Taking Flight

Libby asked me a year ago to tell her about my German boy friend.  All of the “letters” before this were a way of introducing you to my 20 year old me.

Although I dated a lot, I never had a boy friend until Tony Edwards, the English boy that I met when I was 19.  I realized I liked having a boyfriend who wasn’t an American:  someone who was more intelligent than I was, someone who was interesting, someone I could talk with for hours, someone who wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship because I had too much that I wanted to do, that I wanted to learn. 

Following Tony’s example, I applied to be an exchange student in Germany.  Before I was chosen, the other students had been males who had graduated from college.  I was the first female undergraduate. I contacted Dennis McClellan who had been the exchange student before to get information on what to expect.  He was eager to share his experiences and offered to introduce me to his closest friend in Memmingen, Reinhard.

I confidently got on that air plane in St. Louis on August 28, 1966 at 5 PM:  a 20 year old wearing a light weight 3 piece suit, heels, a hat and white gloves with a few small suitcases. (my trunk with most of my clothes had been sent earlier). My first flight was exciting.  I landed in New York City at 8PM, but had to get transportation to JFK Airport for my flight to Europe on Icelandic Air Lines at 1 AM.  I sat alone in a cafe sipping coffee and wondering if this was the cafe Tony had called me from a year ago.

Icelandic was the most inexpensive way so the flight had many students and young people like myself. We had to land in Iceland to refuel before taking off for Luxembourg. We boarded Icelandic but I no sooner closed by eyes than the sun rose and we were over a tree less land.  I thought we were going to crash because without trees, I couldn’t judge our height.  We landed safely in Reykjavik to refuel and were allowed to get off the plane.  Iceland looked no better on the ground than it did in the air.   I went to the hanger that had refreshments (not a real terminal). So, my first foreign country to visit was Iceland.

Landing in Luxembourg, at 8 PM, we boarded a bus that took us to Germany.  That was quite the rollicking bus ride with singing, laughter, jokes which even the bus driver got in on.  One girl shouted to him, “Ich bin heiss”.  He pulled off the road, slammed on the breaks and headed to the back of the bus with an exaggerated lear on his face.  Then, she realized her mistake.  She’d said, “I am hot” which has a more sexual connotation in German.  “Mir ist heiss” is more appropriate for someone who wants the heater turned down.

We arrived in Mannheim at 2 AM and joined several other American passengers for a train  to Munich where we arrived at 7 AM. I was exhausted from sleeplessness and yet I needed to see when a train left for Memmingen and I needed to find my hotel.

Unfortunately I was attracting too much attention. American girl, alone with white gloves and maps…. Men were everywhere offering help (???). I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and I just smiled which encouraged them.  Not wishing to appear unfriendly, I kept nodding and smiling which only made things worse—-one even grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a building. 

Finally, I found my voice and said, “NEIN” (no).  I could speak only a few phrases fluently:  “Can you tell me where I can wash my hands”, “I don’t know why I’m so sad” and ”a girl without freckles is like the sky without stars.” The first phrase was fairly useful because I could change that last part of the phrase to the hotel I was looking for: “Can you tell me where Hotel Garni is?”  

Once at the hotel, I called my German benefactor who had set up the exchange program, Herr Doktor Maximillian Dietrich.  He was a grandfatherly man who owned the local newspaper. He met me the next day at the train station in Memmingen, introduced me around and filled up my “dance card” with several evenings of activities with some of Memmingen’s bachelors: the head master’s son and two former  exchange students I’d met in Cape when they lived there.  

All Peter wanted to do was go to his parents’ house to watch TV.  All Helmut wanted was to stay out partying until 3AM at the local disco. All Georg wanted was a relationship.  After several weeks of forced joviality and friendliness,  my anxiety level was building. Although I like a good party and I like to watch TV, day after day, week after week was not me. And I wasn't ready for a relationship.

And, then I got a phone call from Dennis’s friend Reinhard… ….

Love, 

Grandma