professional athletes graduating from a 4-year university and still being illiterate. "How can that happen", you may well ask.]

Fluency has to do with one's command of a language. I've seen references to the idea that being fluent in a language means knowing the basic grammar and having a vocabulary of 2,000 root words. Over the years, I've done my share of learning word lists in several languages, and each time after having learned 10 new ones, I've felt pretty good, until I realized that that was just the tip of the iceberg. While I may know the words for bird and flower, for example, I'm quickly reminded that doesn't help me distinguish a crow from a sparrow, or a rose from a tulip. As a wag once said, "Those foreigners have different words for everything!"

When I started high school in 1965, only the students in the "A" stream (of which I was one) could take a foreign language, and we had to choose from Latin, Latin, or Latin. Yes my friends, Latin was the only choice, apparently because some Education Department bureaucrats had decided South Australia was most vulnerable to attack from the Romans! And boys like me who didn't care for Latin had to take Agricultural Science instead, while the girls' alternative was Drawing. Speaking of Latin, you may have heard of the famous quote attributed to Julius Caesar, Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered); well, the modern-day version is Veni, vidi, Visa (I came, I saw, I shopped).

Here in Fairfax County, Virginia, to graduate high school in the public school system students are required to take one foreign language for three years, or two languages each for two years. Most schools offer Spanish, French, and German. The high school my son attended also offered Japanese, Russian, and Latin. And most American Liberal Arts 4-year colleges require students to take two semesters of a foreign language or to show proof of fluency to get an exemption.

In 1986, an excellent TV series called The Story of English was aired here in the US. It showed the evolution and distribution of the language as the British Empire expanded around the world. One aspect that I found most amusing was that in more than a few interviews subtitles were added so viewers had a chance of actually understanding what was being said. They may have been speaking in their normal form of English, but it certainly wasn't mine.

Let's move on now to how the written word is actually written.

Alphabet Soup

Simply stated, an alphabet is a set of letters each of which is represented by a distinct symbol. [For the purpose of sorting words alphabetically, the set of letters can have one or more orders; that is, collating sequences.] As I'm writing this in English, I'll use that language to start my discussion. English has 26 letters, which come in two flavors, lower- and uppercase. [Follow the lowercase link to see why they have these names. In Australia, I learned them as small and capital letters, respectively.] Not all alphabets have more than one case. And not all letters in one case have a corresponding letter in the other case (the lowercase ß in German being one such example). And to make it a bit more interesting there is an artificial third case, title case (or letter case). This comes into play when typesetting headings and titles in publications.

For most people using an alphabet, they think of it as the alphabet, not as an alphabet. However, numerous alphabets are in use. For example, the Greek alphabet has 24 letters and two cases. The Classical Latin alphabet had 23 letters (that from modern English without J, V, and W, and with U written as V) and two cases. [Nowadays, Latin alphabet is used for any alphabet derived directly from Latin, so the English, Swedish, and Spanish alphabets, for example, are Latin alphabets.] The modern Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters and two cases. [Initially, the EU had two official alphabets, Latin and Greek, and if you look at any Euro paper money, you will see the words "EURO" (Latin) and "ΕΥΡΩ" (Greek) printed on them. However, now that Bulgaria has been admitted, Cyrillic has been added as the third official alphabet.]

In English, each vowel and consonant has a different symbol; however, the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets have letters for consonants only. They use other devices to indicate vowel sounds.

Uppercase letters in English are used sparingly, such as at the start of the first word in a sentence, to start proper names, and to write acronyms. However, in German, every noun is written with a leading uppercase letter.

Some alphabets use what look like multiple letters to make a single letter. For example, Spanish has the letters ch and ll. And yes, they do occur in both cases, and if these letters start the first word of a sentence, only the first in each pair is capitalized. Spanish also has rr, but that is really two r's, not a single letter. In Dutch, ij is sometimes considered a single letter; I've certainly seen it as a separate key on a typewriter keyboard.

In the good old days, once we had mastered printing, we moved on to cursive writing. And we were told of the importance of penmanship. However, for many of us, as we grew older, our cursive needed no encryption to keep its meaning secret. Our handwriting bordered on the illegible. The interesting thing now is that with the proliferation of keyboards and keyboard-like interfaces, all electronic communication uses printed letters. As such, does the teaching of cursive still have a place in modern education?

Western European languages have mostly evolved from the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian) or the Germanic languages. As I have a basic grasp of Spanish and German, and a smattering of words in French, I manage to read quite a few signs as I travel through Europe and its former colonies. And having also studied Japanese for a while, I tend not to get bothered by seemingly strange or arbitrary rules. After all, perhaps English is the strange language!

Now what about all those dots, bars, and squiggles that we see written above or below various letters in European alphabets? Take French (please!). It has the same 26 letters as English. However, it adds diacritical marks to aid in pronunciation. These are the acute (´), grave (`), circumflex (ˆ), dieresis (¨), and the cedilla (¸). The main combinations are: à, â, ç, é, è, ê, ë, î, ï, ô, û, ù, ü, and ÿ. The English word facade comes from the French façade; the cedilla clearly tells the reader to pronounce the letter c as an s, but as English has no such marks, that hint has been lost. You simply have to know that is how it's pronounced.

