Why Vienna?

There are many very good reasons to go to Vienna. The primary purpose of our visit wasn't art, or music, or culture or even another fabulous bike ride. It was to meet Manuela, my German teacher.

The back story. I had been (stubbornly!) trying to learn German on my own. For years. I spent hours on the computer with on-line programs like Rosetta Stone and Duo Lingo. I bought work books. I downloaded and watched movies in German. I even bought and read children's books in German. But regardless of how much vocabulary I learned, how many verbs I conjugated, or how many cases I memorized, the glaring defect in my "I'll do it MY way" approach was that I could neither speak nor understand spoken German.

One afternoon in early March I was particularly frustrated, and I knew I needed help. I needed a teacher. I had started taking piano lessons a few months earlier, and my teacher and I had never been in the same room. It was entirely over Zoom. Hmmmmm. If I could learn to play piano over the internet, maybe.... I googled "native German speaking on-line language teachers" or something to that effect. I got a hit: Verbling. I had never heard of Verbling. I went to the Verbling website, and answered a few basic questions about what I wanted to learn, and why. The screen filled up with photographs of potential matches, and I could click on any of them for a short self-recorded introduction. The real clincher was that I could schedule complementary "demo" lessons with as many potential teachers as I wanted in order to find the right fit.

Manuela was one of the first photos I clicked. She seemed perfect. I scheduled a demo. She was perfect. We were off! We met "face-to-face" over the internet once or twice a week for an hour at a time. She downloaded course books and work books. She gave me home work. I couldn't get enough! And I was actually learning to speak and understand German! It was a foregone conclusion that if Ron and I ever got to Germany, we would find a way to get to Vienna to meet Manuela.

And that is exactly what we did.