Achtung! Englisch!

As I write this, I am suddenly aware of a household emergency: we are out of Tembadoro 80% dark chocolate bars! Aiee!! This not only indicates a rather embarrassing speed of consumption (these things are by no stretch of the imagination snack-sized), it also, horrifyingly!, means that there remains none left within reach to be eaten. This situation must be remedied, and quickly.

But while I await my dapper young Deutscher to get home so that he can accompany me through the dark to the supermarket (where we'll also pick up an emergency supply of red wine), I'd like to write a little something about my work!

It all happened... amazingly fast. I landed back in Germany on September 26th after the Summer of No Work, and within two weeks, had half a dozen different teaching contract offers. Two more weeks of bureaucratic hilarity ensued (which I won't get into here) and by November 1st, I had a full schedule as a freelance "language trainer".

And frankly, it's just great. As a freelancer, I enjoy a little more structural flexibility than in some other teaching jobs: it takes some finagling -- especially if you get contracts from several companies! -- but with luck, you can set up your schedule to accommodate a whole bunch of different groups at near-ideal times. I also had the tremendous luck to meet just the right people (thanks to Bert's alert eye at the BASF Lernzentrum), and suddenly this whole regional network of English trainers opened up before me, like fudge ripple through a tub of vanilla. Turns out there's actually huge demand in this area for what we offer! Long story short, I now teach Technical English to five different learner groups at BASF; one advanced private lesson per week to a manager at BASF; four hours per week of tutoring in Neustadt; one Advanced English for Business class (twice weekly) at the University of Applied Sciences in Heidelberg; plus two more classes at Heidelberg, this time for the university lecturers who are interested in improving their English.

It's a full schedule -- not to mention a lot of travel -- but great fun. Ludwigshafen is the world headquarters of BASF, and their campus is massive. It takes up 7 km along the Rhein River! Security is also pretty heavy, and so the most I'd ever seen of it before -- aside from the familiar, lovely view known to every Ludwigshafener of slender belching smokestacks in the distance -- was on a short bus tour for visitors.

Now I get up three mornings a week and take my brown suede teaching bag to the tram stop to catch the Strassenbahn. I call it the "BASF Bahn": the thing is practically empty when it shows up at Berliner Platz, before the wool-coat-wearing, briefcase-schlepping crowd trundles in. Then everyone piles out a few minutes later in front of Gate 1 and whips out their IDs to beep at the entrance. It's a weird feeling to realize you are also one of these guys. Almost every morning, I think of that scene in "Fantasia 2000", where a bunch of stylized cartoon commuters clings to the loops hanging from a subway ceiling to the tune of "Rhapsody in Blue". Somewhere, the wild kid in me who decapitated her Barbies is pointing and laughing at my new playing-grown-up game.

I beep my own important-looking ID and clipclop inside (trainers are expected to dress the part, too). But unlike the other clipcloppers, I get to turn and head to the production area; my group contracts are all in one production department.

The inside of the plant looks really cool. Because it's so massive, they have attempted to make it almost like a miniature city, replete with tree-lined streets, sidewalks, and their own bus system and railways. Except the buildings are covered in various colored pipes and gauges and weird apparatuses, and enormous pipes arc over the streets from building to building. It's like being inside a giant motherboard. I walk down the sidewalk, and a voice squawks orders in German over the PA system; mysterious steam emits from mysterious vents; tall, hardhat-wearing, broad-shouldered German men walk by in reflective blue coats and grin at me. I grin back. They're like Lego men! The whole thing is like something out of a movie.

And my groups themselves are so cool. They're technicians, and their laid-back, funny camaraderie is infectious. I especially like some of my beginner groups: they actually have fun learning the language, and use their limited vocabulary in creative ways to poke at each other.

Today, for example, we practiced how to use the English auxiliary verb "to do". The learners were about to begin an exercise, so one announces to the other in loud, deliberate English: "Sven! Do-you-have a sheet of paper?"

