Caged Animal (Part 2)

"So what?" I asked Scott when he said it was getting close to 1 o'clock. We were on the bus with plans to go to the train station and catch a train to Stuttgart for the day. Stuttgart is the home of Mercedes Benz and it's the biggest city anywhere near us. It's kind of like the Chicago of this area. I was trying my hardest to fight the depression I had felt the day before and thought a day trip to a new place would brighten my spirits.

"So, if we get to Bahnhof (the train station) at 1:30 and catch a train immediately, we won't get to Stuttgart until almost 3:00. A train ticket is kind of a lot of money for only a few hours there."

I sighed, annoyed, "O.K. Fine. You make the plan for the day then." "Why don't we just get off the bus at Marktplatz in Schwabish Gmunde and take Elle to the Vasserspielplatz (water playground)." "That's fine." I shrugged begrudgingly.

Scott has always had a quirk - a quirk he'll deny I'm sure - of giving me the choice for where we should go or what we should eat or what we should do, and then, for some reason, changing the plans anyway. Honestly, I usually find the quirk amusing and laugh at him when he does it, contentedly going along with his alternative plans anyway, but my mood was not good. Because I was feeling so bad, he was the poor soul who took the brunt of it. His changing the plans at the last minute really irked me this time. In fact, in my state, everything about him annoyed me to no end.

The clothes he wore embarrassed me. The noises he made were like nails on a chalkboard. The words he chose, his gait, the way he hung his mouth, the way he chewed, the way he even breathed all made my jaw tense and my skin crawl. The poor guy couldn't do anything right. It was just one of those awful kind of days in my head when I couldn't stand my own husband.

So, of course, I hated his idea but felt powerless to do anything else. I wouldn't go to Stuttgart for the first time on my own, right? We found a cafe with dozens of small round tables and wooden folding chairs outside on the mall. The weather was an absolutely perfect sunny day in the low 70s. We could see the decorative fountain where children played and Elle investigated all the little water gadgets while Scott drank Coke and I had a mineral water.
A stone-throw away sat a circle of vendors selling fresh produce, meat, cheese, bread, fresh flowers and big grilled sausages perched on thick Briegel bread (briegels are unique to this part of Germany; it's a hard salty bread, half pretzel and half bread). We treated ourselves to three of the hot, juicy sausages while Elle tiptoed through the water.

 The Vasserspielplatz was small but quaint and very creative. The kids had to pump the water into the little steel river using different types of pumps. One was a round plunger that Elle could push down repeatedly to force water up into a pool. One had a paddle wheel that turned with the pressure of the flowing water. Her favorite was a wood and metal swing. She had to stand on it and balance as if she were on a surfboard. When she rocked the swing back and forth, the water pump dipped up and down, causing a spurt of water to pop out of the ground in time with her swinging. The harder she pumped the higher the burst of water flew.

Needless to say, this feature attracted most of the other kids as well, so they would come up behind her and wait for her to get off then climb on the swing themselves. She ran to us crying that she couldn't do it anymore because another kid had made her get off and we finally convinced her that if she stood long enough beside the swing, he would soon get off and she would have another turn. While she waited, a sweet little girl maybe 5 years old approached her. She looked straight into Elle's face and smiled. Elle became nervous and walked to another part of the river. The little girl, with curly brown hair and an endless smile skipped behind her.

Elle wasn't sure how to handle the situation. She knew by now that the kids here didn't understand English and she couldn't figure out how to play with someone without being able to give directions. She ran over to us. The little girl, sure enough skipped behind her and fearlessly came right up to our table. She smiled up at me with huge brown eyes. I handed Elle two chocolate tube-biscuits and told Elle to give one to the girl. The girl took it happily and said, "Danke" in the sweetest little chipmunk voice. "Wie heist du?" I asked her her name and I told her, "Das ist Elle." She nodded up and down so fast, her smile permanent, and the two of them galloped back to the water swing as new friends.

 Elle played happily and Scott and I ordered Eis (ice cream). It ended up being a fine day really so we agreed to go to Stuttgart the next day. I was able to relax into the sweetness of the situation and in spite of myself, let my resentment go, but I still couldn't feel genuinely happy or excited. That in itself was enough to depress me more. I kept asking myself why I wasn't happy when I was here having drinks in an outdoor European cafe on a perfect day with my husband and daughter.

