Der Austausch: Part II- "Boogie, Woogie, Woogie"

The summer before my senior year of high school, I studied abroad in a small village in central Germany. This installment: "Boogie, Woogie, Woogie."

(If memory serves me correctly, there are photos coinciding with all of these events. I shall have to unearth them.)


Someone had the brilliant idea of shepherding nine high-strung American high schoolers (most of us cracked out on high-octane German coffee) and their foreign host counterparts on an excursion down one of the placid streams in central Germany. We were grouped into threes and given a boat that appeared to be a cross between a kayak and a canoe. Life-jackets, bagged lunches, a brief explanation of geographical importance, and off we went.

Whenever adults expect students to group themselves, they invariably group according to cliches. I'm certain that the idea was for us to mingle ourselves with the German students and exchange vocabulary lessons whilst navigating the rivers and streams with our map. What happened, instead, was that they gave us free reign. Which meant three kayaks of German students shooting off ahead of us, and three kayaks of American students giggling and speaking nothing but our native tongue.

While this may have completely circumvented the entire point of the excursion, I will say that the bucolic setting was not lost on us. We were city kids, all of us, and we appreciated the nature aspect. We rolled lazily downstream, paddling alongside beautiful serene pastures and rolling hills. It was late June in Germany, a particularly beautiful time more like spring than summer. The sky was a perfect blue, the grass that piercing new green. Cows (whose low "moo" even sounded slightly more German; more like a "mmmmaaaoooooo") grazed in fields and drank from the stream as we passed. And, of course, being the typical American teenagers we were, we had to break the serene silence of nature with our own cow noises.

I do not know if the German high school students were so compelled because, as I mentioned, they were far down the stream beyond us at this point. They seemed to be primarily concerned with speed, something that seemed right to me, given the penchant for luxury cars and the Autobahn. We were more concerned with trying to get the cows to respond to our advances.

At some point, it was decided that we would choose one such grassy knoll upon which to sit and eat our hearty lunches. We chose a bend in the stream that had a little pebbled beach upon which we could put the kay-oes (as I am choosing to refer to them), and while there was a fence separating the pasture from the bank it appeared to be nothing more than some wooden posts between which was strung shreds of tarp. A half-assed fence, perfect for ducking under so that we could sit in the grass and eat.

I was at the front of the kay-oe, and so as we launched ourselves up onto the beach I was the first to dig my feet into the pebbly sand. On attempting to stand, however, I lurched forward and reached out to the haphazard fence to for balance.

I don't recall exactly what happened next, just that one moment I had my feet in the watery sand and one hand reaching for the shreds of tarp between the fence posts and the next I felt someone punch me square in the stomach. All of the breath went out of me, blackness took over, and as soon as I felt the impact of the punch in the front of me, I almost immediately felt something wallop me from behind. Blackness. Confusion. A weird noise.

I couldn't open my eyes, but I somehow understood that the hit from behind had, in fact, been the ground. Because, as I oriented myself, I discovered that I was lying on my back, on the beach, and that I'd hit the ground fairly hard. I couldn't breathe. No air.

I coughed and, painfully, sucked air into my lungs. One breath. Two. Ragged, painful, but then slowly it came more regularly.

"Are you ok?!" one of the American students asked. I could hear his concern, could hear the fierce whispers as everyone was trying to figure out how I could have been climbing out of a kay-oe one moment and flat on my back the next.

I opened one eye, and then I saw it. The tiny yellow sign affixed to one of the fence posts, warning stupid people (probably Americans) like myself that the fence was not to be touched.

"The-the....the- fence," I gasped. "It's...it's....."

"What? What happened? What's wrong?!"

"It's electric," I groaned.

"Boogie, woogie, woogie?" one of the students said, much to the entertainment of the rest. I was so pissed about that comment, that I don't think I spoke to him for the rest of the day.

I had been electrocuted by an electric fence surrounding a cow pasture, while standing in a puddle of water. And he was quoting that freakishly awful song played at every prom, Homecoming, and wedding I'd ever been to.

I couldn't decide whether to be humiliated or just grateful to be alive. I still walk that line.