Spanish also uses the acute accent mark on its vowels, as in á, é, í, ó, and ú. Once again, these are not new letters, but marks to tell you where to put the emphasis when pronouncing them. In the absence of these marks, the stress goes on the penultimate syllable. These marks can also be used to give the same-spelled word different meanings. For example, sábana means bed sheet while sabana means savannah. Spanish also uses the dieresis, but only on ü. On the other hand, the word señor (meaning a formal version of mister) is widely known by speakers of other languages; however, ñ is a letter in its own right, not an n with a diacritic. Once again, when it was taken into English, the tilde atop it was lost. However, when English took on the word canyon from the Spanish cañon the letter y was added to retain the original pronunciation.

And what about them there umlauts in German, as in ä, ö, and ü? There is some dispute about whether they are separate letters or simply diacritical marks. In any event, they certainly indicate the pronunciation. My family name is Jaeschke, which when written in German is Jäschke, with the a-umlaut having the e sound in egg. [When I went to register the internet domain name www.Jaeschke.com, a German with the a-umlaut version of the name already owned it, so I went with www.RexJaeschke.com instead. Currently, domain names and email addresses have to be written using the English alphabet, so the German ä gets written as ae.]

Occasionally, in English-language typesetting you will see the dieresis (¨) used with English words. This mark is placed over the second of a pair of adjacent vowels to indicate that those vowels should be pronounced as separate sounds rather than as a diphthong. The most common word having this is naïve. Another one is the word Noël, which means Christmas.

The Norwegians and Danes have 29 letters in their alphabets, with the 26 English ones followed by Æ/æ, Ø/ø, and Å/å. [Two uses of these letters in English publications come to mind: Æsop's Fables and encyclopædia.] However, the Swedes like to be different, so their set of 29 letters ends in Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö. Finnish looks like Swedish with the W/w missing, but its roots are completely different, so the visual similarity is misleading.

Diacritical marks turn out to be very useful, and I can see why people have difficulty in pronouncing many words in English, which has no equivalent visual pronunciation guide. One letter pattern in English that has numerous sounds is ough. There is ow in bough, uu in through, oo in though, au in thought, u in enough, and o in cough (and probably others).

Regarding pronunciation in English, look at the front of a good dictionary to see the list of pronunciation symbols and their sounds. For example, man is pronounced măn and plane is pronounced plān. (The ˘ is a breve and the ˉ is a macron.) There is a whole phonetic alphabet used to describe how letters in other alphabets are pronounced.

Even the sounds of the same letter in the same language can vary from one country to the next. The classic example in English is the letter z, which in the US is pronounced zee while the rest of the world says zed. Of course, with the American version of Sesame Street being exported around the world, that is changing. [By the way, Big Bird is not always yellow. For example, in The Netherlands, he is blue.] Also, the way in which small children are taught their letter values varies between countries. For example, I first learned the short sounds a, b, c, etc. rather than the long names aye, bee, cee, and so on. That is, "the a and the t make at in bat"; not the "aye and the bee make at in bat", which would obviously be quite unhelpful.

Each time I travel to a country that uses an alphabet that is somewhat new to me, I look at a local computer keyboard. At a glance, everything is the same, but on closer inspection, quite a lot is different. As many European keyboards have more than 26 letters and/or keys for diacritical marks, the layout is different and some keys serve more than two purposes. The key sequence I have the most trouble finding and using is that to generate the @ symbol when sending email. And what's that ¤ key for?

At one time, I studied a world atlas in Greek for several hours trying to see what I could figure out about that language. Having taken math and physics classes for some years, I knew most of the Greek letters, but still it was a challenge. Legend has it that Saint Cyril—for whom the Cyrillic alphabet was named—and his brother developed that alphabet from Greek and took it into Bulgaria from where it spread through the eastern Slavic countries on up to Russia. So if you look at the history of those areas you can see where certain influences were made, by the alphabets used in those areas. One unusual example of this is the Serbo-Croatian language. The eastern practitioners wrote it using the Cyrillic alphabet while the western ones wrote it using a Latin alphabet. As a result, you have two groups of people speaking the same language, but neither can read it in the other's written form.

I freely admit to having had almost no interest in history during my school years. [After all, as someone once said, "History is nothing but one damned thing after another."] However, having traveled to some of the places I learned about (the Tower of London, Runnymede, and the Waterloo Battlefield, for example) I started to relate to more and more of it. And now I actually like the subject, and I see its influence on language evolution and distribution.

One thing about other languages that can be confusing is their use of a letter that you have in your own language, but with the two having completely different sounds. One example is the Russian letter C, which is pronounced like the English S (except on Wednesdays between 10 and 11 am, and in leap years). And to make it interesting, the Russian P is like the English R. If you look in photos or films covering the Cold War, the Soviet missiles and space rockets always have the letters CCCP painted on the side. These stand for "Союз Советских Социалистических Республик", which—as I'm sure you all know—in English means, "Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik". Now "Soyuz" is Russian for "Union", so CCCP in Russian became "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR) in English. [Speaking of the Cold War, there is a story about how the US spent $1 million to develop a ballpoint pen that would write in space. The Soviets simply took a pencil!]

Putting the Em·PHA·sis on the Correct Syl·LA·ble

In Part 1, I wrote, "… my Japanese friend Misato would say that not only doesn't she have any lowercase letters—poor Misa—she doesn't have any letters at all or even an alphabet!" So what does she have? As well as Kanji (which we'll discuss later) she has two syllabaries—hiragana and katakana—which together, are referred to as kana.

Where an alphabet has symbols for letters, a syllabary has symbols for syllables. Typically, a syllabary symbol has a vowel sound proceeded by an optional consonant. Some examples in Japanese are ah, kah, sah, go, zo, do, kyu, shu, and ryu. [Note that Tokyo really has only two syllables, to·kyo, not the three that Westerners insist on using, to·ki·yo.] Hiragana and katakana each have 100+ symbols with almost complete overlap. And just about any word can be written in either. Having two systems seems redundant to me, and students of Japanese must learn them both. Loan words from foreign languages are always written in katakana. Hiragana is used to write particles, a curious language element that does not exist in English.

