As a child who hardly left her street growing up, I cannot fathom what it is like for children who have monumental opportunities to travel. What must it feel like to observe, absorb, and become fluent in the atmospheres, customs, and languages of places far from home?

Case in point: my grandchildren are here in Weimar for a good part of the summer. This is not their first trip to Germany, but it is the first time they are old enough for the experiences to stay in their memories.

Since arriving, we have been spending tons of time in the parks. Europeans have amazing parks, mostly with fine playgrounds. So far we’ve frolicked in the Schnecken Spielplatz (snail playground), the Elefant Spielplatz, and one that is cool beyond description whose name I do not know. In our fractured world, it is comforting to watch kids enter a park and, within minutes, be giggling wildly with kids from Germany, Spain and Greece who have become their new “best friends.”

This trip is also the first time they are “getting” it about languages. A bit of German is starting to stick, which means more will come quickly. Most importantly, they are recognizing that people in Europe are multi-lingual—not because they are smarter or study harder (although plenty do!), but because multiple languages are desirable, indeed essential, for survival. When you grow up in Europe bordered by three, four, or five countries with different languages, then you are going to learn at least some of those languages. Beyond that, when you are a refugee, trying to reestablish a life in a country that requires you to make that linguistic transition, then you will learn the new language.

Language is always on my mind, but especially when I work out of the US. To me, all language is a gift, an amazing delight that we are given as humans to craft, shape, and enjoy. Of course, the study of language is serious, but think about it: even with our native languages, we are constantly turning, twisting, trying, beckoning, rejecting, and dancing with its elements.

Grasping a “foreign” language—a language unknown to us—presents a more sophisticated version of the same game. The stakes are higher. Yet, as we gain familiarity, we understand not just the new language better, but ingredients of our own.

Being around different languages is exciting. Two days ago, my seven-year old grandson raced across from the twirl-around-thingy to the bench where I was reading. He was exploding with the realization that the four-year old girl with whom he was spinning spoke three languages! “Is that possible, Grandma? Is it?” Well, as I told him, one parent comes from Country A, another from Country B, and she’s in a German preschool, so yes. Plus, once she starts 1st grade, she will begin a rigorous study of English, so get ready for three to become four. He shook his head in wonder. “I want to do that, grandma” and off he raced.

Get ready, too, for this story. I promise you it is true.

The first time I even heard a “foreign language” spoken in real life, I was 16. I had studied Latin for five years in junior and high school (thank goodness for that!) and was finishing my first year of Spanish. But really, truly, I could not imagine that people spoke other languages.

Then on a rare (trust me) date to a newly opened Chinese restaurant in downtown Roanoke, all that changed dramatically. Up to that point, the Chinese food in my life had come in cans labeled “Chung King.” Just being in the restaurant was exotic.

Half-way through a meal that dazzled me with its flavors, colors, and textures, I heard a furor arising in the kitchen. The waitress and the cook—ostensibly proprietors and likely married—had gotten into an argument. This was no mere disagreement. Stuff was going “crash.” The argument spilled out into the dining area. As I recall, the cook, flashing some kind of kitchen knife, stomped out to the street in anger. Wow, right?

I remember going home and telling my mom about the “wild” thing that had happened . . . and it happened “in real Chinese”! In a curious way, my world shifted at that moment. Maybe I couldn’t understand what those angry people were saying, but they could.

Now, back to Weimar. It’s a happy afternoon. The kids are jumping in an absolutely zero-technology type of kid zone. There are no flashing lights, no computer anything. Nothing is buzzing, and, blissfully, no background rock music blares. Paradise.

Instead, there is a cluster of chutes and ladders, spider-ropes, small trampolines, and rubbery steps to fall up and down on, all encased in woven-rope walls. This place lies on the top floor of the only shopping mall in Weimar’s City Center. It has four stories, is absolutely clean, beautifully decorated, and houses C&A, Aldi’s, two shoe stores, many boutiques, a small bowling alley, a bakery, a Chinese restaurant, an Apothek, and glitzy Saturn, the German-equivalent of Best Buy.

Unlimited playtime here costs 3 euros (about $3.25) per child. Right now, my grandkids have the whole place to themselves. Admission requires just a simple signature and the scribble of an adult’s cell-phone. Thereafter, the adult is free to go home (and hopefully come back!), start shopping, or enjoy Kaffee-und-Kuchen (the ubiquitous coffee and cake tradition that most Germans indulge in around 4 p.m. daily). I’m tucked around the corner (this anxious grandma rarely goes far). I have my rice-cakes, my laptop, and my ever-present thermos of tea with honey.

Best of all, the sun is blazing its light though a huge oval-shaped skylight. It is hard to believe this sparkling building stood in the middle of a U-shaped complex built by Hitler in the late 1930s when he stretched his tentacles to appropriate Weimar as his cultural capital. It was in the forest outside Weimar that he built his first “labor camp”: Buchenwald. To make room for these three massive buildings that scream of dictator-style Neoclassicism, he ordered a swath of historic structures and green area to be stripped. I’ve been told by locals that Hitler intended to extend the complex to create a swastika-like shape from an arial perspective. Fortunately, only three buildings were finished before the war began going badly for the Nazis.

During East German times the buildings either sat empty or became administrative offices. At some point, probably after the Wall fell, one building became a gallery for Ultra-Modern Art (I needn’t point out the irony here). The middle one was revamped into this lovely capitalistic shopping and entertainment space. The third houses all those bureaucratic agencies you wish you never had to mess with.

And so the day goes. It’s getting time to pull the plug on playtime and get the grandkids back to the apartment for dinner. Yes, they are fortunate beyond measure to be here and hopefully they will realize that when they are grown up (ideally speaking three languages!). I am blessed by the opportunity of watching them grow in these experiences. And I’m doubly blessed by those of you who read these essays and travel with me. I keep you in my heart as I put one foot in front of the other.

I fold in my heart, too, memories of my own childhood when a little girl named Carol  knew only her street and the path to the elementary school and branch library.