“Eine Amerikanerin in einem Kleinen Deutschen Dorf”
I live in a tiny village outside of a city in Baden Wuerttemberg. Perhaps that is not remarkable to you, except that I am American, and I did not speak one word of German before I came (okay, maybe words like “Kindergarten,” but I didn’t know they were German words).
That probably sounds crazy, and it was.
I came here because I unexpectedly fell in love with a German man. In a whirlwind romance, I met my husband while he was on sabbatical in California. Three months later I visited Germany, nine months later we married, and fourteen months later in the late spring of 2019, we moved here.
I felt like the fact that I was American was obvious to everyone when I arrived, and there seemed to be a general consensus about me, “Well, if she’s going to live here, then she needs to learn German!” someone rightly justified.
A nod of the head, “Yes, of course she MUST.”
And learn German I did every day in the Volkshochschule until the very last day of B1.2 when the COVID lockdown began. After that I just decided to speak German, blunders and all, whether someone understood me or not (which definitely goes agains the German culture of perfectionism). More often than not, I used pronouns incorrectly. In fact, they were probably terrible.
Sometimes I asked strangers, “Um … der, die oder das … Schinken?” zum beispiel. (“Is it male, female or neuter ham?” for example.)
Once in a while, a brave soul would say something to me in the local dialect, Swäbisch, that I couldn’t understand.
I would simply nod my head and smile.
That’s what I do. I smile.
I am a happy person that likes to spread happiness wherever I go. I’ve found that if I smile and say, “Hallo!” on walks, people are generally friendly in return. Sometimes, though, I would look at people, hoping to catch their eye and greet them only to find that they would look away.
When I researched the differences between American and German culture, I read that it’s rude to smile at strangers here. My reaction was: You never know when people need your kindness. Your smile might help them forget their troubles, or it might bring them hope.
Then there is “Mr. Grumpy Man,” who, for whatever reason, often happens to be walking at the same time as me. In the beginning, I cheerfully said, “Hallo!”
Sometimes he would look at me and not respond. Sometimes he would simply ignore me. (Well, I suppose his grumpy-looking dog greeted me by wagging his tale and letting his silly, long tongue fall out of his mouth to the ground.)
After two years of not receiving a response, I stopped even acknowledging Mr. Grumpy. My husband told me that it wasn’t that people didn’t want to speak with me, but rather that they did not know how to when I didn’t yet speak German and they, of course, thought, My English is very poor.
Really? After you’ve learned it for years in school? I don’t think so. Your “very poor” English is far better than most Americans who cannot even speak their own language well!
Once the romanticism of living in a remote, small, idyllic village faded, I fell into culture shock, extreme culture shock. If I merely describe my personality, you will understand:
I am a Creative who often lives in my imaginative world of what could be instead of what is. I mean, this is the land of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, right? I am an artist. I live fully from my heart through emotion.
I like to be spontaneous, try new things and try doing things in new ways. And, by the way, I don’t like paperwork!
Does that sound like German culture to you? I think not! (Now you can imagine me in my first practical driving test, which I failed, after 24 years of driving in the United States!) My romantic ideal of life here in Germany did not allow room for the harshness of culture shock, or how difficult the German language and culture might be to learn.
There have been phone calls and in-person experiences where someone refused to try and understand what I was attempting to say in German, or simply hung up the phone on me—multiple times. I began to feel humiliated, and if I’m honest, angry. I found that as an immigrant, I needed to be the vulnerable one, the one to take a risk, if I really wanted to learn and embrace the culture. And so, I took great risk at great personal cost, and at times, it was painstakingly embarrassing.
When I finally spoke adequate German to have a very basic conversation with someone, the first question people often asked me was, “Do you like Donald Trump?”
“Um?” I would stutter and then think, How can I possibly answer that question? I thought people don’t ask about personal political views here?
Another question people would ask me was, “Why would you choose to live here instead of California?”
Good question.
I didn’t just move here for love. I also want to understand my history, and someday I want my children to understand and benefit from both cultures. You see, my grandfather was German. He left with his family in 1925 for a new life Los Angeles after they lost everything during the Bolshevik and German Revolutions.
He never spoke to my mother about his previous life or what it means to be German. Seeking answers, my parents and I came for a visit just after the Berlin Wall fell … My eleven-year-old mind forever trapped the images of the broken wall and the pictures of the concentration camps in my mind, and I never thought I’d be back.
Now that I’m two years in, the question people ask me is, “Fühlst du dich Wohl in Deutschland?” (“Do you feel satisfied/content/fulfilled in German?” Germans have a word for everything that is far more specific than can be translated in one, simple way.)
That’s a heavy question for someone still emerging from culture shock. I would state honestly, “I’m getting there…, and slowly finding my path.”
My husband is an engineer, and bought a 100-year-old house that he started renovating before he met me.
Now I believe that he bought it for me. As a writer, our house and little village cannot be more idyllic, more romantic.
To me, it is the, “Land of Bread and wine, and Maultaschen!” I walk nearly every day … I cannot get enough of the colors of the sprawling, mountainside vineyards, the smell of the forest after the rain, or the wildflowers that spring up variably from the fields from March to September.
It’s breathtaking, and each day that I wander, I am refreshed.
I volunteer with the horses at the local farm so that I can learn more about them—a life-long dream as a child (and as such, I of course learned how to play “Jessica’s Theme” from Many from Snowy River).
I meet weekly with a group of village ladies to drink tea, talk, read Scripture and pray. We are denominationally and theologically different from one another, but it doesn’t matter. The group is about being women and finding community together.
When I go shopping in nearby Korb, friendly faces at Hofmarkt Schmidt and Rewe recognize and greet me. I’m starting to feel like I’m known, and I’ve come to realize that even Mr. Grumpy needs my kindness, whether he acknowledges me or not. So, my goal is to greet him anyway.
And now I’m beginning to believe that it’s not just a little German village, but rather my village—my home—mein kleines Dorf (“my little village”).