Speaking of loan words, Japanese words all end in a vowel sound or n. So loan words have to fit this model and the syllabic pattern. For example, hotel becomes ho·te·ru, taxi becomes ta·ku·shi, and cheese become chi·zu. [While bread is also an imported idea, it came via the Portuguese, so it finished up as pan, which not only fits the Japanese model, but also comes from the Latin panis.] Rather than invent new words whose meaning is equivalent to foreign words, Japanese takes them literally with slight tweaks to "make them fit". My favorite is a·i·su·ku·ri·mu, icecream. Although these extra vowels allow the words to fit the spelling model when written in Romaji, they are unvoiced, so when spoken, the words sound very much like their English counterparts.

More than 10 years ago, one of my textbooks was translated to Japanese. As my first and last names were of foreign origin, they had to be written in katakana. However, there is no direct way to do that without adding some extra vowels to fit the required syllabic pattern. Here is the cover of that book:

[The same book was also translated to Russian, in which case, my name was written as Рекс Жешке.]

When one starts learning a language, one is told to learn to read and write as well as to speak and listen. In general, that makes sense, but when I started looking at Japanese, the idea of learning 200 kana seemed way too much work. [And that's without learning any of the thousands of Kanji characters!]

Other languages use a syllabary, but the Japanese ones are the most widely used.

Early versions of telex and telegram services were limited to as few as 32 symbols, which for most westerners was sufficient for a single-case version of their alphabets. So, did the Japanese have access to these services?

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (Or is it?)

It turns out that alphabets and syllabaries are latecomers in the written language stakes. At the beginning of the written word, we had pictograms, which used symbols that resembled the physical object for which they stood. [Even today, the Chinese and Japanese symbol for entrance is a mouth.] Of course, we have since invented many words that have no obvious physical representation, although pain might be symbolized by a picture of a dentist! Ideograms were also developed and they are symbols representing an idea or concept.

The best known of these kinds of writing systems are the hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt and the characters used in Chinese, and which were adapted by Japanese (Kanji).

When I was dabbling in Japanese, I did try to learn the Kanji for basic numbers, and I had some success. So even though I could tell how much I was paying when buying from street food stalls, I still had no idea what I was buying. And to make it interesting, many vendors used a combination of Arabic and Japanese digits. For example, 100 would be written with a Kanji 1 followed by two Arabic zeros.

Although I've asked numerous native speakers how they know how to pronounce what I affectionately call "chicken scratchings", I am still none the wiser. In fact, I think they simply have to remember each character. As to how they look up words in a dictionary is a complete mystery to me. And to make it a wee bit challenging, ideogram-based languages seem to have no concept of inter-word spacing, little or no punctuation, and no upper- or lowercase.

To survive in present-day Japan, a student must master the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, have a good grasp of the Kanji ideograms (some with multiple meanings or readings), and then be able to at least read and understand a good deal of English. Many advertising billboards and TV commercials use all four writing systems together! And as for how one enters these kinds of characters on a keyboard simply is fascinating.

Writing Direction

If you are old enough to remember typewriters, you'll recall that large arm on the right that you had to push to the left to return the carriage to the left side and down to start a new line. Of course, with computers this has come to be known as—surprise—a carriage return.

Standards for computer programming languages support the concept of one or more characters that cause a display cursor or printer to advance to the first position of the next line. Of course, for Westerners, that means, "go back to the left side and down". That is, their writing systems are written left-to-right, top-to-bottom. I have no idea why those languages are written that way, but I know of no superior property it provides, so it is no surprise that some writing systems (such as Hebrew and Arabic) go right-to-left, top-to-bottom, and others (such as Chinese and Japanese) go top-to-bottom, right-to-left. I am not aware of any that go bottom-to-top, although that could be perfectly normal, right?

Most writers of Western languages are right-handed, which allows them to read easily what they have written as they write. Not so for lefties, like my son. In many cases, this forces left-handers to hold the pen at a very strange angle. [Speaking of lefties, back in the good old days (the Middle Ages) many people believed that those who wrote with their left hand were possessed by the Devil, and so they were considered evil. The word sinister comes from the Latin word of the same name, and means left-handed. Dextrous comes from the Latin dexteritas, from dexter, which means on the right.]

A few years ago, I made my first visit to the new British Library in London where I discovered its treasure room. [Among other things, it contains the first folio of Shakespeare's complete works, some very ornate Korans, and the lyrics of a well-known Beatle's song scribbled on an airline napkin. I highly recommend a visit if you have the opportunity.] Off in one corner was a room with computer terminals that provided access to a digitized version of one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Now Leonardo (or "Yo Leo", as his close friends addressed him) was never accused of being normal. In this notebook, he wrote left-handed, from right to left, and back to front. That is, you need to look at a mirror image of the writing to see it in its "normal" perspective.

Conclusion

We've barely scratched the surface of this topic. For example, we haven't talked about sorting order in word lists, punctuation, grammar, or even the spoken word, which is a completely new topic of its own. But, of course, we have to leave something for future installments.