Sven replies, equally loudly and deliberately, "Yes, Wolfgang, I do have a sheet of paper!"

"Do you want to give it me?"

"Unfortunately" -- this was one of our vocabulary words -- "I do not have one for you."

In another group, I had them practice interrogative syntax by thinking up and writing down some random questions. Afterward, I instructed them to ask their questions of each other. This seemed to take them by surprise, and so everyone sat up straight to prepare himself for this new exercise. One then turned to his colleague and began his question with, "Dear Franz." Hahaha! They're so playful that I sometimes have trouble keeping us all (including me) on track to finish the day's lesson plan.

Occasionally, I have time afterward to catch my own tall, hardhat-wearing, bestubbled "physics technician" for lunch in the (surprisingly nice) cafeteria. Most of the time, though, it's a quick jog back to the Strassenbahn so that I can get to Heidelberg for my Business English class.

There, my students are all majoring in Sports Management. It's pretty much what it sounds like: the business end of the sports industry. I am, frankly, completely apathetic to organized sports of any kind; but our class concerns itself almost exclusively with language and business in more general terms, and so I don't think my (highly athletic) class has discovered this yet. They're a bit younger than my BASF groups -- mostly your typical university ages, between 19 and 25 -- but just as energetic. Admittedly, it sometimes seems they spend more time in competitions of wit than they actually do with the material, but they're fun and it keeps me on my toes. Besides, when you're reading a text on various types of banking, you've got to liven it up somehow!

All in all, I teach about 18 hours a week -- which means lots and lots of preparation, especially since most of the lessons are completely different from each other and require completely different material. Add the time it takes to just commute from one appointment to another, and I put in a pretty full week. The only negative side to all of this is that I only actually get paid for those 18 hours of teaching; and so although the hourly income seems pretty high, the travel and prep time fully justifies my fee.

Well, that physics technician just got home, and so it's time to go solve this lack of chocolate problem. Hope all's well out there in Januaryland!

Internetless at the End of Times

I'd like to mention that my Dad is hilarious.

First, a little background:

Right about the middle of November, some cable down the street gave up the ghost and we were (gasp!!) without internet at the apartment for THREE. WHOLE. WEEKS. During this time, our bright and helpful internet provider brightly and helpfully promised to send a technician between the hours of x and y; and time and time again, nobody showed up. When we’d call and demand to know where the guy was this time, they’d brightly and concernedly assure us that, according to the technician, he’d “tried to call, but no one answered the phone.”

This is where the usually sweet-voiced and urbane Bert lay ze Schmack daun with logical, methodical Germanness. He pointed out, in his soft urbane voice, that first, no calls had been made to the home phone number provided during the appointed time. Call records also show that neither have any calls been attempted to any of his other numbers, whether cell phone or work (although all numbers have been confirmed as operative). Secondly, two people had been waiting attentively in the place specified – our apartment, at the correct given address – during the entire arranged time period. Thirdly, the technician’s fulfillment of his duty hinged in no way upon calling, anyway: the agreement was for him to simply show up, not to pretend to make non-existent phone calls as an excuse for running out of time for all of that day’s appointments. This was the second time Arcor’s service had been proven unacceptable, and if the situation was not remedied immediately, Bert would pursue legal recourse to end his contract.

Our connection was back up the following day, with an apology and a credit.

Anyway, as soon as Dad heard we were back online, he wrote the following:

While you were gone:

Cold fusion was harnessed, ending our energy problems.
Global warming has been stopped.
The stock market hit 21,300.
A wonderful Independent-Party woman was elected president of the US.
Aliens landed, taught us a lot of cool stuff, and gave rides.
Both cancer and AIDS were cured.
Jesus came back, visited, and it was really nice. No apocalypse.
World peace has been declared.
We spent a wonderful weekend at the Dells.

