We have arrived. New York City is just as spectacular as when I came here months ago. They used to call it New Amsterdam, and just as well. Dutch is a little closer to German than English is, which reminds me of what I want to talk to you about today.

You must be asking why I write in English. God, you already know, but Adam? Are you still reading over the shoulder? Good. Adam doesn’t know anything about it and I’ll spare you the labor of telling him. You’re welcome. Here is the story:

When I was a child of 12, my mother and father decided to become travelers, and - thanks to you - they took me with them.

We left Munich in autumn. It was a cloudy day, the fallen, orange leaves turning grey with shadow. Not your most cheerful work, as you should recall, but the smell of change was in the air. Notice how I use the word autumn and not fall. I have a simple reason for this, and that is that we did not fall that particular season. Now, we did not autumn either, but I am not quite sure how one autumns. I digress.

It was a cloudy day, which swiftly devolved into a rainy one, to my father’s great frustration. The deluge got to such a point so that my dear mother had to drape her good blankets over top our luggage, which was carried by hand through the dampened streets. I will never forget the faces of the people around us, peeking out from under tophat and riegelhaube, with the strangest looks of confusion on their faces, as if there were no reason to leave. Each and every Münchner has a sense of loyalty to their city. I am of the opinion that Germans, Münchners or not, should be loyal to Germany and Germany alone. That is not to say a true German should not travel, of course. I am living proof of that.

We took many trains from Munich to Aachen, all of which I can remember clearly now. The train from Mannheim to Mainz ran up the western bank of the Rhine, the dark skies contrasted by the golden brown of the turning hazels and copper red of the beeches. The river was calm but the surface outlined the changing winds, though I could never feel them from inside our cabin. The world churned outside, the treeline swaying noiselessly while my mother and father told of all the places we were soon to see. My father pulled a paper from the waist pocket of his blue janker - I can still remember it - and handed it to me.

The front was a painting of a large clocktower connected to a wide building, all of which towered above a dull blue river. On the top and bottom of the picture were words I did not understand. My father, when asked, told me it was an English postcard, and that the words were English. I’d never seen English before, and so I asked him what it said. In full it read:

“See the heart of the empire! See the capital of the world!”

On the back was more text between blank lines for address and name. These read:

“London, United Kingdom”

And another line:

“From the foot of Big Ben”

Of course, I asked what it meant. Did this Big Ben have hands for feet? From the foot of Big Ben. What a strange thing to say! My father set me straight, however, and told me about London and the Big Ben clock, and all about England, the land of the English and of the English language.

Then and there, he taught me my first piece of English, which I use to this very day:

My name is Otto.

It is true, my name is Otto and we did get to London, after many more trains and even a boat! The rest of the journey, including the country of the French, was not notable enough for entry in this journal, but I shall soon see plenty of France once I join in the war. My hope is that I will see Paris again by this time next year.

I learned my English partly in England through books and now partly in the United States by exposure, and still I struggle. This is good practice but I know that by the end of the war, German will be the language of the world. Were Adam still alive, he would be hearing and speaking German in about a year’s time.

I’ve been on only two boats in my life, once from Dieppe to Portsmouth, and again from Southampton to New York City, and now I will be making the reverse trip. It was my understanding at the time that this course, Southampton to New York, was the course set for the Titanic just the year prior. This next trip will be, I suppose, the return that never came to pass. I will choose to see it as a lucky charm rather than a bad omen, which Adam most certainly would have. That is the difference between us two, and yet the same. I choose to see good omens in everything, and so they are. Adam chose to see bad omens in everything, and so too they were. The world is as you make it. You of all people would know it, my divine audience. I will write on the boat.