Years later, recently in fact, the story would follow me. I was kayaking in Annapolis a few weeks ago and, quite gracefully I'm sure, flipped the kayak within moments of leaving the dock. After jokingly posting something on Facebook about it, Mr. Spaz resurrected the horribly embarrassing story by commenting, "Boogie, woogie, woogie?" Even though there were no electric fences in this particular story, the moment of choosing between humiliation and survival was potently the same.

Der Austausch: Part I, "I Think We're Drunk!"

The summer before my senior year of high school, I studied abroad in a small village in central Germany. It was my first time being truly away from home (unless you count the devastating week my cruel parents sent me to music camp when I was eleven) and it was my first time in a foreign country. The German I'd learned the previous three years in high school seemed woefully inadequate to prepare me for spending a month living with a German family, and for the first two days I don't think I spoke at all.

FRAU: (In German) What do you think of our country so far?
ME: (silently, frantically, in my mind) Ummm..ummm..konnen Sie...ummm....bitte....mochten Sie etwas wie Hackfleisch? (Translation: Could you...please....would you like something like ground beef?)

After a short while, however, it became clear that my German Vater and Schwester both spoke fluent English and were eager for practice. Our days became a game of them asking me questions in English and pushing me to answer in German. They were endlessly kind and patient, incorporating me into their family life and feeding me as though I were a starving child. Mutter was convinced that I was far too skinny, and she made it her mission to fatten me up. I think I ate about six hearty meals a day while I was there.

There were multiple incidents that occurred on that trip that I will be describing over the course of the next couple of posts. The first: "I Think We're Drunk!"



There were a handful of other American students from my high school scattered about the neighboring villages also residing with other German families. One afternoon, all of our German host siblings had some sort of colloquiem to attend after school, and so all of us Americans sequestered ourselves one host family's house.

The girl staying there was a good friend of mine, and she was fortunate enough to have landed not only a spacious room with its own bathroom and balcony, but (gasp) a small refrigerator stocked to the brim with German beer.

"They said it's for me!" she said, proudly. At this point in my life, my experiences with alcohol were limited to the small sips my parents allowed me from their own beverages from time to time, and I don't think anyone else was all that steeped in knowledge about it either. All we knew is that we were in a country where our tender ages still made us legal to imbibe, we had a refrigerator full of beer and no adult supervision. It was time.

We cracked open the cans and invented our own games with a deck of cards (this being long before any of us would learn the classic drinking games; Asshole, Kings, Circle of Death, etc.) We opened a second round. And a third. I felt nothing. I was embarrassed to admit it.

Everyone seemed a little giddier, a little louder, a little more red-in-the-face. I was mortified. Maybe alcohol had no effect on me! This could either be very good or very bad. Perhaps I would go through life drinking whatever I pleased and never getting drunk. Maybe I was immune. Or maybe, worse, it was all about to creep up on me and I would be humiliatingly flat on my back in seconds and everyone would know that I'd never drank before. Because nearly everything at this age was humiliating, this experience was quickly filling me with dread.

A fourth round was opened. And then one of the Americans opened her mouth: "I am wasted!" she said. A quick vote of concurrence. Doomed, I was doomed. I felt nothing.

Or did I? As soon as she said it, I felt the giddiness of so much giggling rush to my head. It was exceedingly warm in the room. Maybe these were the signs. I did feel a bit of a sway coming on.

At that moment, my friend's host sister poked her head into the room.

"Hallo! We are home now! Are you having a good time?" she said. There was no frantic move to conceal the cans, we all just simply watched as she swung the door open wider to reveal that she was standing in the hallway with some of our other host siblings. And they looked at us. And they started laughing.

"You are drinking the beer?" she said, covering her mouth to attempt to hide her laughter. "How do you like it?"

"'S-awesome!" one of my friends slurred. This provoked another round of giggles from the Germans. (Yes- Germans giggle.)

"Wasso funny?" another beer-drinker demanded, nearly knocking over a pyramid of spent beer cans.

"The beer is piss-water," the Germans crowed.

"'S not so bad!" we insisted.

"No, no!" my friend's host sister said. "They mean that it is, ....here, look!" She pointed to a tiny line of script on the side of one of the cans.

Alkoholfrei.

Awkwardly, we gathered up our decks of cards and quietly disposed of the cans of Alkoholfrei beer. We would not speak of this incident again.