The next day we would indeed take the train to Stuttgart, and the tension that had been notting in my stomach would finally release in a spectacular argument with Scott in the middle of the beautiful Schlossplatz (Castle Square).

Caged Animal

For three days I allowed myself to slip into a depression. I lost motivation to do even the smallest routines that I had made since arriving in Germany 2 weeks earlier. I didn't have the energy to jog. I didn't see the point in listening to my daily German lesson. As much as I learned to say, it didn't help in understanding the quick-speaking locals, and I didn't really have anyone to talk to anyway. I stopped having my evening glass of wine on the balcony, worried that the alcohol would make me only more depressed. I had to swallow a disappointing truth about myself; somehow I only existed through other peoples' eyes, and without any people here from whom to reflect, I felt like nothing.

To make things worse, I felt bad about little Elle having only imaginary friends to play with. I kept thinking of something my friend Sue from America had told me one day as we left a play group at her house. "The best gift you can give your child is a sibling." I beat myself up now for not giving Elle that precious gift when I had the chance.

It was during this 3 day span that Scott returned from work one day excited to tell me he had met another visiting professor from America. He had invited him to join us for dinner the following night and asked me if I preferred to cook dinner or go to the one restaurant in town, which he had dubbed Mario's. I couldn't help but be excited as well. I was so hungry to socialize and I wanted to return to Mario's to see Annamarie and Mario again.

When we arrived at the Italian restaurant, Annamarie had not yet started her shift so we ordered from a young waiter who we later found out was Mario's son. When we ordered milk for Elle, he returned with warmed milk. We remembered then that Annamarie had asked on our first visit if the milk should be warm or cold, and that the owner of a Turkish food stand we visited the week before had insisted that the juice in the refrigerator was too cold for Elle. We corrected him, requesting specifically kalt milche and made a mental note that small German children probably drank their beverages warm so we would have to specify from now on when we ordered milk for Elle. We ordered beers for Scott, Ryan and me.

 Ryan was from New York state and had been in Germany teaching English Literature for at least a year. He was a lanky 27 year-old with spiraled shoulder length hair and a short forehead. While we drank and ate, he told us about his time in German and my interest was piqued when he mentioned a book he was writing. He said he was finishing his fifth draft and getting ready to search for an agent. After grilling him mercilessly about the setting, plot and characters in his novel, I asked if he wanted to hear the idea I had for a novel I wanted to work on while in Germany.

Scott scoffed, "It's a romance."

 "No, it's not just a romance!" I insisted. "Sure, it has an affair in it but there's much more to it than that."

 Ryan said he wanted to hear about it and listened intently while I explained the plot line of the novel. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but until this moment, hadn't even thought of starting work on it. If this 27 year-old had finished a FIFTH DRAFT of his novel, I thought to myself, there was no reason I couldn't at least finish one draft of SOMETHING!

 "The premise is based on something that happened to us in real life. See, when we told Scott's parents that we were coming to live here, they told us that they had lived in Germany when they first married. They'd stayed for a full year in 1955, and in fact, his mother kept a travel journal. She gave me that journal to look through."

Ryan nodded and I continued to tell him my idea to fictionalize from that point on, so the daughter-in-law reads the journal only to infer some secrets about her husband's family from the journal. While struggling with the decision to tell her husband what she has uncovered about his past, she also discovers some truths about her own relationship with her husband. As I rambled on, I became more animated and excited, not only by the book idea, but for the mere chance to talk to someone besides Scott and Elle. I shared the twists and and turns of the plot and the surprises along the way while Ryan nodded approval and Scott rolled his eyes, probably embarrassed by my enthusiasm.

"Anyway," I continued, "Most of the book will actually be a flashback to 1955 Stuttgart through the journal, so I figure while I'm here I can do some research and interviews about the 50s in Germany and start a first draft." I searched his face anxiously for a reaction. "What do you think?"

"Do it! It sounds like something people would want to read." Ryan diplomatically encouraged me.

