Monday, December 15, 2014

Europe or Costa Rica

If you had the option and can only pick one, which should it be.  This is a fascinating question to me and the choice isn't for me but still it's interesting.  With Europe, the multicultural experience is life-changing; with Costa Rica, it seems more a life experience as it's for real jungle, for real monkeys and parrots, all that beautiful stuff.  There is probably exceptional snorkeling / diving as well.

While the life experience aspect may seem like amusement, it's an opportunity to see the full range of life.  When life here is usually dogs, horses, and sometimes turtles, such a vista would be magnificent and I suspect life-changing in a way similar to Europe but in a different dimension.

There's a huge advantage to Costa Rica in language as you only need Spanish and English is probably commonly-used anyway.  For Europe, it's best to get a smattering of multiple languages.  The approach I use is to at least learn the words needed for manners (e.g. please, thank you, etc) as that alone gets you halfway to communication.  That covered me for three thousand kilometers so I assure you it works.

Traveling with a translator on a mobile phone or tablet doesn't strike me as very useful and it would be singularly uncool.  It does show a pathetic attempt to be civilized but, geez, it's a damn machine.  Why should not the person say, "Bitte, gibt mir die Machine und ich werde mit ihn reden."  (Please, give me the machine and I will talk with it.)

(Yes, I do still cheat with Google Translate but less and less as time goes by.)

I'm not going to decide anything here as it's not my decision to make but it would be a fascinating one to consider.

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