The Lamp, Part 3 (7/5/2009)

I had had the choice to leave my host family after the first four weeks. It was standard operating procedure in those days for the student to choose, two weeks in, whether to stay with the orientation-time family or to play Roulette and be placed elsewhere in the country. The Lechners and I had always considered this a long-haul gig; the first two weeks had gone fine, I loved Bavaria, and I had no real reason to uproot myself and head for what may well have been a tiny village in Saxony.

It was, I maintain, the right choice. And as I continued to make friends, see Bavaria, and improve my German, I fell in love with my new life. My friends at home were battling PSAT and balancing around on college visits while I was bouncing around Germany, speaking a new language, tasting the delicacies. True, my host family was growing more distant, but I never considered it more than the honeymoon wearing off – perhaps school was too heavy, or the quiet American wasn’t novel anymore.

I loved seeing, breathing, experiencing Germany and wanted to share it. I needed to talk. And so, on top of sending copious letters and postcards, I also called home – friends and family – every couple of days. It was, even I knew, too much. I’d given thought to quitting and relying solely on snail mail, but for some reason I couldn’t break the tie completely. Maybe by November, I thought…

My host family, it turned out, drew up a lot of negative connotations from the phone calls, and strikingly, never told me save a few veiled references in passing. Slowly, their anger waxed. They talked to other host parents, vented behind my back. Vietnam barbs aside, I barely noticed.

The fever broke 10 days before Halloween, and 48 hours before I left for a week to visit some German friends up north. At around 7 p.m., my host family and I sat down around the dinner table. They sent their youngest to another room, and one by one, teed off. Four months of rage poured out.

“You don’t really want to be here.” (Actually, I really like it…)
“You never walk our dog.” (You never asked me to…)
“You get your news from CNN, so you only care about America.” (Logical fallacy aside, the CNN you get is CNN international. Its US coverage is paltry at best…)
“You call home too often.” (You got me there. But I’ve slowed down; give me some time…)
“You don’t like our food.” (That’s a new one…)
“You never ask us how our day was.” (I suck at small talk. You should see me try to chat up women…)
“You’re unfriendly.” (Shy, yes. But unfriendly … that’s excessive…)
“You probably sleep in school.” (That’s conjecture, but no, I actually don’t…)

On it went for over an hour, a repeated tongue-lashing where I sat, largely silent, picking at walnut shells. Unequivocally and remarkably, none of their opinions varied. Five voices spoke as one. At the end, they handed me a letter – a typewritten 95 theses we hate about you, ratified by all of them – to ruminate on, before they left the table en masse. I retreated to my room, shocked and awed, before I read and shoved the letter out of sight.

And so, for the next few months, I made myself who they wanted. I BSed. Lauged with them. Said thanks for dinner every night. Walked the dog. Played hockey with the six-year-old. Stopped calling home. Stayed off e-mail. My conversations about their days were, sometimes, downright remnant of the German 101 textbook.

“Hi Dorothea! How was your day today?”
“My day was great, Matt. Thanks for asking! How was your day?”
“Thanks for asking, Dorothea. My day was excellent. My math teacher came in today with the letters ‘VD’ emblazoned across his belt buckle. That’s probably not funny to you, since you know it’s just his initials, but to me…”

Small talk is hardly my game, but my host family liked it. And more importantly, they liked me. It was forced, yes. Stereotypical, yes. But in the don’t-screw-up détente of Schaerdingerstrasse, I was hardly one to argue.

A month later, the first weekend of Advent, I shared a joke with my host parents before retiring to my room at 7:30. It was Friday, but I had to be up in 10 hours anyway to catch an early train to Nurnberg for the Christkindlmarkt, an outdoor holiday market with wooden toys and Lebkuchen and Gluhwein – with the slight snowfall that the paper expected, it would be the typical German Christmas. Somewhere, the Brothers Grimm were smiling.

It was already dark out as I walked downstairs. My host brother had left an hour or so before, and the outside light was still illuminating the back stairs. I went to the door, and put my hand on the switch. I contemplated for a second whether to flip it. No, I decided – better leave it on. Flo must have wanted to light his way home, maybe in case the stairs ice over or something. I thought nothing more of it and went to my room.

I read some letters that night to pass the few hours before bed. A few were imploring me to check my e-mail. With the pax dontcallica reigning above, I figured it better to end the e-mail thing by sending a quick blast – Hi guys, love you all, but I want to rely on snail mail now rather than calls and e-mails. Write me that way. Peace, Matt – to everyone. I fired up the ancient laptop.

As I did, my host father came down to shut the light off – drat, I knew I should have done that. He looked at me typing, saw the modem’s cord to the phone jack, said goodnight, and went to bed. I wondered if he was pissed: but when a couple hours passed and no one came down, I figured he trusted I hadn’t broken our détente.

The next morning, I headed to the train station and spent a memorable weekend with students from Germany, Norway, Russia, Finland, Denmark, and the US. Nurnberg – which I still consider one of Europe’s most striking cities – was in full holiday regalia. If the American Christmas comes from anywhere, it’s decidedly Germanic – one which I couldn’t wait to chat about once I got home.

By Sunday, the dusting of snow had turned to a deep rain. When the train pulled into Passau around five, I decided, stubbornly, to walk back up Mariahilfberg. I was already wet, I thought, plus it’ll give me the chance to burn off the Lebkuchen I’d been chomping down all weekend. If nothing else, the tranquility of that walk never got old.

I reached the house on Schaerdingerstrasse about 45 minutes later. The lights, strange for a Sunday, were all off. I plodded around the house to the basement entrance and shook the water off my hair as I fished for my key.

Finally, I grabbed it. I shoved it into the lock. It didn’t move. I tried again, a few more times, but no luck. A key was in the other end. I stood outside, in the rain, locked out.