Wintry wonderings

You know, sometimes I think we humans have really forced ourselves into some unnatural behaviors. For example, aren't mammals supposed to sleep at some point in midday? Don't most mammals do this? Yet because we have mechanically-controlled schedules and a complex societal/economic infrastructure that requires the cooperation of more than just a small tribe of hunters, we can't allow ourselves this. "Thanks for the meeting, guys, sounds pretty interesting. Excuse me now while I sleep through the heat of midday." We allow this to children, but not to stressed-out, responsibility-laden adults. Why else do we all seem to experience that mid-afternoon drag? Some of us turn to snacks for energy, because we can't just lay down and sleep. Let's start a campaign for the good of humanity: More naps! Less sugar!

I think this is also a pretty good explanation for why people get grouchy and tired during winter. The sun is low; daylight is short. For centuries, this was when we -- out of necessity! -- stopped working in the frozen fields, and spent our time inside on small projects, passing the long evenings with stories and community. But now that we're no longer so dependent on daylight to carry out our tasks, we try to keep the same hours and activities that we do during the summer. Doesn't this just somehow seem... wrong? Artificial? In contradiction to our biological rhythms? As a result, we're tired; performance lags; we get cranky. Here I don't recommend that companies change their policies to account for "winter behavior", but maybe it would at least help us all individually to recognize that we're just going to feel a little less than 100% between November and March. Or, well, at least it helps me to recognize this! :)

Then, maybe I'm just particularly sensitive to all this "season" business, anyway. After spending so long in the desert, these irregularities in sunlight availability must be seriously impacting my system. I've never enjoyed spring so much as I did last year: "So that's where we get all these cliches about the Earth 'coming back to life'! It really does stir, like an old man slowly waking up." No wonder our ancestors could so easily personify Nature. Following this, the whole summer was just an orgy of energy and happiness and activity.

Come October, though, I started to noticeably slow down and get more pensive; and then by November, I'm downright sluggish. The effort to try to maintain the activity expectations set up by the summer makes me irritable. I've found myself sliding back into some of the melancholy thoughts I remember from last January: "Am I really making the right decisions, here? Where am I going with work? Why am I still broke? Am I actually a good language trainer, or will I get found out as a fraud at any moment? Why aren't I working on my PhD right now? Where's my family? Do I actually have a 'home' anywhere?"

The realization displeases me -- "I thought I was over this!" -- until I consider the possibility that maybe it's just the time of year for brooding. It would make sense: nothing has actually changed enough to justify my sudden, inexpicable shift in attitude, except the season. Maybe if it snowed here, the landscape would take on that soft, magical look that it lends the Erzgebirge, quieting the harsh lines of the bare tree branches and reflecting some of the low light back up into the sky. But in Ludwigshafen, it only rains, making the highrises uglier, wetter, and darker, and more visible through the naked trees. Ugh. At least the realization that it's probably just the time of year helps quiet inner concerns that I'm actually dissatisfied with my newly-made life.

This is certainly true of the daylight factor. Bert was the one who noticed it: he says I'm a bird. As soon as the sun comes up, "cheepcheepcheep!" I'm energetic and talkative and optimistic. But as soon as the towel is dropped back down over my birdcage, I get quiet and slow-moving again. He's right! Now that I thought to notice it, evidence is everywhere. If I have to get up before sunrise, the world, and my outlook, are gloomy and cranky. The moment it's light outside, I have this personality shift, and feel like a productive, successful contributor to society, in control of my day and my world. Weird. A little unsettling. And yet simultaneously comforting, in that any bouts of moodiness will probably shift back again naturally, come ten o'clock, or springtime.

The sheer realization of this appears to be a good coping strategy. The other two are 1) working out and 2) eating. Yesterday, the former was it: I punished that elliptical machine for an hour, pouring cleansing sweat, bathing my brain in oxygen, clearing out my insides with the simultaneously energizing and comforting rhythm of pounding feet and heart. I love that full-body swing that running/elliptical training facilitates. You feel so powerful and light, reveling in the primal joy of a healthy body's freedom of movement. Today, though, I could hardly muster enough energy to catch my Strassenbahn on time (it was also raining, which might contribute to the Sunlight Theory). When I got home, I proceeded to change into my pajamas, flop down on the couch, and eat the better part of a rather sizable bar of 80% dark chocolate, washed down with most of a bottle of red wine, plus a block of Swiss cheese, for good measure.

