From time to time in my life I've made colossal decisions that would have seemed comically impossible had I really chosen to think about the likelihood of my success in them. Was I nervous at the age of 20 when I decided (having never left the country before or even flown more than a couple of times) to fly halfway across the world to meet up with a class in Italy for the summer? Did I really think that I could learn a dead language from scratch and actually be able to read it in 10 weeks, or that it would be easy to drop everything and move to the UK for a year and travel Europe on my own? Did I really think that any of these things would turn out well?
To be honest, I chose not to think about them at all. I have a method, you see, when taking big steps. I forget the BIG PICTURE and the grand totality of whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish, and I choose, instead, to focus on tiny intervals of that process (in this case- packing appropriately, getting to the airport, finding my gate). I'm like a horse with blinders on. Before I know it, I'm right in the midst of things and I don't have time to think about whether I CAN do it or not, I'm just doing it.
Besides, the BIG PICTURE doesn't work well for me. You see, my internal voice has regrettably dramatic tendencies when they're given rein. I had decided to travel to a foreign country entirely on my own for the very first time, and these dramatic tendencies decided to display themselves to full effect when the horse blinders came off while at cruising altitude over Belgium, listening to the boisterous German-speakers in the rows around me. "Oh dear God," I thought, "I don't know a word of German besides counting to ten, hello and goodbye, thank you, and where's the restroom! I've planned too many side trips. I'm bound to get lost somewhere, take a wrong train and end up in some remote part of Austria where no one speaks English and I can't get myself home! Something's bound to go wrong! I have no idea what I'm doing! It will be awful and I'll never travel by myself again!" You know. Things of that nature. I never said that my internal voice was rational, just dramatic. Anyway, I mention all this to say that from the moment I set foot in Germany, the world conspired to make all my worries seem ridiculous.
In the lobby of my hotel, the receptionist heard no more than my badly pronounced German greeting before she deftly switched to flawless English and welcomed me to my room. My fears of linguistic inadequacy lifted even more during dinner that night. I had picked the Augustiner-brau biergarten and restaurant which was listed in all the guide books as having some of the best beer and most authentic Bavarian food in Munich. As anyone who's done any traveling knows, its difficult to know what the general protocol is at restaurants in foreign countries. Do you seat yourself? Wait in a certain place to be seated? Ask a waiter? Inevitably, you end up standing around awkwardly near the entrance sending surreptitious glances around at others coming in for a clue, and trying to meet the eye of a member of the wait staff while smiling hopefully and disarmingly. This must be the universal symbol for, "I'm a foreigner and I feel very out of place. Please help!" A waitress carrying two huge of beer in each hand and donning the traditional costume worn by all the waitstaff at any biergarten in Germany strode over and said, "You speak English?". I nodded with a sigh of relief, and she (after glancing around the crowded restaurant for a bit) smiled and said, "You can sit with the professor. She speaks very good English."
Momentarily, I found myself seated across from an elderly former teacher who had defeated several beers of her own already and wasted no time in telling me her life story in great detail. She had three daughters who all went to university in England and remained there after graduation, and they were mortified with her recent decision to leave her flat in Munich and live in the country. Every woman should have a dream, after all, and she had always dreamed of growing old in a house of her own out in the country with a fenced-in garden where she could walk around naked and no one would see or care. Meanwhile, I was taking in this unexpected barrage of conviviality while simultaneously trying to decipher a menu filled with 5 syllable or more German words, all of which meant precisely nothing to me. She must have sensed my confusion, because she suddenly stopped mid-sentence to tell me that I should try the duck. It was the best. I didn't take much convincing, but she was right. It was fantastic! I left an hour and a half and several beers later, with a list of English-speaking schools to apply to and more travel recommendations than I could possibly accomplish. That night, I was serenaded to sleep with a private violin concert. I never figured out what the building behind my hotel was, but it was occupied by a group of musicians who played or sang every evening until very late at night. Sometimes it was instrumental and sometimes it was a group singing German folk music. It was never loud enough to bother me and was always surprisingly good.
The entire week was filled with unexpected conversation with locals on the walk into town or while sitting on park benches eating lunch. Usually, these started when passersby (assuming I was German) started speaking to me in German, but when I looked apologetically confused, most were happy to start over and resume the conversation in English. I met another local the next time I went to the biergarten. This time he was an elderly man who didn't speak much English at all but was still very friendly, and we had a very fluent silent conversation of companionable smiles, and toasts, and mutual admiration of the scenery. He did manage to tell me, somewhat haltingly, of a special lent beer that I should try. As I found out later, it was a sweet and very strong recipe invented as a sort of "liquid bread" by monks who were fasting for lent. For some reason, they all have domineering and masculine names like Salvator and Maximator.
I also met a newlywed couple about my age from Austin Texas (small world! The woman's name was Melinda, too), and a middle aged couple from San Francisco who were on a month-long tour of Eastern Europe and who seemed genuinely happy to have a third party to travel with for the day. I ended up touring Neuschwanstein with them, after which they insisted that I join them for dinner and drinks back in Munich that evening and refused to let me pay my part. I really ended up leaving my vacation feeling that I hadn't traveled on my own much at all.
If I hadn't walked 10 miles a day every day that I was there, I probably would have gained 10 pounds on my trip, because I seem to have made a subconscious pact with myself not to eat a single healthy thing (except sauerkraut- fermented cabbage- which is actually surprisingly good!). Germany is full of very unhealthy food that is really tasty. I don't know why you can't seem to find it outside of Germany. I binged on fried potatoes, schnitzel, German chocolate cake with slices of pear baked inside, and thousands of different kinds of sausage with spicy mustard. Be sure and try the weisswurste, a fresh white sausage made of veal and pork that is not smoked, and therefore perishable and meant to be eaten as a snack between breakfast and lunch. A local saying is that weisswurste should never hear the bells of noon. It is delicious sucked from the skin (which isn't typically eaten) with some sweet mustard and a fresh pretzel. Yum! For a glimpse of local culture at it's best, find a place to go for a drink on a Saturday evening when all the locals are out wearing their traditional dress. You'll see men and women of all ages out and about, the men wearing suspender-ed lederhosen and feathered hats, and women wearing the traditional dress (called a dirndl, I think) with ruffled apron and fluffy-sleeved, low cut shirt.
Although I never really had to speak more than a few words of German during the entire trip, I had my moment of triumph on the last morning that I was there. At breakfast, I was usually waited on by the same couple of people who always spoke to me in English, but on the last morning before I made my way to the airport, I had someone new. He greeted me in German to which I replied, "Guten morgen." Then he asked me a question. I didn't recognize a word of it, but I knew from the usual routine of the week that he was asking what I wanted to drink. "Kaffe, bitte, mit zucher," I replied (probably the only German phrase I had picked up while I was there). Another question- I hoped, about milk. "Ja, danke schon," I answered, and got the usual little pitcher of milk for my coffee. Regardless of the fact that I had spoken less than 10 words and hadn't understood a word that he said, I had had my first conversation completely and comprehensibly in German. Win! :)
