urbanSTL

^Nice! Also a subtle little boast there. Nicely done. Entirely jelly!

Stl Mag - A guide to taking a Viking river cruise along the Mississippi from St. Louis

https://www.stlmag.com/culture/travel/a ... ississipp/

I wonder why no river cruise company offers Mississippi River cruises to Europeans in German, French, or Spanish?   I don't know if any Europeans take the English language cruises, but I would have thought there might be a market for Europeans wishing to see more of America than just New York and Miami.  

We only speak Murican in these parts.

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^I understand what you're getting at, so forgive me in advance:

Ich soll mein Frau sagen weil Englisch ist ihre zweite Sprache. (Natürlich sie sprecht nicht Deutsch, aber . . . ich kann nicht alles habben.)

When my wife was working at Lowes they asked her to translate the help wanted ad into Vietnamese. I think they ultimately put it up in English, Spanish, Bosnian, and Vietnamese. You're not wrong Miss Shell. That does go on here. But we can be better, and I think we need to be. Not sure how to do it, mind, apart from stupid jokes in mediocre German. (Or abysmally crappy Vietnamese, but I'm working on it.)

Anyway, I think we can learn. And I think Gary has a point. Germans like their cruises and I bet an occacsional German language cruise could sell well if marketed correctly. (You'd have to market it in Germany, of course. But I expect Viking knows how to do that.) I do run into German speaking tourists around town every now and then even without the non-English cruises. Hardly a careful statistical study, but it happens. And probably Germans aren't the only ones. They're just the ones I run into. For reasons.

Funny enough, I was able to pick up on what you said using my limited German that I remember from high school!

But I think this is just an overall issue with Anglocentrism. We expect others to learn the language when they come here while also expecting tourist places abroad to speak English. It's compulsory in many countries to learn English, but we do a terrible job teaching other languages in our school system. Only two years were required for me in high school, although I decided to take four, and I wasn't required to take a language course for my BFA.

But I definitely think it's a good idea to have cruise options for multiple languages.

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^I think part of that might have to do with spanning a continent and having fifty percent of our nearest neighbors speaking the same language too. It takes some real effort to go somewhere people don't speak the local language. In Europe,  by contrast, it's fairly easy. It's a bit harder in Asia, since borders are a bit less open and there are a couple of continental sized countries, but it's still easier there than here. All that said, even though I speak two languages and usually travel with ready translation assistance into a third I've still run into some real language barriers. (Took me forever to find aspirin the first time I was in Shanghai, and man, did I need some aspirin. Migraines and fourteen hour flights are not a great combination.)

Anyway, glad my German joke wasn't too obnoxious. But in all seriousness, yeah, we need to do a better job. Even if people here never learn a second language as regularly as folks in Europe it'd be good if we could learn to be more linguistically polite. (And learning a second language is supposedly a great way to improve your earnings potential. I'm told. Can't prove it, mind. But I've heard that rumor.)

Both docked today

Nice! 

Was also hoping to get a picture with both boats, but one was gone by the time I got to the river

American Queen Voyages is shutting down. They had some cruises come thru here.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/american- ... huts-down/

Maybe we should market our town as a cruise destination with a bunch of lame anagrams of the letters "Saint Louis".  Sorry.