By this time, Annamarie had arrived and came over to us to welcome us back. She rubbed my shoulder and back familiarly and I savored the touch. Mario peeked his head out of the kitchen to wave to us as well. After two beers, I was feeling relaxed and at peace. I told the guys how good it felt just to drink a little too much and hang out. I told Ryan he would have to take me out on the town drinking some night to let loose. Scott told him I was a "caged animal!"

Before we left, I walked toward the bar to give Mario a quick hug. Honestly, he and Annamarie were the closest thing we had to friends so far, so I wanted to take advantage of any camaraderie I could find. When I approached him, he kissed both of my cheeks, and pulled me in for the hug. He was about equal to me in height, so it was an effortless embrace. His hand rested on the small of my back. When I pulled away and turned to leave, he kept his hand in the same place, causing him to feel my entire circumference, from back to waist, from waist to stomach. I smirked to myself, those Italians are smooth.

 I skipped out to catch up with Scott, Ryan and Elle. "Did you see that? He was able to get an all-around feel of my waist and stomach just by keeping his hand still. He's a smooth operator."

Again, Scott scoffed and shook his head, "You know you loved it, Molly!"

 I laughed, "Yeah, I did!"

"See, Ryan, what did I tell you, she's a caged animal!"

Shopping

Within a few days of playing at the park with Nadine and Lisa, our new friends were gone. Nadine and her girlfriends were taking a mini-holiday with their children while their husbands attended a handball match in Stuttgart. Scott had to start working right away so Elle and I were on our own again. We took the bus to Schwabish Gmunde Marktzplaz to go shopping. I had a list of things I wanted to pick up and the shops here are locally owned and specialized, so we would have to stop at several different shops.

 We stopped in the kamera laden first to see if they could fix my camera which had fallen on the floor. A tiny latch holding in the batteries had broken and I thought maybe it could be repaired while we shopped in the square. When I approached the man behind the service desk, I smiled and began, "Ich bin Americaneren..." but before I could even finish getting the word American out, he chuckled good-humoredly, as if it was so obvious that I was American I hadn't needed to say such a thing. I enjoyed his good nature and continued my request in the best German I could muster.

In the end, he told me in a sort of Germenglish he could send the camera out but the little mechanism that was broken was part of the base of the camera so it would cost more to fix than just buying a new camera. I told him I would talk to my husband and return later in the week. I left the store perplexed again by how the people here can identify me so quickly as an American before I even speak...I was wearing inconspicuous leather sandals so it couldn't be the shoes this time. Maybe the backpack?

We continued our errands, stopping at the butcher for meat, the bakery for bread, the fresh market for vegetables and the pharmacy for some antihistamine Scott had requested. The drugstore was a true pharmacy with a tall white counter behind which stood two women wearing white coats. I approached one of the service windows and explained what I needed for "mein Mann's nase" while Elle wandered the store. The pharmacist typed the medicine request into a computer then shuffled into a back room where she found what I needed. When she returned and gave me instructions, I bought the medicine and turned to leave.

Meanwhile, Elle had found a red balloon on the floor and brought it to me asking if she could have it. I turned back to the pharmacist to ask if Elle could have "that" as I pointed at the balloon. The woman looked confused and didn't know any English so I tried to ask again using a different order of the same words. She shrugged. Just then a woman in the next line scanned the situation and her face flashed with comprehension. She told me with her eyes that she could help and turned to the lady behind the counter speaking in rapid German. Again the pharmacist wasn't sure so the other lady behind the counter approached speaking a quick German sentence. The only word I understood was "Nein" so I knelt down to Elle. "Elle, the lady said you can't take this. It's the store's so we have to leave it here." Her little lip pouted out as I pulled the balloon from her grip and turned to leave.

 "No," the woman in line called to me in English, "She said you can have it. She said they don't know where the balloon came from so she can take it." I turned and beamed at the woman in appreciation. "Vielen dank!" I gushed. Then I picked the red balloon up from the floor and handed it Elle. She hugged the balloon to her chest and we walked to the next store.

 Elle had lucked out on our trip into the city. At nearly all the shops, she walked out with something new gifted by the people behind each counter. At the buch laden she had been handed a sucker, at the clothing store, a chocolate. The baker reached over the glass display to give her a tiny toothpick flag. She had even been treated to an impromptu game of peek a boo with a man shopping with his wife.