I'll leave you with the following anecdote from my travels in South East Asia in July 1979. I was in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, and Superman: The Movie, starring Christopher Reeve, had just been released there. The Malaysians loved movies and the ticket price was cheap, so each showing was packed. However, Malaysia has four official languages: Bahasia Malay, Chinese, Indian, and English. Although the soundtrack was in English, that was not the first language of most patrons, so they read one of the three sets of subtitles that covered the bottom half of the screen. At the same time, they were talking loudly amongst themselves making it difficult for those few of us trying to listen. For them that was normal.

© 2009–2010 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

In the first 10 years of my adult life, I flew on a private or commercial plane fewer than ten times. However, I made up for it in the next 30 years when I added another 1,100 flights; that's a flight every 10 days!

This article describes my flight log and provides some flying-related information. So put your seatbacks in a comfortable position, put your feet up, and come "Fly the Friendly Skies" with me.

My Flight Log

During a vacation in the Caribbean over the Christmas/New Year break of 2008/2009, I dreamed up an idea to use up some of my then copious free time. I would attempt to create a complete record of my commercial flights, the first of which I took in 1971 while living in Adelaide, Australia.

After having set up a spreadsheet and tracking down all the flight details from business and personal records and cancelled passports, I finished that task, and a summary of the results is shown below. I had to make some intelligent guesses for a few things (see "Estimates" below), but I believe that the result is very close to what actually transpired.

The period over which this travel occurred was June 1971 through December 2009 (38 years, 6 months); however, except for four flights all other travel was done between June 1979 and December 2009 (30 years, 6 months), so the latter time frame is used in statistics below.

Some Terminology

A flight is one take-off and its subsequent landing. [What goes up must come down, right?]

A trip is one or more flights taken together as a group with a single purpose, but not necessarily taken on the same day or connecting directly one from the other. (For example, a trip might last weeks and have several flights each on a different day.)

Flying time is the time from pushback from the gate on departure to pull up at the gate on arrival.

Ground time is the time taken getting to an airport before departure of a flight, getting from an airport after arrival of a flight without a connection, waiting at an airport between connecting flights, and moving from one airport in a city to another between connecting flights.

Travel time for a flight (or trip) is the sum of the flying time and ground time for that flight (or trip).

Estimates

Not surprisingly, I didn't have all the flight information available, so in some cases I had to come up with a best estimate. Specifically, for my first five years in the US, I submitted all my expense/travel reports to my employer and my copies were long ago tossed away.

In some cases, I knew the city from which I departed or into which I arrived, but I didn't know the airport. For example, the Washington DC area has three major airports and I've used all of them from time to time. However, the flight distances and times to one or the other would only vary by 20–50 miles and a few minutes flying time, which are insignificant.

For a handful of flights, I know where I started and finished, but not if I connected along the way and if so where I connected. The difference in times would be insignificant, but it might mean the airport usage count is a little off.

For all flights taken prior to 2008, I used an on-line database to find the direct flight distance between any two airports. Of course, when I actually took the flight the distance flown might have varied a bit. In a few cases, I had to estimate the distance from a map as some out-of-the-way airports weren't listed in the database. From 2008 onwards, I have the actual distance flown.

For all flights taken prior to 2008, I used some basic math to figure out the flying time based on the distance and type of aircraft. Ground time involved some guesswork, but I pretty well know how long I take to get to/from airports and many of the flights were repeated numerous times. From 2008 onwards, I have the actual flight times.

Some of the travel days and months are guesses; for example, I know I took a certain trip, but I couldn't pin it down with respect to the actual date.

Non-Goals

For more than a few flights, I don't know the airline or airplane type. I also didn't track my seat number or the class of service, but most of my trips were in Economy Class with more than a few in Business Class and a handful in First Class. I did not track which trips were taken using free or discounted tickets due to Frequent Flyer program participation. I also did not distinguish between business and personal flights although each flight I recorded does have a "purpose" field. In any event, I often extended business trips to include personal days or even weeks. I did not track the price of any tickets.

The Big Numbers

1. Total distance travelled was 1,545,515 miles (2,472,824 kms). (907,700 of these miles have been with United Airlines since they started their Frequent Flyer Program, so I'm well on my way to joining their Million Mile Club.)
2. Total travel time spent was 6,899 hours. This is 862 8-hour days, or 3 years and 4 months, full-time based on a 40-hour workweek, made up from the following two components (which are just about equal): Flying time 3,628 hours, which is 453 8-hour days, or 1 year and 9 months. Ground time 3,271 hours, which is 409 8-hour days, or 1 year and 7 months.
3. Number of countries (or distinct regions) flown into or out of was 42 (Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Czech Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, French Polynesia [Tahiti], Germany, Guatemala, Hong Kong [now a Special Administrative Area of China], Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea [South], Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles [Northern Group: Saba, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin], New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, US Virgin Islands, United Kingdom [Greater London airports only], United States [including Hawaii and Alaska], Uruguay, and Venezuela). [I have been to the following other countries or distinct regions, but got there by car, bus, train, or ferry: Austria, Estonia, Lichtenstein, Macau (then a Portuguese territory; now a Special Administrative Area of China), Russia, Scotland, Sweden, and Wales. I have not been to any country in Africa.]
4. Number of airports into or out of was 146 (60 in the U.S., in 34 states)
5. Number of airlines used was 42 (based in 24 countries)

Flights

1. Total number of flights was 1,134.
2. Average distance/flight was 1,363 miles (2,181 kms).
3. Average flying time/flight was 3:12 hours.
4. With 1,130 flights in 30 years, 6 months, I averaged a flight every 10 days.
5. Busiest year (most flights) was in 1984 when I had 106 flights, in 27 trips, for 31,310 miles (50,096 kms).
6. Busiest year (most distance) was in 2007 when I had 41 flights, in 15 trips, for 109,657 miles (175,451 kms).
7. Shortest flight by flying time was 15 minutes; 31 miles (50 kms), San Francisco, California, to San Jose, California; and 19 miles (30 kms), St. Eustatius, Dutch Antilles, to Saba, Dutch Antilles.
8. Shortest flight by distance was 19 miles, 15 minutes, St. Eustatius, Dutch Antilles, to Saba, Dutch Antilles.
9. Longest flight by flying time was 15:24 hours, 7,787 miles (12,459 kms), Chicago to Hong Kong (there were six movies shown, with snacks between each). We flew north and south only, over the pole then over Russia and China.
10. Longest flight by distance was 7,920 miles (12,672 kms), 13:30 hours, Melbourne, Australia, to Los Angeles.

