Random thoughts and memories

In a magazine, I think it was during the 1980s, there was a questionnaire on American Style. After answering the questions my score was -285. (I cannot remember the exact score.) The interpretation of that score was that I had not grown up in the U.S.A, and I definitely had not grown up speaking English. ( I did grow up in the U.S.A. speaking English.) It is funny to me that people most often say that the language that I speak with a foreign accent is English. I studied Russian years ago, and I remember some of what I learned. I would like to study it again. I was on a bus in Lawrence, Kansas talking to a woman from Russia. I said some of the phrases that I remembered. She commented that I said them without an accent. I was pleasantly surprised when she said this. Often people think that I am German. German is a language that I would like to learn. One of my favorite words is the German word Arschloch. In Prague I was in a music store buying a couple of Czech cds. When I walked up to the cash register the cashier was speaking to the woman in front of me in English. When I stepped up she spoke to me in German. I was able to understand what she was saying because of context and having learned some words and phrases in the language. After I left the store a few people spoke to me in Czech and Slovak.
I was in downtown in Winston-Salem, NC, and there was a group of Latin-American musicians playing awesome music. I got transported by the music. For me everything besides the music almost disappeared. It was a beautiful experience moving to the music ignoring what other people might think.
One of my favorite memories of my trip to Prague happened on the Metro. Three young guys got on the train with a bottle of wine. They sat close to me, and we passed the bottle of wine around and had a good time talking.
When I was in Paris in 1979 several times I was stopped by French people who asked me for directions. Once I was walking past the American Center that had its name in large letters on a wall by the sidewalk. A French guy stopped and asked, "Où est le Centre américain?" I just gestured at the sign.