 That evening, Elle bounced the red ballon around our little kitchen while I made dinner. She squealed and yelled as she punched it into the air and chased it. Soon, she was yelling at an invisible friend she had transported here from America. "KENDALL!" she shouted. "CATCH IT BEFORE IT FALLS!" Then the game changed as she scurried around the room snatching at the ballon. "KENDALL, you can't steal it from me!" I felt for her loneliness, and when Scott got home, he immediately sensed my low mood. "Let's go for a walk after dinner," he suggested. "That will make you feel better."

 Elle borrowed Lisa's tricycle from the garage and we all walked the winding bike path around the village. As we strolled, a dark blanket of clouds enveloped the hills around us. Despite its beauty, I couldn't help but feel its heaviness. I felt the same ominous gathering in my stomach. I feared an oncoming depression if I didn't find someplace where I felt I belonged. Scott reminded me that we had felt the same loneliness when we traveled in the pass and before long I would have tons of friends and too much to do.

New Friends

Elle needed a friend, so I took her by the hand and led her up one flight of stairs to knock on the landlord's apartment door. Armien, an olive-skinned, baby-faced man of 35, with dark eyes and black hair had welcomed us to stop by if ever we needed anything. I had met his wife, Nadine, along with their little daughter Lisa (pronounced Lee-za) very briefly when we arrived a week earlier. When Nadine answered the door, I reintroduced myself and, in German, I haltingly told her we were going to the park and wondered if she and Lisa would like to join us. By then Scott had followed us upstairs and Armien had come to the door. Nadine answered in German that she would come to the park in a few minutes after she changed out of her shorts into jeans. Then she asked, "If it's better for you, I can speak in English if you would like?" We all agreed to meet at the park in about 15 minutes, and to speak English.

At the park, Lisa and Elle played side by side in the stones and took turns pushing each other on the swing while Nadine and I talked about her time in California, and Armien and Scott chattered about places they had traveled. I guessed Nadine was a few years younger than her husband. She was equally fresh-faced with olive skin and round friendly eyes. She reminded me of my friend Lisa from Mothers and More back in Grand Rapids. She had the same natural beauty, the same smooth, mid-length dark brown hair, and had the same happy willingness to answer every one of my questions with informed, but not condescending advice. Nadine told me all about parks, zoos and pools where moms took their kids to play in the area. She invited Elle and me to her apartment to play anytime and suggested that we make plans to go to an amusement park together soon. Right away I felt at ease with her laid back demeanor.

As we all walked back to the apartment, Lisa and Elle held hands. I put an arm around Nadine's shoulder for a quick playful squeeze and said, "Thanks so much. You'll be my new best friend here."

At the park, Nadine had told me of a nice bike path around the village where I could run, so when we got home, I changed into my running clothes. I slid on my running shoes, plugged in my ear buds, and jogged up the road Nadine had mentioned. When I came upon the first left, I turned. It's where she told me I would find the beginning of the path. The street was narrow and looked more like a long driveway, but I continued. Many of the small streets here looked like curvy driveways. I passed a man leading a proud chestnut horse. The man watched me curiously as I passed, and I followed the path away from the house and barn.

Within minutes, the path ended abruptly. I stood looking back and forth, scanning my surroundings. There were green fields everywhere. Nadine said the bike route went in a circle away from town then back to the same path where the playground had been, so I knew I must have turned on the wrong street. In the distance, I spied a man on a bike riding between the green fields. I thought that must be the path I was supposed to be on.

 I really didn't want to run all the way back to the main street, so I decided just to wing it. I sucked in a deep breath and began running through the tall grass toward the right path. The uneven mounds of dirt beneath the grass challenged my ankles, and I focused with each step, willing my feet to stay sturdy. The thick green grass reached past my shins and I said a silent prayer that snakes weren't common at this latitude. I looked behind me and saw I had run about half the distance between the farm and the bike path. When I turned around, a huge rabbit popped up out of the grass, jetting hurriedly through the field, his eyes bulging in fear as he shot away from me. I jumped back startled, then laughed at myself as I continued to run.

 Once I reached the smooth black bike path, I settled into a relaxed jog between the grassy fields. My iPod shuffled to a West African hip life rhythm. Green and green and green stretched out forever all around me, interrupted only by blurry splotches of red roofed villages bunched in the distance. High mountains covered with thick evergreen trees lined the horizon all around, as if the scene were part of a huge bowl. The green fields rolled up and down like the smooth swells in the middle of a great sea.

