This is my travel blog for our upcoming trip.
Planning the trip has been a lot of fun as well as challenging. Just imagining and planning places we'll see, where we'll stay, how we'll get there, and putting it all together like a puzzle. Studying the languages of Italian and Croatian and wondering if I'll have the nerve to stick my neck out and start talking to the natives.
When I was a student of Slavic languages many years ago, I hung out with fellow Russian major Mike Long and his girlfriend Sandy Burns, also a Russian major. We called each other by our names translated literally into Russian-- Long (as in not short) in Russian is dlinni (more or less Latinized, the Russian alphabet is Cyrillic), so that's what we called him-- Michael Dlinni. Sandy was Pesotchnaya, of course, sandy, as in beaches, in Russian. That name really had a nice ring to it... and Cofer? Well, Cofer, actually Kofer in German means suitcase, which in Russian is chemodan (ch as in church), so I was Jon Chemodan.Some people knew me only by that name. Hence the name of this blog. Seems appropriate since we'll be visiting a Slavic land. And suitcases do have something to do with traveling. And so to my fellow language students of long ago, thanks for the memories and the inspiration and now I'll probably think of you every time I log in to this blog. Which is not a bad thing.
