One of the things that I like about traveling is that you never really know whom you might come across and how one’s various interests can come into play at the same time.

Today we were in Gloucester, Massachusetts. We went whale-watching today, searching for the Ishmael within, I suppose. The trip was fun – if a bit cold and windy at times – and we were lucky because the whales were being unseasonably active, which meant many missed photo opportunities.

But the other thing that kept grabbing my attention was what appeared to be a woman with who I figured were her parents that were on board. I could just barely hear them speaking over the din of the boat’s engine, but it did not sound as though they were speaking English. I kept listening but I couldn’t initially make out what language they were speaking.

Then I heard a word that I recognized: zurückfahren. They were speaking German. As we began the return trip to the dock, I stepped outside and saw that the woman was standing outside by herself, so I walked up to her and said hello auf Deutsch. And she answered me. It took several minutes for it to kick in that I was standing on the side of a boat coasting through the Atlantic having a conversation with a woman from Germany in German. I found out that she was from Stuttgart (in southern Germany) and was on vacation with her parents. I told her a little about our class trip, and she was curious about why I had started learning German. We talked until we were both freezing and had to go inside the cabin to warm up.

It seemed a little funny. I am on a trip to study the relevance of historical locations to American literature, and I find myself using German. I don’t guess I was really expecting that kind of opportunity.