Neat lines of tall trees, evergreens and apple trees, maples and ash trees, separated some of the rectangular fields from each other. The ones without trees were still distinguishable. Each farmer's individual mowing pattern made their patch of land unique from the next. And although, the whole was green, each shown a subtly different hue in the early evening sun. Bunches of tiny yellow flowers overtook one field, white wildflowers skipped through the next. In another, feathery balls atop spent dandelions swayed in the crisp evening breeze. I thought of a portly grey-haired woman shaking a huge old quilt in the wind. Although the sun sank close to the horizon, it shone brightly. Billowy clouds fluffed the azure sky, casting gigantic shadows across the patchwork.

I inhaled deeply, pulling the beauty and freshness into myself. Cool, crisp evening air filled my nostrils. It smelled like newly mown lawns and freshly spread fertilizer. I lost myself in the moment, forgot the function of running and just glided across the scene.

Ahead of me, the curvy black path peeked between the green swells, leading me. When I reached a sharp turn on the path, I glanced behind me. I jerked my full body around and caught my breath. The sun was gone but its rays had transformed the blue sky into the brightest pink, almost opaque in its depth. I jogged slowly backwards in awe, seeing the fields for the first time again, colored now by the fuchsia light cast from above. I was overwhelmed by the blessedness of this place, the blessedness of this moment, the blessedness of my life. I thanked God for glory and grace. I turned around and ran again.

The fullness of my soul, the renewal of my spirit propelled my feet back toward the tall red clock tower in the center of Bargau.

Throwing Stones

Scott and I sat on a giant, long log, worn smooth from people sitting on it. We watched Elle playing on the kinderspielplatz (playground) beside three German children. Elle climbed the ropes and slid down the slide happily as the other children sat in the tiny stones that made the bed around the play structures. Scott and I cynically wondered if the German children would throw the stones. We smirked, reading each other's thoughts.

Back in America, we had recently had dinner with an American family who had done the same trip we were on now. At the dinner I had asked Megan, the wife and mom of two small daughters about parental etiquette on a playground. "Do the moms speak to the other mothers' children?" I asked. Reflecting on Americans' own sensitivities concerning our children, I didn't want to break any unwritten codes that German parents had about their children. Megan hesitated and tilted her head, furrowing her eyebrows, unsure what exactly I was asking.

 I clarified, "For instance, if children on the playground are doing something...like throwing rocks or some..."

Her chin popped up, understanding the question and she interrupted. She was definitely sure that this would not be a situation in which I would find myself. She declared very adamantly, "German children do NOT throw rocks."

Scott and I glanced at each other, eyebrows raised. I could read his mind. Uh oh, our daughter will be a handful over there if German children don't even THINK of throwing rocks.

So now, we watched the three German children very intently, almost holding our breath with anticipation.

Elle went on jumping from slide to ropes, climbing the ramp of a tall wooden boat. When she got to the deck of the boat, she scanned the playground from above. I noticed the instant she spied the other children as her eyes zeroed in on her next mission. She turned and scurried down the boat ramp, running over to us while pointing at the three kids.

"Can I go play with those kids?" she panted. She was rounding out her u-turn before I could even finish saying yes. I didn't blame her for her excitement. It had been three or four days since she had interacted with any other children and she had already declared that "playing with adults all the time is boring."

 She slowed as she approached the children, two girls and a boy. About 10 feet away, she began walking. At five feet away, she tiptoed. At three feet away, she stopped to observe. With the tiniest movements, she examined the kids, bending over slightly, tilting her head and squinting at their busy hands. Having concluded her study, she inched a little closer to the three, who were hunched in a circle around the mound of stones they were building. I guessed the oldest girl to be 8 and the younger girl and boy at about 6 years-old. No other parents were in sight.

 She took a seat and proceeded to push her own little pile of stones together. Every few seconds, she craned her neck to check if her potential playmates noticed her. In only a few moments, she realized her tactic wasn't working so she galloped back to us hopefully. My parents surely can solve this problem, she must've been thinking.

 "Mommy, I want to play with those kids but they aren't playing with me."