The only thing left to do is just hunker down and wait for March!

The clothes make the panhandler

I notice that when I'm dressed for work, people approach me in public significantly more often than when I'm wearing, say, jeans. It can be for various reasons: they ask directions, make casual small talk while waiting for the tram, or offer a religious pamphlet. Mostly, though, it's a request for money. This includes both "normal" panhandlers and schoolkids needing donations for various projects, as well as those guys with clipboards who want you to sign up for this-or-that. Yet take away the slacks and button down shirt, and these same people walk right by me, headed for the other guy in the slacks and shirt. Funny, that the difference in behavior is so noticeable. I guess "jeans" must somehow equal "dicey bet," while "slacks" equal "probable high-paying business job." I'm polite, but usually decline (which makes me feel like Ebenezer Scrooge). I want to save them the effort by wearing a sign with my work clothes that says, "Teacher, sorry," accompanied by a little graphic of a fly escaping an empty cartoon wallet.

A new year on the Weinstrasse

Happy 2008, friends and family!

I hope everybody had a good "slide" into the new year. :) Sorry the blog has been a bit neglected; our internet connection went ffkkzbk in the middle of November (more on that later) and got reconnected just in time for me to disappear into the coffee-filled depths of Seattle for Christmas. That trip was marvelous. And way too short. But no sooner had I landed in Frankfurt than this tall handsome German appeared to distract me from my family-missing sorrows, and swooped me away for a week-long New Year's vacation in the Frozen East. So of course the first thing I can think to do is lean back in my rocking chair with a glass of Dornfelder, set the bifocals on the end of my nose, and commence with a long-winded droning elaboration of all that's been happening to me, me, me! :)

(Or you can just see some pics!)

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January 1-6

Olaf called the Erzgebirge in winter “German Siberia.” Given that, though I’ve never been to Russian Siberia, Dr. Zhivago looked pretty darned cold, I’ll take this as a sufficiently apt description.

From the time we arrived in Sehma on the night of December 3oth until boarding a train back to Mannheim a week later, I couldn’t stop commenting on the temperature. "Damn," I’d muffle through my scarf as we stepped outside, "it’s cold." Or later, listening to the wind attempt to tear out the rafters outside our cozy loft bedroom: "Damn! It’s cold!" Or, stepping into skis before getting enough blood moving to ward off the wind’s icy blue fingers: "Dammit’scold!!"

I was definitely the picture of a wimp – or, as ze Germans would say, a “warm-showerer” – while pulling on wool leggings and a wool shirt under my normal pajamas before climbing under two layers of feather comforters to sleep. Bert’s family even seemed mildly concerned. (There is a great picture of me and Bert’s sister, Heidi, a strapping Viking maiden if I’ve ever seen one, as we go for a walk through the snow: I’m wearing an arctic parka, she’s wearing what appears to be a rain jacket.)

At last gratification was mine, however, when two nights ago, Bert sat straight up in bed, looked at me with consternation in those enormous brown eyes and exclaimed, “Verdammt! Es ist kalt!”

The thing is, it is so cold because it is beautiful. If the Erzgebirge in March looks nearly like a picture-print by Currier and Ives, the Erzgebirge in January is a winter wonderland. Thick white snow covers everything: as if a whole town (and the forests, hills, and rivers around it) had been dipped in whipped cream. The naked tree branches were coated in enough ice to turn them into sculptures of pure white lace; and in the silent blue evenings, golden Schwibbögen would light up the windows of every house in the snow-covered town. The whole place had the look of one of those model villages you’d set out on top of the bookshelf at Christmastime. Plus the temperature really wasn’t insufferable: the parka had been a Christmas gift from my marvelous family, and – despite a sure resemblance to Joel Fleischmann in Northern Exposure – I was grateful for every minute spent bundled in its feathery depths.