Trips

1. Total number of trips was 328.
2. Average number of flights/trip was 3.5
3. Fewest flights in a trip was 1.
4. Most flights in a trip was 12. Two trips tied for this. June/July 1979, a one-way trip, when I moved from Adelaide, Australia, to Washington DC. The complete itinerary was Adelaide, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Bombay, Rome, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, and Washington DC That trip involved 12 airlines and 15 airports in 11 countries. (In two cities [London and New York], I departed from airports other than those at which I arrived.) June/July 1985 when I took a vacation to Australia, stopping off on the way out and back. The complete itinerary was Washington DC, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Fiji, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Alice Springs, Adelaide, Melbourne, Tahiti, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. Next best were two trips with 10 flights each: October/November 1991, when I took a vacation in Chile and Argentina that involved hiking in the Patagonia. The complete itinerary was Washington DC, Miami, Santiago, Puerto Mott, Punta Arenas, <by road across South America>, Rio Gallegos, Comodoro, Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Miami, Washington DC. July/August 1997 when I took a vacation to Australia. The complete itinerary was Washington DC, Los Angeles, Auckland, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin, Ayers Rock, Adelaide, Sydney, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
5. Average distance/trip was 4,712 miles (7,539 kms).
6. Average travel time/trip was 21:00 hours with the average flying time/trip being 11:00 hours, and the average ground/trip was 10:00 hours.
7. Longest trip by travel time was 89:45 hours, 24,282 miles (38,851 kms) the second of the 12-flight trips above.
8. The longest trips by distance were 28,266 miles (45,226 kms), 84 hours travel time with 56 hours in the air involving Washington DC, Los Angeles, Sydney, Singapore, Sydney, Gold Coast/Coolangatta, Sydney, San Francisco, and Washington DC. 24,642 miles (39,427 kms), 84 hours travel time with 55 hours in the air involving Washington DC, Los Angeles, Auckland, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin, Ayers Rock, Adelaide, Sydney, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
9. The longest time taken to complete a trip was 7 weeks.

Countries

The country with the most flight arrivals and departures was USA (885 of each), Australia (44 of each), Germany (39 of each), and United Kingdom (19 of each), Canada (17 of each), and Japan (14 of each). (These involve travel between airports within the same country as well as to/from that country.)

Airports

1. Airport with the most flight departures was Washington Dulles International (222) [which is no surprise as I've lived 15 minutes away from it for more than 28 years]; Boston (193); Washington National (101); Bangor (87); Chicago (47), Seattle (36), Frankfurt (34), San Francisco (29).
2. Region with the most flight departures was Washington DC (BWI, DCA, IAD) with 325.
3. Airport with most flight arrivals was Washington Dulles International (222); Boston (193); Bangor (87); Washington National (76); Chicago (46), Seattle (36), Frankfurt (34), San Francisco (28).
4. Region with the most flight arrivals was Washington DC (BWI, DCA, IAD) with 325.
5. Most common flight was Washington National (DCA) to Boston (88 in each direction), Boston to Bangor (86 in each direction)

Airlines

1. Ever since United Airlines put a major hub at my local airport (IAD), they and their Star Alliance partners have been my preferred carrier. I've had 387 flights with United alone.
2. Prior to United, I was a regular passenger with Delta Airlines as they were the only carrier servicing a route I took frequently. I've had 363 flights with them.
3. After that, the numbers drop off dramatically. The next best is Lufthansa with 35 flights.

Luggage

I have never lost any luggage permanently, and I have had luggage go astray only three or four times, which is quite remarkable.

Unlike many frequent fliers, who want to avoid waiting for luggage on arrival I do not try to pack everything into one carry-on bag. In fact, the number of times I've flown without checked baggage would be only two or three. I like to take my time; "It's the journey, not the destination."

Not being a wearer of suits or jackets, I very rarely travel with a garment bag. And when I do, I have to find a way to remind myself that I have an extra piece of luggage hanging in a closet up front.

In March 1988, when I first traveled with a video camera bag, I was not used to having an extra piece of hand luggage. I accidentally left it behind on a mobile lounge that took me to a plane in Florida. Fortunately, I recovered it and all the video it contained from my just-completed vacation.

On more than a few trips, I've traveled with only a backpack.

Runway Designations

I usually sit in a window seat and I like to watch out the window while taxiing on and to or from a runway. Along the way there are signs marked something like 31R/13L, 21R/3L, or 4/22. And if you have listened to air traffic control on an audio headset, you might hear pilots and controllers use these numbers, which designate runways.

To explain their meaning I'll use my local airport, Washington Dulles International (IAD). IAD currently has four runways. Three of them run in a north/south direction and going from west to east they are designated 1L/19R, 1C/19C, and 1R/19L, respectively. The fourth runway runs northwest/southeast and is designated 12/30.