 "Maybe if you go sit closer to them. You could even just sit in their circle with them and start helping them. They'll let you play with them if you do that." I said.

"Noooo," she whined. "I want to ask them if they will play with me."

"O.K., Let me think how you could ask." I ran the few words I had over and over in my head until I came up with the closest request I could construct. "Try saying, 'spielen si mit mir, bitte?'" (Will you play with me please?)

 Elle repeated the phrase back to me three or four times before she had it memorized, then she turned to walk back to the kids. Halfway to them, she lost her nerve. She returned to me begging, "Mom, please tell them for me!"

 I wagged my head back and forth, "No Elle. You have to ask them yourself."

 "Wwwwwwhhhhhhhyyyyy?" she pleaded.

To my surprise, Scott joined in her argument. "Molly, why can't you just go ask them to play with her?"

 It seemed obvious to me, but I answered anyway, "Well, because...they are kids. Elle can just go sit by them and they will let her join them. Plus, they're bigger kids so they don't want to play with some little kid who has her parents ask them to play with her." I coaxed Elle to repeat the phrase I had taught her again and told her to go sit by them and say the phrase. Her bottom lip stuck out, "But maaahhaaam, can you come with me?"

 "No"

"Why not?" Scott asked again. He was getting annoyed with my stubbornness.

"Because Scott, those kids do not want some adult coming over to play with them. If Elle wants to play with other kids, she has to approach them on her own. If I go over there, those kids won't want anything to do with me OR ELLE."

Scott rolled his eyes, "Well I guess we'll have to disagree." He stood up and turned to Elle, "I'll go with you Elle, but you have to say what mama told you to say."

She nodded agreement and led Scott over to the circle by the hand. They stopped just outside the circle. Scott looked huge standing beside Elle, and he must have looked gigantic from the three little children's perspective sitting on the ground. Scott nudged Elle, and she carefully repeated the phrase. The children didn't respond in any way. I knew that if I had heard her tiny request, the kids must have heard her too, so when Scott turned to me with questioning eyes, I shrugged.

 Scott cleared his throat, "Entschuldigung si." (Excuse me) The biggest girl looked up at his towering stature. He nudged Elle and she repeated the phrase. The two girl looked at each other, unsure. Then to all of our horror, the three children turned their backs on Elle and Scott and laughed out loud before returning to their exclusive task.

 Elle and Scott returned to the log, heads hanging. Elle's little lip quivered, then her mouth pursed before tears began pooling in her big brown eyes. "Mommy, I want to play with them but they just ignore me. I even said what you told me to say and they just laughed at me."

I tried my best to comfort her, but remained realistic. "Elle, those are big kids. They don't want to play with you if your dad is right next to you holding your hand. Just try to sit in their circle with them. Then they will let you help them."

She pulled her shoulders back, inhaled a deep breath, wiped her eyes and marched back to them. This girl REALLY wanted to play with other children! She sat only inches outside of their circle this time and began a pile of stones.

Within moments, the two girls opened the circle and scooted on either side of her. "See?" I elbowed Scott. The girls began speaking to Elle, presumably asking her questions in German. Elle stared down at her stone mound. She certainly didn't understand a word they were saying, but she didn't even look up at them. The bigger girl asked a few more questions. Elle continued to ignore them. Then, as quickly as they had approached her, the two girls hopped up, skittered away and sat in a different area of the playground. When they started a new pile of stones, the boy ran over to join them and Elle was left alone again.

"See?!" Scott elbowed me back. "They think she's weird because she won't speak to them. You should just tell them she can't speak German!"

 "We'll have to just disagree, I guess."

 Elle erupted into a fit of crying, sitting hopelessly alone next to her meager pile of stones. After she buried herself in my arms to cry, we rubbed her back and apologized for the situation. Both of us were at a loss on how to help our daughter and hated to see her so rejected. To make it worse, both of us thought the other handled the situation wrong.

 "Elle's tired'" I said. "Let's just go." Feeling isolated and vulnerable, we began walking away from the log bench. Scott put a crying Elle on his shoulders and we shuffled away, defeated.

We turned back to the playground when we heard a peppering of stones against wood. Sure enough, the three children were gleefully throwing handfuls of stones against the side of the wooden boat. Scott and I met gazes. We knew those brats would throw rocks!!!!