Pretty pretty pretty!

Where to begin? The trip was, as ever, magical. We pulled in early enough for a light Abendbrot with Bert’s parents on Sunday night, and then settled into an apartment downstairs from Olaf and Corinna (which Olaf’s brother owns but doesn’t really use).

When I say “apartment” I mean “bottom floor of a large, pretty, old stone house that has been sectioned off for three families to occupy.” Indeed, few of the houses in the Erzgebirge – or in Germany, for that matter – are single-family dwellings. There are some, sure, but in general there just doesn’t seem to be that tradition of inexhaustibly vast frontier that made us Americans so accustomed to roominess; here, owning the entire building – plus enough surrounding property to make a front as well as a back yard – is a bit of a luxury.

However, unlike the vaguely unappetizing apartment highrises that line the residential streets of Ludwigshafen (which itself can’t be blamed – after all, the bombed-out city was entire rebuilt in the fifties, and on a budget!) the “apartments” in Sehma are absolute coziness. We woke up on Monday morning to sunlight streaming through huge windows, and a snow-covered landscape rolling gently to the mountains in the distance. It was even a little like waking up at Grandma’s house in Colorado!

That day, Monday, was New Year’s Eve, which we spent making raclette with Olaf and Corinna, Heidi and her boyfriend, Jens, and another couple from Leipzig. Raclette is neat – a very social meal. It consists of one large electric cooking device in the middle of the table, with two surfaces: the top can be used for grilling or frying, and underneath sit eight individual, wedge-shaped little skillets, one for each guest. All around the table are bowls of uncooked food pieces, which you can assemble to make a variety of mini meals under the cooker in your tiny skillet. I started with a chicken, mushroom, tomato, olive, and cheese concoction, followed by eggs and potatoes with bacon. Mmm… bacon… We also had salad and lots of wine. The leisurely meal took hours until we suddenly realized that it was a quarter to twelve!

Outside the party went. We stood around a snow-covered hay bale on a snow-covered hillside with a view of the snow-covered Sehma valley below, and by the time the bubbly had been distributed, it was midnight. And I gotta say, the best way to celebrate New Year’s has got to be looking down on a valley in the Erzgebirge. All the towns came alive: bells started drifting up from every corner of the valley, followed by the marvelous, anticipatory screeee! of firecrackers. Pink and green and gold lit up the night; we danced around in the snow; friends called from other parts of the country; and “der lustige Bert” proceeded to light a few rockets of our own and then flee so comically that he was even more entertaining than the fireworks.

Prost Neujahr!

The party then continued a few houses down the road at Bert’s uncle Gert’s house, where everyone else sampled Gert’s famous punch… while I fell asleep on the couch.

So on that note, here are two observations from my first week back in the Fatherland: 1) Everyone is having babies. 2) I forgot how much people here can drink!

It’s true. On Sunday night – before New Year’s Eve – I felt unusually sleepy. Then I realized that this might have to do (other than jetlag) with the fact that I’d been offered, within the first day of being back in the country, a total of two beers, two glasses of wine, and a Schnapps, for no particular reason except that we’d stopped by various houses to visit.

It’s not like people sit around getting drunk, any more than most Americans would sit down and consume two liters of 7-up at a time. Beer is simply What You Drink. I hate to stereotype, but sometimes it seems we Americans have a relationship with alcohol that lies somewhere between titillating excess and scowling Puritan disapproval. Whereas Arizona law dictates no sale of wine before a certain time on Sundays, the beer on the menu here costs the same as, and often less than, a bottle of water. You can go to any Christmas market and enjoy a cup of mulled wine – standing right there in, gasp, public! My God, what if the children see??

