So, I know the whole point of this blog thing is to have interesting, easily digestible chunks. This… isn’t that. I want to write about my first experience traveling abroad and my life at the time. However, I don’t have any of the numerous emails I sent home during that time. So I have nothing of my own writing, and I have very little in the way of photos. I actually had with me only film cameras, from which I now have physical photographs, but no digital images at all. So bear with me as I reminisce and share a very different time in my life. –On second thought, I’ll put this in a few posts. I’m so very verbose.
How it happened
I always wanted to travel. When I started college, I signed up, literally day 1, for the International Honors Program. The requirements to graduate with International Honors were to take a couple of classes specific to this honors program, to take a certain (large) number of course hours of a language, and to spend at least one semester studying abroad. I signed up, thinking that this is the most reasonable way to get the opportunity, as the infrastructure and support is there. I picked German as my language because, of all the places we had available, it was the most central in Europe and I thought I’d have the most access to experiences. Also, I definitely did not want to go somewhere where everyone just speaks English.
My plan was to hopefully do my study abroad in my Junior year. I took honors German classes starting in my sophomore year (after completing the internation honors classes). The honors language class was meant to replace 2 semesters of study, and met for 10 hours/week. My roommate joined in my adventure, as one of the degree requirements was studying a foreign language. We studied together and made flash cards together and labeled all the things in our dorm room. And we made fun of the one super pretentious girl in class whose boyfriend, Falco, was German (you know I could not possibly make that up). Near the end of this semester, I was pulled aside one day. The program we had with Germany was an actual foreign exchange. Meaning we send 2 students to Germany and, in exchange, they send 2 students here. All the students pay their normal tuition and dorm fees, and just switch places. So it was with some dismay that the professor informed me that the girl who had gone this semester, with the agreement to stay for the entire year, was coming home for Christmas and was too homesick and refused to go back. Faced with possibly having to send home the German student, they asked if I’d consider going early… like next semester.
On the spot, I of course said yes. It didn’t need any thinking over. Whatever it took and however I got the opportunity, I wanted to go. Sure, I had only studied the language for 4 months and now needed to go to a small town and take college classes in German. Totally fine. Let’s go.
Getting there
My spring semester in Germany began in March/April, so I spent my December-March working at McDonald’s and saving my pennies. I found a language school in Tübingen and signed up for 1 month of intensive German language training, complete with accommodations with a host family. I remember so many little things about this time. Trying to pay for it was its own challenge. I needed to mail a check to the language school for however many Euros. But the heavily accented lady at the Nashville Regions bank informed me that she would have to ask her manager because she doesn’t know what a “Eurodollar” is. So… thankfully they weren’t on the Deutschmark anymore?
I had never purchased a plane ticket (or flown on a plane), so I had no idea how that worked. I don’t know if expedia or orbitz existed back then (2001/2002), but I went physically into a travel agent’s office and they ordered me a plane ticket. Like a literal, physical plane ticket, round trip, that I had to keep with me and not lose for the entire 5 months or so that I was there. Yay smartphones.
On the day I left, I boarded a plane from Nashville to Memphis, and then from Memphis to Amsterdam. I had my first legal drink, a tiny bottle of (probably terrible) red wine, in international waters on a KLM Royal Dutch flight. I turned 21 in 2003, almost a year after I returned.
I landed in Amsterdam and panicked, thinking: “OMG I don’t know as much German as I thought I did!” Everything is not spelled the way I thought it was and I can’t read things…. and also it’s in Dutch, not in German, get a hold of yourself.
My final flight was from Amsterdam to Stuttgart. And here, I stepped my first steps into Germany. My first flight on a plane. My first passport and passport stamps.
The first month
The first 4 weeks, I spent at the language institute. It was fun, and most of thee other students were not from the US, so we really did have to speak German to communicate. Everyone had a different accent when they spoke, with Italian and Swedish being the most interesting. Those are very musical languages. We all tried spezi together (don’t recommend), and we all learned to say matchbox together (Streichholzschachtel).
On the other hand, I was living with a host family. This was…. challenging. I was much less social and certainly less self-assured at that point in my life. So I wasn’t well equipped to handle my often combative host mother. The first day I was there, she asked “Why didn’t your president sign the treaty on climate change?” This was 2002 and I was no happier about any of that than she was, but she seemed certain that I could explain our election of George W. Bush to her and that I probably agreed with him. Sadly, that was not the case. I was never able to make peace with her, and she seemed to enjoy pushing me.
My first day with my host family, still jet-lagged, my host mother decided to show me the way to school. My school was actually in a different town from where she lived, so each morning, I would need to take the train. But this day, she decided that I would enjoy bicycling the 25km to school. She got out her daughter’s bicycle and took out her own, and we biked from home to the train station so I’d know how to walk there. Then we biked all the way to Tübingen, and then we biked from the train station there to the school. Ringing our little bells and just learning on the fly the rules of the road and the rules of the shared bike path/pedestrian walkway. Just jump right into the deep end. I’m 5’3, and my German host family were all German-sized. So the bike I rode was 2 sizes too large, and it wasn’t a lightweight road bike. That night, I lay awake with my legs aching. My quads seized, locked in agonizing cramps. I was so alone and in so much pain.
It wasn’t all torture, but it was always awkward. My host mother would bring me traditional German things. While I studied in my room at night, she would bring me a Heineken. Room temperature, all the way from the basement. It was sweet, but awkward. I didn’t drink much at home, so I had no tolerance. I couldn’t drink a Heineken and still focus on studying… but I felt obligated to drink it anyway. I don’t think anyone in her house ever drank beer anyway. She would bring me chocolates, and ask me to hide them because her (high-school-aged) children weren’t allowed to have candy. And, like the beers, she kept bringing them. I kept having to eat more chocolate and more beer every day. It wasn’t terrible.
One weekend, the family had plans to visit Paris and, rather than leaving me home for the weekend, they took me along. It was my first time crossing a European border and as we crossed into France at Strassbourg, we stopped at the passport control station. There were to workers there, but no people, as the borders of Europe have been open for quite some time. My host mother insisted that they stamp my passport. The guy dug through a drawer and found an old stamp…. one that didn’t have any dates past 1999. And he stamped my passport with whatever it was set to: 1991.
We visited Paris and I saw the entire city. I traveled with my host family, who travel like starving college students. My host mother packed bread and jam and butter from the hostel’s continental breakfast for all of us to have a picnic lunch. We didn’t really go to restaurants or eat fancy French food. But we saw all the sights and had a lovely weekend.
I bought a beret. And the one treat I requested while walking around was a crepe. Which, when pronounced the way we say it in English, sounds like the German word for cancer, Krebs. So it took some effort to communicate that one.