Airport runway numbering uses an international standard. As you may recall from your geometry days there are 360° in a circle, with degrees numbered from due north going in a clockwise direction. Every runway points in a direction—called its heading—that is rounded to the nearest multiple of 10°, so Runway 09 points due east (90°), Runway 18 points due south (180°), Runway 27 points due west (270°), and Runway 36 points due north (360°, not zero). That is, "the runway number is one tenth of the runway centerline's magnetic azimuth, measured clockwise from the magnetic declination." But you already knew that, right?

Of course, a runway can be used in both directions, so when landing from the south on a runway that goes due north, the designation would be Runway 36. When landing on that same runway from the north, the designation would be Runway 18. Runways tend to be built in straight lines, which is very convenient for landing planes! [I just hate it when there's a sharp right turn midway along a runway!] As the angle of a straight line is 180, the two designators for any given runway differ by 180/10, which is 18.

So why do some runways have a letter suffix and others not? Many airports have two or more parallel runways, in which case these all have the same number. To keep them separate when taking-off or landing, the one on the left has an L suffix, the one on the right an R suffix, and the one in between left and right has a C suffix (for Center). IAD has 1L/19R, 1C/19C, and 1R/19L, but the left-most runway is quite new. Prior to that, what is now 1C/19C was called 1L/19R, but with the addition of another runway to the left, what was left became center (except on Thursdays with a full moon in leap years). So when you read a news story about a plane landing on the wrong runway it's likely it landed on L instead of R, or vice versa, as they are going in the same direction and might only be several hundred yards apart. Of course, you know that some airports just absolutely have to have more than three runways in parallel. In such cases, those beyond three are artificially "moved" 10° so they have a different designator. Of course, a runway designator without a letter suffix has no runways parallel to it at that airport.

The designation of a runway can change over time because the magnetic poles drift slowly on the Earth's surface causing the magnetic bearing to change. (Don't you just hate that when that happens?)

English is the language of international aviation and when a runway designator is spoken, all digits and letters are said individually, as in "runway zero six left" and "runway one four right", although a leading zero might be omitted.

The Spelling or Phonetic Alphabet

In this system, each of the 26 English letters is assigned a code word so that combinations of letters can be pronounced and understood by radio or phone, especially when safety is an issue. Here are the code words used in commercial aviation:

Conclusion

The average distance from the surface of the earth to the moon is about 235,000 miles (376,000 km), so I've flown more than the equivalent of three round trips to the moon (or 60 times around the earth at the equator).

Can I have your attention please? We are on approach to Kitty Hawk International Airport, and this is our first time landing a commercial flight. Please stow all your belongings, fasten your seatbelt, put your tray table in its upright position, and say a few "Hail Marys." If we all make it down safely, we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Thank you for flying Wright Brothers Airways.

This is Romeo Echo X-ray signing off.

© 2009 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

It has been my experience that people who travel for pleasure fall into two main camps: tourists and travelers. Tourists tend to have less time and less frequent trips and they don't want to spend time on organizing lots of logistics themselves. They want the security of having their itinerary locked-in in advance. They stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, and go on guided tours. Many want the romance of an international encounter but at arm's length from the locals. Travelers, on the other hand, often take long and frequent trips. They want to "make things up as they go" and might not have any accommodation or travel tickets booked at the destination. They stay with host families. They buy food at bakeries and supermarkets and they picnic in scenic places. They wander the back streets in search of the unexpected opportunity, photo, or personal encounter. To be sure, many people have a leg in both camps and one approach does not fit all circumstances or personalities. Both have their place and their adherents. As for me, I prefer to be a traveler as much as possible.

Many of my trips have involved stays with strangers, most of whom I had contacted in advance—but maybe only one or two days before—through one organization or another. Some hosts were people I met while on the road and others were "friends of friends". Some of my travel diary readers have commented on how exciting it must be to arrive in some far-off place with an as-yet unknown "friend" waiting to meet me and to share hospitality and a cross section of their life and community. And yes, it generally is exciting. Inevitably, I am asked how I organize a home stay and whether I have encountered any problems. And since I also host travelers, I am asked about that too.

What follows are some of my experiences, both as a host and as a traveler. I also offer some advice for anyone considering hosting or traveling in this manner.

Europeans Tête-à-Tête with the Philistine Americans

My first experience in hosting via an organization came through American Host Program (AHP), a group that, unfortunately, is now defunct. During the Cold War, a teacher couple from California was traveling in Europe. They were disturbed at the negative view that many people had of those arrogant war-mongering Americans ("What? Us warmongers?"), so they decided to do something about it. They invited teachers and librarians to come to the US for 30 days and to stay 10 days with each of three families or 15 days with each of two families. Guests had to have reasonable English skills so they could have a prolonged and meaningful exchange with a small cross section of the real America (you know, with people like me, immigrants!). Hosts provided accommodation and meals and were asked to be ambassadors for their country. To be sure, it was a big commitment for both parties, but it was only once a year and it was a great opportunity to have a meaningful exchange and to make lasting friendships.

From 1988 through 2000 Jenny and I hosted 12 sets of guests, 10 of whom were on their own (seven women and three men) and two who brought spouses. They were from Austria (1), Finland (1), France (2), Germany (7), and Sweden (1). Three were born and raised in the former East Germany. As well as hosting them, I have stayed with or visited eight of them at least once and one of them, Astrid, numerous times. She has also visited me again. I keep in touch with four former guests via my trusty and cheap Skype internet phone software.

Peace, Brother!