I’m pretty sure that this has something to do with a centuries-long tradition of sterilizing the village water by simply fermenting it. (I’ve also heard that this accounts for the British love of tea.) Funnily enough, people do look at me a bit sideways when I drink tap water instead of bottled mineral water. “Well,” they say, eyeing my glass. “I suppose one can. It’s potable. But you don’t have to,” they protest, “We have plenty of normal water right here!” And a 1.5-liter bottle of sparkling Odenwaldquelle hovers over my glass. I attempt to convince them that the water out of the faucet here is delicious; but the general reaction is still a bit as if I had started to drink, I dunno, mouthwash, instead of just rinsing with it.

As for the second observation: 2007 appears to have been the Year of the Baby. I read an article a while back that mentioned a correspondence between the jubilant World Cup in Germany in summer 2006 and a sharp rise in birth rates nine months later; and am inclined to believe it. This is good news. The country could use a little population boost. With an economy based on socio-capitalism, the successful financing of social programs (like public healthcare) is heavily reliant on having a healthy generational bell curve. That is, the population should consist of mostly working-age folks helping to support the young and old on either end; and yet in the last couple of generations, the population has only been getting fewer and older. Not to mention that holding Olaf and Corinna’s bright-eyed baby, Samuel, is a warm and snuggly prescription for a New Year’s Day hangover.

Speaking of New Year’s Day and babies, I finally got to meet Sophia! Conny and Nate were at her mother’s house in Bernsbach for the holiday, and so we got to catch up a little over coffee and cookies. I also finally got to meet Conny’s sister, Franzi, and her brother, Thomas, which felt weird, seeing as how I’d seen so many pictures and heard enough stories that I’d completely forgotten I’d never actually met them. It was like talking to moving photos. Franzi’s daughter is just a couple months older than Sophie, and so it was a baby-filled visit. Sophie’s great. She’s good-natured and curious; plus Nate’s parents had brought her a warm fuzzy outfit from the States that includes a hood with ears, so that she looks like a stuffed animal when bundled into her carriage for a walk.

Franzi (holding Louisa), me (holdie Sophie), Heidi, & Conny

Meanwhile, Nate and Conny are as funny as ever. Nate couldn’t get enough of remarking on the uniformity of Erzgebirge Christmas decorations, and feigned dry, Natelike shock when he spied a multicolored Schwibbogen in one window. “Is there a hotline we can call to report this?” he asked gravely (before discovering that the offending Weihnachtsschmuck was a perfectly respectable white-light-bedecked arch, seen through a multicolored stained-glass window).

New Year’s Day also included a succulent lunch prepared by Bert’s uncle, and another walk through excessively charming snowy villageness back in Sehma with Olaf and Corinna.

The next day, Bert, his mom, his uncle, and I hopped aboard the steam-engined train to Oberwiesenthal (the skiing town at the top of the Fichtelberg), strolled across the border, and walked about an hour or so to a Czech café where I saw they served “American potatoes.”

“What are ‘American potatoes’?” I asked eagerly.

“Kind of like french fries, but they’re bigger and thicker, and lightly spiced. Plus they leave the skins on,” explained Gert. (I like Gert.)

Wedges! The menu offered potato wedges. Not that German fries aren’t heavenly, but I was curious to order “American” something from a Czech menu and see how it would come out.

They were awesome. Fresh, plump, crisp, tender, spicy, and exactly like you would get at a steakhouse. I gobbled up both my own and the rest of everyone else's, and was tempted to order another, separate portion. Nothing like hot salty potatoes on a cold snowy day!

While Regina and Gert headed back to Sehma by bus, Bert and I hopped off a few miles early so that we could walk a bit longer through the snowy woods and hills. I couldn’t get enough of stomping around in the snow; and thanks to Shauna’s merino wool socks, my feet stayed toasty warm despite the minus-whatever degrees. :)

The next day, we decided we still hadn’t tanked up enough fresh mountain air before the impending return to BASF-scented Ludwigshafen, and so we spend the day in the hills near Wiesenbad, hiking a couple of hours up to the castle in Wolkenstein. Somehow it seems there are only a few ways to describe wintry bucolic beauty before you resort to exhausted cliché: suffice to say, every step of every walk and hike was sheer visual feast. We wended our way along the sides of hills overlooking deep valleys; through woods heavy with creamy snow; alongside fields of horses whuffling their lips over the ground in an effort to eat the icy white stuff; and all the way up to a stately castle on a mountaintop.

