Our First Night in Germany

I can hardly believe that our time in Germany is over. I think back to our first starry-eyed night when, after a meal of cheese, apples, orange juice, and of course, bread, we eagerly set off on foot to explore our new town. I was delighted to find tiny garden paths spilling over with pink geraniums and red roses, and crumbling barns behind pastel blue and yellow half-timbered houses. An hour later, the evening light was starting to fade as we unlatched the gate and strolled back up the brick driveway leading to our refurbished barn apartment. It wasn't until we reached our front steps that we realized that in our jet-lagged state, neither of us had grabbed the key to the automatically locking door. We were locked out.

We didn't have a cell phone, much less anyone's phone number. Not that it would have helped, since we knew that our landlord, who had the extra key, was out of town for the week. We didn't know where our host, Rachel, lived. It was after 9 pm and we had no idea what to do.

We didn't know, at the time, that most of our immediate neighbors spoke English and that we could have knocked on any one of their doors for help. We also didn't know that our soon-to-be best friends lived right across the river, and we could see their apartment from our front porch. We didn't know that we could have walked to the Italian Eis Cafe down the street, and most likely would have run into someone connected with BFA there. We'd never lived in such an intimate community and didn't know that people were no longer separated into work, neighborhood, or church categories. Instead of working to integrate our lives, it would soon require effort to separate it. We didn't know how immediately known that would make us feel, and how much we would enjoy small town life. But we would learn.

We also didn't know that any one of the people in this wonderful, tight-knit community would have bent over backwards to help us out. We'd never lived in a community quite like it before. After-all, Dayla hadn't yet given us her precious bottle of wrinkle spray from the states, after learning how much I hated to iron; Marcy hadn't given us her electric water kettle so that I could drink the comforts of my tea from home; and Kari and Mike hadn't yet offered to pick us up from the airport on Christmas Eve. We didn't yet know what it was like to receive such bountiful generosity from people who hardly knew us. But we would learn.

We didn't know that had we actually knocked on a German neighbor's door, the fact that we didn't speak German might not have prevented us from communicating. In all likelihood, they probably would have said they spoke, "a little" English, which really means that they spoke English quite proficiently, and if they didn't, charades worked really well, too. But we hadn't yet had to act out bread crumbs at the grocery store, or jump starting a car for the policeman. Like a chocolate-vanilla twist ice cream cone, our interactions with Germans would soon alternate between funny and frustrating many times in the same conversation. We didn't yet know the fun, and the terror of living in a country where we didn't speak the language.  But we would learn.

We also didn't know that despite how great everyone claims German windows are, if they are cracked open at the top, it actually only takes about fifteen minutes of panicky jiggling and wiggling, after you've tied your curtain to the handle and pulled the window shut as far as possible, until the lock pops open and you no longer have to plan on sleeping on your neighbor's trampoline in the rain. But that night, we learned.