Seventeen years ago, I read an article in the travel section of the Washington Post newspaper about a couple traveling in Wales with their 3-year-old daughter and staying with host families. The host organization was Servas International. Soon after, Jenny and I joined as both hosts and travelers and three years later, we also became interviewers for new members. [As it happened, our first Servas trip as a family was to Wales where we stayed with three completely different hosts.] Servas has members in more than 60 countries and is a peace-based organization intended to facilitate dialog between people from different countries, regions, or cultures. [I host and stay with members from other parts of the US as well as other countries. After all, the US can be viewed as 50 different countries.]

Most Servas hosts provide accommodations and meals for two days and nights. The rule is that a traveler doesn't just "use" a host for an overnight stay or wear out their welcome over a longer period, although hosts and travelers can agree to other terms. For example, a veterinary surgeon in Mexico offered a month's stay provided guests helped him in his practice. Some hosts offer longer stays if you buy language lessons from them. One man offered a long stay if you worked some hours each day helping him renovate his large villa.

There are also Day Hosts, people who cannot—or chose not to—have people stay overnight; perhaps they live in student dormitories or are priests or nuns. They like to meet guests for coffee or a meal, to take them on a walking tour, or to practice their English. Day Hosts are great! They allow for meaningful contact with little commitment. In either case, travelers arrange directly with hosts based on entries in host books, each of which covers a single- or multiple-country region. Membership runs for a year at a time and each country charges an annual membership fee.

I've stayed with hosts in Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Uruguay, the US, and Wales. [As I write this, I am staying with the second of two hosts in Normandy, France, where I'm spending a 7-day holiday after a business meeting in Paris. The experience has been fantastic, despite the inclement weather, and I'm already planning a return trip; thank you Jean-Claude, Brigitte, and Martine.]

Given the "competition" from internet-based hosting organizations, Servas is looking at going online in some form or another. However, one of its strengths is that membership requires personal references and an interview.

Servas conducts an international conference every few years. Some countries host annual conferences and some local chapters hold regular events. In the Washington DC area, we have a summer picnic and a Christmas party, with occasional functions through the year as members chose to organize them. The idea for these is to allow local members to meet each other in addition to the people from out of town who they host.

Bring out the Best China

My first internet-based hosting experience was with Hospitality Club in 2005. I was planning a vacation to Hong Kong yet there were no overnight Servas hosts there—only Day Hosts. As it happened, Hospitality Club only had Day Hosts too, but I made contact with a number of members living there, and an expatriate American and two young Chinese businesswomen each agreed to meet me. The American took me on a walking tour of the financial district and had a meal with me at an Irish pub where his wife joined us. One Chinese woman took me to a banquet with her extended family. The other took me to a neighborhood restaurant and brought two friends who wanted to practice their English and to pepper me with questions about travel.

Can I Surf Your Couch?

In mid-2008, I was staying with a Servas host in Philadelphia and he introduced me to CouchSurfing (thanks Todd). This internet-based organization is very popular. There are members in pretty much every corner of the planet. Although I have yet to stay with a host—I tried to in Rome, Italy, in May 2009, but without success—I have hosted quite a few members, mostly domestic travelers within the US. One of them finished up living with us for five weeks while he worked on the Obama Presidential campaign, a cause dear to our hearts.

The Second Viking Invasion

Some friends of ours were involved in a Danish program that needed extra hosts one year. Jenny and I were "pressed into service" and discovered that that year's group was made up of retirees from the island of Fyn who were amateur folk dancers. They were traveling around the eastern US having a holiday and performing. We hosted the leader and his wife and had a great experience. (I have stayed with them twice since and met their extended family.) In subsequent years, we hosted other adult groups as well as members of several Danish national youth gymnastics teams.

Konnichiwa and Domo Arigato

In 1999, I read in our local newspaper about a hosting opportunity. A company nearby provided business English lessons and customer service training to employees of foreign companies. Most students were from Japan and their companies sent them for 2–12 weeks. Over the 3-year period before the school's closing Jenny and I hosted 14 Japanese men and woman, most of whom stayed with us for two weeks. The school gave us $120/week towards the cost of meals and we were asked to spend at least an hour a day speaking English with our guests and helping them to use the skills they were learning. We had some great experiences and I visited several of our guests back in Japan. On one memorable occasional at a dinner party we hosted I prompted Harusa to "sing us a song", and without fluster she broke into a Japanese girl-scout campfire song.

Don't Wait for a Knock at Your Door

You don't need to be a member of a hosting organization to host, however; you just need to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. For example, while staying in a youth hostel in New York City I gave my contact information to a German traveler called Frank who was headed toward Washington DC. I invited him to stay, and he did. (Separately, I had also invited a Chinese professor called Frank to stay, so when someone called Frank phoned Jenny to be picked up at the station she looked for Chinese Frank when it was German Frank waiting!) Whenever I meet interesting people on my travels, I hand them a business card. I do so more to keep in touch on a personal level than for possible business connections.

Once, I was waiting at the Toronto airport for a flight that had been delayed by the first snowstorm of the season. I got talking to a young Brazilian mother who was flying home to Rio with her 5-year-old son. We were together more than an hour before our flight was called. We didn't sit together in-flight but I saw her at the airport on arrival. By then she had missed her connection to Brazil and was going to have to spend the night until the next flight 24 hours later. Although she was prepared to deal with that, I told her that in 15 minutes, my wife would pick me up, and we could host the two of them. She hesitated for all of five seconds before accepting. The next day, she gave me a music CD by well-known Brazilian singer and songwriter Tom Jobim. Although it wasn't something I would have bought for myself, I came to really like it and 10 years later I still play it regularly, thinking often about that fortuitous meeting.