Here's a "holiday home" you can rent in Wolkenstein. Wow...

There, we found a cozy café; and I know this blog busies itself excessively with food descriptions, but I just gotta describe one more. At this café, they serve the best fish you will ever eat in your life. I still don’t know what it was. Trout? It was juicy, oily, pink, soft, flavorful yet mild... roughly a foot long, freshly caught in the river at the foot of the mountain, and cooked and served whole, next to a pile of creamy yellow potatoes. Admittedly, attempting to eat an animal that retains its original animal form is a little unsettling. But after the first steaming pink forkful, you become a savage. This macabre little pile of skull and spinal column and bones piles up, while your only focus is on finding the last scrap of fishmeat between head and tail. Mm... delicious barbarism.

Friday was spent in lazy Vacation Mode. We slept until the last moment possible before tromping over the hills with Heidi to have lunch at Gert’s; then Bert and I fell asleep on Gert’s couch for another two hours. We woke up; had some After Eights (Gert is an After Eight pusher); tromped back home; and I made a crustless pumpkin pie for Bert’s family, simply because I didn’t feel like all the work required to make the crust. Maybe that makes it more like pumpkin custard... at any rate, it was a success, and one American got to smell pumpkin pie baking as she stared out the window at the moonlit snow.

Saturday was skiing day. Bert had been wanting to go cross-country skiing all week, but hadn’t gotten his new skis waxed until Thursday night. So despite the arctic weather that blew white feathery rivers sideways across the roads, we donned our gear and headed out with Heidi and Bert’s dad, Horst, to try the cross-country trails.

The Lißners all grew up on skis, and it shows. Heidi had no sooner tumbled out of the car than was she attaching the things to her feet like extra body parts, and gliding away naturally over the snow. Bert and Horst were not far behind, and I… well, I’m from Arizona. Plus, compared to Bert’s tall, powerful family of mountain giants, my usually well-built frame of five-foot-five is apparently so dwarfish that we had to borrow ski poles from the neighbors just to find ones that fit me.

But my boyfriend is the most patient boyfriend who ever boyfriended. While his broad father and statuesque sister glided expertly away through the forest, he gently instructed his shrimpy foreign girlfriend in the basics. I have to admit to being a bit frustrated that something which had come so easily last March was suddenly so difficult; but Bert assured me that the conditions were also different this time, and that (so he says) my skis were particularly slippery, and that’s why I kept sliding backward when I meant to move, you know, forward.

These... look... like... skis...

It was still a lot of fun. Once, in learning to turn around, I fell over into a pile of snow with my skis crossed behind me, like some kind of cartoon. Then, just as I was starting to get the hang of swooshing along on the even surfaces, our path headed up a long, steep, curving hill. Bert assured me I could ascend this. He demonstrated by splaying out his feet so that his skis formed an open V, and scrabbled up the hill. I splayed out my skis in similar fashion and scrabbled in place. Bert looked back down to see me flailing around, buglike, at the bottom of the hill, laughing hard enough to make the whole business go from difficult to impossible. By the time I did get a few feet up the incline, some other people started approaching from behind, and I didn’t know how to get out of the way. Here, my overtaxed facilities gave out. Bert looked me in the eye and advised me to turn sideways while stopped on a hill (while we let the people who knew what the hell they were doing go by), but for some reason, I stopped understanding German and just stood there squinting at him. And then sliding backward.

That was yesterday. Now we’re plopped on the train back to Mannheim, and my triceps are pleasantly sore; Bert is snoozing off and on next to me with his earbuds in, waking up just occasionally to blink at me with those eyes that are the same color of his chocolate-brown sweater.

The holidays were wonderful.

We’re almost home.

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