Ever thought of your bucket list?

A new topic which has recently come up in society, likely after the Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie, the idea of a personal bucket list, a list of things which you want to do before you die. I don't like thinking of my own mortality but with each passing year, it creeps up ever larger in my head. And I never thought I had a bucket list. If I did, it had rather mundane things on it like what I did today. But who is the judge of bucket list items? Today I checked of one of my bucket list items.

   For many years, after seeing these modes of transportation on the Internet and then seeing them in real life down in The Distillery district of Toronto, I wanted to try one. Then, when I got to Munich, I saw that right across the street from my hotel, there was a shop doing such tours, Segway Tour Munich. I went in and talked to the co-owner, Dagobert Benz and booked a tour. They do tours in German mostly, but they also have some in English. I booked the German tour as it was in the 11am slot, a time when the heat of the day would not yet be peaked. Dagobert reiterated that the tour was in German, but I countered that there would likely be one or two people on the tour who could speak English. I was right !

   The "pre-flight" training video makes the mode of travel look super simple. The very first minutes of training are a little awkward as your means of control is simply your body lean, a strange sensation for making something move. Riding a segway is kind of like being on a pogo stick with flat platforms for your feet. Control is far easier than you would think. Lean forward, you move forward, lean more and you go faster. Lean back, you stop. Lean back even more, you go in reverse. To turn, you just push down on the handle bar of the side you want to turn toward. Push down a little, you turn a little, push lots and you circle right around. You can actually make yourself spin ( no pun ) on the spot by holding down one side of the handle bar. It takes about 2 minutes to get the hang of it and then you're off.
   We were a group of 7 led by Dagobert who guided us on the tour. He would stop at locations of interest to explain, in German, the importance or historical relevance of the spot. My occasionally understood word was not enough to really make sense of what he was saying, but with each passing interval, more members of the group displayed their capability of speaking English and would come to my assistance. Jessica, young German whose mother is a Parisian was assigned to help me with translating but she was shy or else I simply intimidated her. She explained that it was hard to remember all he said and also even harder to find the words in English. At the end of the tour, I gave her a Canadian flag pin in appreciation of her very honorable effort at keeping me tour informed.  
     I think adults are self conscious about their foreign language speaking capability fearing they make themselves look foolish when they make mistakes. I am not quite that bad in being reluctant to speak my Italian but will take stabs at it more and more, ignoring that I may make mistakes. But, I must be coming fairly good at masking my lack of capability with the language as native Italians, once they hear me speak a little, respond with alacrity and complicated replies. I think they assume that if I can say things, I must be able to understand them too. How wrong they are. My speaking is already formed in my head...but hearing them, I am busy translating as they are talking and in seconds, I have to tell them, please slow down, I cant turn the mental pages of my mental Italian-English dictionary fast enough to keep up with them. Oops, got side tracked.

    Anyway, the segway tour was a fun way of touring about 10-15 kms of the the city in three hours with stops for a lunch break, coffee, and bathroom relief. We had no accidents, no near misses and we were gawked at by all kinds of people, though I think segways are more commonly seen in big cities nowadays than a few years back. How technology is changing the world and how fast too !
    And now I can check off another item off of my bucket list. A strange thing about my list is this. I see something or read about something and then I note that it is something I would like to try. So it becomes an item on my bucket list. I think one day soon,  I will actually write down a bucket list on my computer and add to it, modify it from time to time. I never realized that I had such a list in my head but I must have because today, when I finished my segway ride, I felt like I had really accomplished something for myself.
   I have another item on my list now, I know. One day, I want to drive a Ferrari, maybe even on a race track, or a Porsche. I keep hinting to my American friend, Pedro, who is a real Porsche cognoscienti, to keep on the look out for a deal for me. Maybe I can buy one someday and own it for a while? A bucket list item, to be certain.
   Visit back !