I remember well a very nice random act of kindness bestowed on Jenny and me when we traveled to Brussels with our 3-year-old son. We'd ridden a public bus to the Waterloo battlefield and were eating our picnic lunch at the top of the huge earthen memorial. There our son played with a girl about his own age so we got to meet her parents, a Canadian couple posted to their embassy in Brussels for several years. They invited us to ride back to the city with them and to spend the afternoon and an evening meal at their house, after which they'd drop us back at our hotel. We cheerfully accepted and had a very nice time.

Opportunities are all around us; we simply have to recognize and take advantage of them.

Some Host and Traveler Considerations

There are many things for a potential host or traveler to consider. Based on personal experience, these are the main ones I cover when interviewing new members for Servas:

1. Home Access: Should the host give the guest a house key? Some hosts require that a guest leave when the host does—possible early in the morning—which means that the guest typically cannot get back in until the host is back home. In general, this is very inconvenient for the guest. Traveling can be hard work and some days you just want to lie in bed, read a book, and write postcards, do laundry, or rest.
2. Food: Discuss any food restrictions and allergies. Hosts or travelers may be vegetarian or vegan. Don't be shy as a host about asking guests to contribute food or, if you are a guest, to bring food or offer to buy food. Remember, the host is already providing accommodation without charge.
3. Generosity: Hosts are well advised to not say "Make yourself at home" since they have no idea what the guest's home life is like.
4. Helping Out: Good guests offer to prepare food, cook, clean, and help with other household chores without needing to be asked.
5. Phone use: Understand the rules about phone use and the cost of calls.
6. Smoking: Do not violate any smoking rules of the host. [I have heard of a case in which the host said, "You may smoke in my house, but if you do you may not exhale!"]
7. Appropriate Expectations: If a guest wants a choice of food, that's called a restaurant. If they want an en suite bathroom or a private bedroom, that's called a hotel.
8. Computer stuff: Is internet access available and, if so, what are the costs and limits? Travelers often take many digital photos, which fill up memory cards. Offering guests to burn pictures on a CD-ROM or DVD is very thoughtful, but don't be shy about charging for the media you use.
9. Space: Give everyone his or her space. Don't s/mother your guests but don't ignore them either. Don't over plan.
10. Convenience: Discuss things that might be needed unexpectedly such as umbrellas, hats, gloves, water bottles, and picnic equipment.
11. Interaction: Unless it has been pre-arranged otherwise, be prepared to spend some quality time with each other and to have a meaningful exchange. A host stay should be more like a good bed and breakfast experience rather than a cheap hotel visit.

What's the Worst that can Happen?

So what are the risks of inviting strangers into your home? Should you be worried about them stealing all your stuff or running up large telephone bills with international calls? What if they are escaped mental patients who killed their families with an axe?

After 20 years of hosting, I am very happy to report that I have had none of the problems most people think might occur. And, apart from some family photos, home movies, and personal effects, household goods are replaceable. It's just stuff, right? My experience has been that if you are that much in love with your stuff you probably aren't a real traveler. [I met a man who complained he had no shoes until he met a man who had no feet!] As for the escaped mental patient, if he stays at my place he'll simply think I'm a fellow patient. We'd probably get along just fine.

The worst I can report is a lack of synergy, punctuality, or sensitivity. (Fortunately, not all were with the same guest!) In the latter case, Jenny and I hosted a young Russian man who lived three hours away on the mid-Atlantic coast. He was using the program to stay with families on weekends to get to meet Americans and to learn about their culture. However, a few hours after we met him we decided that we needed to have a serious talk with him about his approach. When he didn't understand something or didn't agree with it he expressed very strong opinions about it even saying things like "Why do Americans do such stupid things?" and "We had much better ways of doing that back in Russia." The next day we told him that sooner or later he was going to stay with someone less understanding that us, and they would simply tell him to go back home if he was going to be that ignorant and arrogant, and rightly so. While his intent was good, his execution was seriously flawed.

In this internet age, I have computers and gadgets throughout the house with protected wifi access. However, because my internal network is not secured from one machine to the other (to allow Jenny and me to share files), I don't give open access to my computer systems. If guests have their own laptop, they can "plug in" without breaching my security. Take sensible precautions and you should be fine.

As far as staying with strangers, I have never felt any environment was unsafe or unhealthy. I've had a couple of experiences that made me wonder why the hosts bothered, however.

Conclusion

As with many other aspects of life, problems in hosting can arise from a lack of communication and unreasonable expectations. Most can be avoided with a little planning and some common sense. As a host, ask yourself what you'd reasonably expect as a traveler, and as a traveler ask yourself what you'd reasonably expect as a host. While it's not necessary to be a traveler to be a good host or vice versa, experiencing it from both sides certainly can help. I've had many great experiences from hosting and from being hosted, and I have made some long-term friends. I've really gotten to appreciate that "normal" is relative to the experience of each person even within the same country or region.

Is hosting or traveling for you? Are you more interested in the journey than the destination? Are you more interested in the cultural aspects than the sights? Do you want the challenge of being an unofficial ambassador for your country even if you disagree with your country's policies? (One Mexican host held me personally accountable for much of the illegal immigrant policy that was being enforced in California!)

You never know what new friendship, experience, or adventure is waiting for you around the corner. But don't sit at home and dream about it, go make it happen. Create your own luck. Oh, and beware of hosts and travelers who list "axe murder" under their personal interests!