I was sitting here thinking about my childhood and started reminiscing about the year I spent living in Germany with my family in 1981.
It was only my second time on an airplane, and I was sitting next to my sister and some guy wearing a blue checkered shirt (it's strange the little details we remember). The flight was so long, and we flew out of JFK, which was a nightmare. Our flight was delayed for hours, and because we were leaving for a year, it seemed like we had more carry-ons than what would be allowed today. The airports (the larger airports, anyway) used to have these chairs that had TV's attached to them, and for a mere quarter, you could watch about 20 minutes of a television show. It's pretty easy to see the problem with the math here. A normal sitcom runs for 30 minutes, so one quarter isn't enough to watch a full 30 minute show, so you just keep putting quarters in until you run out of money. I was 11 years old at the time, so it wasn't actually my money that was being spent on 20 minute intervals of TV watching.
We landed in Frankfurt (I have no idea what time it was), and while we were waiting for our luggage, I wandered into a magazine store. The Europeans are not as uptight as Americans are about sexuality and naked body parts, and I picked up a magazine that in the states would have been kept behind the counter in black plastic wrap. The clerk started yelling at me in German, so I put the magazine down and hauled ass out of that store pretty quick. I don't think I ever told my parents about that, so if they read this, they may be hearing this story for the first time.
After a two or three hour train ride, we arrived in Stuttgart, and were greeted by Herr Rupp, who drove us to the apartment we would be renting from him for the next year. His family was waiting for us, with apple juice and seltzer, coffee and the yummiest Kuchen (cake) I had ever tasted. At some point I noticed that we didn't have a television, and for a kid who was (still is) a TV -aholic, this was a very dissapointing discovery. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, I suppose. I knew very little German at that time, so I wouldn't have understood what they were saying anyway, but still...NO TV!! What kind of barbarians don't have a television?? LOL
I should have been in the 6th grade while we were in Germany, so my mom and sister decided it would be best to homeschool me for the year. My sister taught me history and social studies, and my mom handled math and science. My dad was busy studying music and traveling to and from Frankfurt to learn from a famous German conductor, so I guess he was off the hook with the whole homeschooling Jennifer idea. I can't remember how long the homeschooling went on, but at some point my parents received a letter from the German government stating that I needed to be in school. My dad asked around to find out what school they should send me to, as my inability to speak German was of some concern, and I was eventually sent to a school that had quite a few children from Greece and Turkey. They did actually speak German and were also in their first year of learning English, but despite the obvious language barrier, we manged just fine, and I ended up making friends with several of the other students. I'm here to tell you, that the best way to learn a foreign language is to be put in a situation where you don't have a choice. I picked up German very quickly and ended up speaking better than anyone else in my family, including my dad, who was our resident German expert.
After a few months at the school with the Greek and Turkish children, I was pulled out of that school and sent to another school that was right next to the church we attended. I honestly can't remember why I switched schools, but I liked my new school much better. I had to walk to school every day, and the biggest problem with my new school is that my walk every morning was uphill. I don't mean a hill here and there...I mean one giant hill from our apartment to the school, and it was not a short walk either. I loved this school, though. I made lots of friends and my German just kept getting better and better.
One of my friends, Alexandra, lived just up the street from me and used to go to a farm every Monday to take care of a pony that was entrusted to her for it's care once a week. She invited me to go with her one time, and I just fell in love with this farm. It was called the "Jugend Farm", which translates simply to "Youth Farm". They had horses, ponies, donkeys and a host of other farm animals. All the animals were cared for by young people from 10 to 17 years old. I went with Alexandra every Monday to take care of a donkey named Senta. The older girls who cared for the horses would sometimes let me ride, which was always the highlight of my day. One day, we went to the farm on a Tuesday, instead of Monday and another girl, who I didn't know, was looking after Senta. I went to Senta's pen and called her over, and this girl got furious and started yelling at me. My German was pretty good at this point, but it was still hard to understand sometimes, especially when someone was yelling at me. Needless to say, that was the last time I ever went to the Jugend Farm. I've never been able to handle being yelled at by anyone, and being yelled at in a different language was extremely unpleasant.
I could probably fill a novel with all the experiences that I had in Germany during this year, but if anybody does actually read any of this, I don't want lose their attention by going on and on for pages, so I have one more story, and then I call it a night.
In our apartment, the sink and shower were in one room and the toilet was in a room by itself. The lock to the room with the sink and shower was kind of tricky sometimes and used to get stuck every now and then. Well, I had just gotten out of the tub and could not get the door open. I started banging on the door, now getting a little nervous, and my mom and sister came and couldn't get the door open from the other side either. This happened to occur on one of the evenings that my dad was in Frankfurt, so it was just me, my mom, and my sister. My mom ran upstairs to get the super, but he wasn't home either and, as it turns out, didn't get home until the following morning. Anyway, I ended up spending the entire night in the bathroom. I slept on a pile of bathrobes and towels, and my mom slid my Conny comic books (German comic books about a girl and her horse) under the door for me to read. The next morning, the super came down and was able to open the door, and I was free! This is one of those stories that isn't funny at the time, but that you can definitely laugh at later. We still talk about the night I got locked in the bathroom and had to sleep there. Thank goodness I didn't need to use the toilet during that time.
So, consider this installment number one about mein Jahr in Deutschland. I have a feeling I'll be writing more about this again.
No comments:
Post a Comment