For the record, as we walked home, every single passerby smiled and happily said "Hallo," as they do every time we walk through town.

Ich Bin Americaner

We met Sabrina at Marktplatz (Market Square) in Schwabish Gmunde at 10 a.m.. Elle, Scott and I took bus number 1 from our apartment 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) to the city center for a tour of biggest city near Bargau. When we stepped off the bus, the cobblestone roads and smell of horses set the scene. Sabrina waited on a bench, maps and tourist pamphlets in hand, outside a red brick building that houses the city’s information office.

Sabrina is an English student at the University where Scott teaches. She spent a semester at Grand Valley State University last year and volunteered to orient us to the city. She had long, curly brown hair and brown eyes. She was about my size and was dressed similar to how I was dressed, with faded blue jeans and a casual short, sleeved blouse. We both wore sunglasses and minimal makeup.

 Her English sounded perfect to me, although she apologized for her bad grammar. I tried out some of my German on her and she smiled, amused. “How long have you been learning German?” she asked.

 I answered her in German, “Drei Wochen.” (3 weeks)

 Her eyes shot open and she raved, “WOW. Only three weeks! That is really good for only three weeks!” So throughout the day, I tried out German phrases on her when I could and she corrected my grammar issues (The order of their sentences is totally different than English).

When I told her I had to buy some cough medicine for Elle at the pharmacy, she became a teacher and asked how I would ask the pharmacist in German for what I wanted. I strung together the few words and phrases I knew, “Do you have…”, “I would like…” and “medicine” and I added in the prefix they use for anything concerning children “kinder.” When I tried to say what the medicine was for I realized I didn’t know what the word for cough was. She filled in that blank for me and escorted me to the pharmacist, who stood behind a tall counter in a white jacket. She allowed me to make my request and patiently waited for me to figure out what the pharmacist was saying when she responded with a question about the cough. It was a successful trial run. With minimal help from Sabrina, I walked away with cough medicine for Elle (which, by the way, I had already packed to bring to Germany but for some reason didn’t make it through customs).

I was impressed with Sabrina’s guidance as she walked us through the curvy little stone streets in town. She pointed to different storefronts and told us what we would find in each. When we mentioned specific things we needed, she walked us directly to the place we needed and helped us get it.

Scott wanted to get bus cards for us, so Sabrina took us to an office to buy them and patiently translated the whole conversation she had with the lady at the desk to be sure we got the best deal for how often we would be riding the bus.

At that point, I really admired the girl, and thought she seemed much older than her 20-few years. I let her lead the way out of the store and scanned her up and down from behind as she walked in front of me, thinking she was really a very pretty young woman too. That thought jumped involuntarily to English professor Jochen, and I wondered for just a split second whether Sabrina had ever had Jochen…in any sense of the word.

We walked past rows and rows of tables and chairs set in the middle of Marktplatz where locals sat drinking coffee or glass-bottled mineral water and eating pastries. Once in a while, a tiny mini-car maneuvered through the unmarked traffic circle, through pedestrian traffic to get to a road on the opposite side of the square. The warm morning sun shone down on little white umbrellas in the outdoor breakfast nook, walled in by beautiful old buildings now with modern storefronts. We stopped to admire the water fountain at the center of the square.

 “I want to show you the Kaufland.” She told us as she passed a tiny vegetable stand in front of an ancient church tower and meandered down a narrow side path, shaded between two stone buildings. “It’s the closest thing we have to your Meijer and you should be able to buy a lot of things there for your apartment; things that are not very expensive so they won’t last so long, but will work for the few months you are here.”

 While we walked toward the store, which was inside a small shopping mall complete with a bakery, Chinese food restaurant, a Euro-store (just like a dollar store), clothing stores, a hair and nail salon, and an erotic lingerie store, I asked Sabrina a question I had been curious about. “So Sabrina, do you think that people will know we are tourists just by looking at us?”

 Scott answered, “Well, yeah by our language.”

 “No,” I clarified, “Even before we open our mouths, will they be able to tell we are Americans.”

 Before I could get the question out, she was nodding her head up and down, “Yes.”

