My aunt and I are taking a flight soon.

[DFW]

68. I've never been to the Azores and don't speak much Portuguese

My wife and plan to check it out some day--if we live that long! Finland is OK, but a little morose and the language would take a lifetime to learn. Except for Estonian (which is really no more than a dialect of Finnish), it's not like anything. Cool to visit, but I wouldn't be comfortable living there. I speak Swedish, so I could live there, but they love their bureaucracy as much as the Germans do. Not sure I'd want to trade one for the other. Norway is rolling in wealth from its North Sea oil, and the language is practically the same as Swedish. Last time I was there, I just spoke Swedish, they spoke Norwegian back, and no one missed a beat. But my wife knows no one there, and doesn't speak any Scandinavian language (Finnish is not one, just lives in the vicinity). She understands much Dutch, and we have many friends there, so if we were to move, that could be a possibility. But Dutch bureaucracy is not much better than the one in Germany. If we were to move and stay in Europe, it would probably be to Switzerland It's less exciting or intellectually stimulating, but most of the country speaks a Germanic language, and the people in that part of Switzerland all learn "high German (standard Germany version)" in school. I can handle the "Schwyzerdüütsch" versions spoken in Zürich and Basel, although the versions spoken out in the hinterlands baffle even the people in Zürich and Basel.

The fact is that much of the world is following our example of taking something good, and turning it into something bad, and with no real justification for doing so. I remember a joke told when I was in high school (I think Zachary Taylor was president at the time).

At a small offshoot of the Nile in Egypt, a dog was about to cross the small river when a scorpion showed up and asked if he could hitch a ride on the dog's back. The dog said he was scared to do so, in case the scorpion should sting him half way across, and then he'd drown. The scorpion replied that there was no reason for him to do that, since if he did, the scorpion would drown as well.

The dog thought about it, and realized the scorpion was right--the scorpion would drown as well. So he agreed.

Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the dog, and as his nerves began to fail, he asked the scorpion, "why did you do that? Now we'll both die." The scorpion just shrugged and said, "it's the Middle East."