It’s very obvious advice, but it can make such a difference while traveling abroad:
LEARN THE LANGUAGE! Or at least a little bit of it.
It is certainly not feasible to master the local tongue in every country you visit, nor is it possible. But
if there is a place where you plan to spend an extended vacation or simply desire to return to numerous times, then it
is a great idea to spend some time mastering the language.
An LA Times article by Susan
Spano explains the best way to go about doing this and the numerous options available. She covers the immersion
method (www.berlitz.us), do-it-yourself (www.assimil.com), CD-ROMs (www.rosettastone.com), and a small selection of foreign universities which teach
their local language to foreigners.
One of the more interesting facts I learned from this article is how the amount of time required for a
“modest level of proficiency” varies according to the difficulty of a language. I always knew this
was the case, but not that it could be quantified. The Defense Language
Institute Foreign Language Center, which trains state department officials, requires 25 weeks for French and
Spanish, 47 weeks for Czech and Russian, and an incredible 63 weeks for Mandarin and Arabic courses.