 I tilted my head and scowled in confusion, “How? I think we look just like everyone else around us.” I looked myself up and down, as well as Scott and Elle. “I think I'm even dressed a lot like you. How can you tell we aren’t German just by our looks?”

 She laughed and scanned us each from head to toe, shaking her head. “I can’t really say how I would know that you’re American, but we can just tell by looking at you.” I don’t know if she was just being polite and didn’t want to tell us what the glaring difference was, but she was 100% positive that we were obvious Americans as we walked through town.

 On the bus ride on the way home, Scott blurted out of nowhere, “It’s our shoes.”

 “What are you talking about?” I asked him, totally out of context.

 “It’s our shoes,” he declared, matter-of-factly. “That’s how they can tell we are Americans. It’s gotta be our shoes.”

 I looked down at my feet. I wore grey New Balance running shoes with sleekly designed, bright pink soles. Elle’s shoes were miniature near-replicas of mine, and Scott wore black basketball shoes with cushioned, visibly shock absorbent bottoms.

“Huh!” I shrugged and stuck my bottom lip out, considering it. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s it.”

 The next time the bus stopped, a woman got on with a Dalmation dog on a leash. It was clearly not a service dog, but not one person batted an eyelash as it sniffed its way down the center aisle. The woman sat in the seat in front of us, beside a young man in his late 20’s. Her dog scooched himself beneath the seat in front of him, happily planting his bottom end on the man’s shoes. Scott and I glanced at each other in disbelief then snapped our heads back to the scene to watch what happened next.

Nothing. Nothing happened. The man didn’t move his feet. The woman didn’t try to move her dog off his feet. He didn’t roll his eyes or ask the woman to get her dog away from him. She didn’t apologize for the dog. She didn’t even look at the man. Apparently, nothing abnormal had just happened at all!

 It reminded me of a story the marine at the airport, Brett told us about his new puppy he bought in Germany. He said he brought it to the vet for his puppy shots and the dog playfully gnawed at the doctor’s hand. The vet immediately pulled her hand back and swung a full-forced backhand across the small dog’s face. The dog squealed and Brett looked shocked. The vet gruffly declared, “GERMAN DOGS DO NOT BITE!”

The bus bounced along the road, curving through the rolling green hills that divide each little village until the next. We were nearing the sign for Bargau village limits when I randomly said, “Hey, Scott, I know something that’s different here than in America.”

“What?” he asked, curious.

 “There’s no roadkill.” He shook his head confidently, “Oh no. I did see roadkill.”

“Really?” I asked. “What was it?”

 “A chicken,” he answered nonchalantly. I laughed hysterically until we reached our stop.

Clock tower

The second thing I noticed when I walked out on our balcony (after the tall church clock tower) was a half dozen small white chickens pecking around in the neighbor's side yard. I hoped there was no rooster. Since we were now 6 hours ahead of Michigan time, I knew I wouldn't be sleeping well until the early hours and I didn't want some screeching cock to wake me at 4 a.m... If there turned out to be a rooster there, I would be forced to close the windows before bed every night.

 I had expected to have problems sleeping the first night so I wasn't angry or frustrated. I just laid there quietly and rested. I heard the bell echo in the clock tower every once in a while, drifting through the damp darkness. It punctuated my thoughts as I relaxed in the quiet room. The window was open to let in the night air, fresh with a hint of horse farm. It didn't take long to figure out the bell's pattern, and it became a little game in my head trying to predict when the next bell would ring and which pattern would chime.

 Every quarter hour, the clock would chime a three-note phrase. At fifteen minutes after, the phrase chimed once. Ding, ding, dong. At half past the hour, it chimed the three-note pattern twice. And at 45 minutes after the hour, the bell finished the phrase three times through. Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong. On the hour, the same phrase chimed four times before the bell announced the hour with deep resonating bongs. BONG, BONG, BONG.

 I had heard four loud bongs and two three-note chimes before I finally dozed off.

 The good news was the small white chickens in the neighbor's side yard do not have a mate. The bad news...the bell pattern in the church tower is interrupted at 6:30 a.m.. It CLANGS and CLONGS - not the deep bongs, not the sweet ding, ding, dongs - incessant CLANG CLONGS, no rhythm or melody, for at least one minute strait. Looks like I will be closing the windows before bed after all.