I'm sure someone must've said, "Who invited this asshole?"


Many new experiences and random difficulties have occurred since my arrival in Frankfurt. I suppose I'll start from the beginning.

The Arrival

I arrived in Frankfurt at 10am, German time (GMT +01:00), on September 10th, 2003. The flight was long, tedious, and cramped, but that's how they all seem to be, so I won't go into detail. After reaching Frankfurt, my next step was to purchase train tickets to get from Frankfurt to Zittau, which for those of you who don't know, is essentially across all of Germany from West to East. (Maybe I'll post a map sometime so that everyone can have a better idea of where I'm located, but not today...)

Knowing only the extreme basics of German, I was apprehensive to attempt the ticket purchase, but it turned out that the girl at the counter spoke good English, so I was momentarily rescued. (I've come to understand that English abilities seem to be directly proportional to distance from the Atlantic.) Continuing, I got my tickets, found all necessary connections without much incident, and arrived in Zittau at 8:59pm. (I did make one mistake early on in Frankfurt with the trains, but it wasn't a big deal, as I blundered my way through more bad German to learn that I needed to go back one stop.)

Here's where the story really gets interesting. My contact person here in Zittau is a nice, well-spoken woman named Frau Urban. The thing being, I had emailed Frau Urban before leaving, stating that I would be arriving in Zittau at 8:30. (I was under this impression initially, since the English version of www.bahn.de had given me this time, whereas the German version is apparently not quite the same.) German trains being extremely punctual, she was no longer at the station waiting for me. I had prepared for this possibility, and therefore already had my "Zittau Handbook" dogeared to the address of the only youth hostel in Zittau. The plan was this: Find a cab driver in front of the train station; point and butcher a little more German; get to the hostile and sleep off the 25 hour trip.

Parts one and two of the afore mentioned plan worked pretty well. I pointed, spoke badly, and he knew where to go. The youth hostel, however, wasn't REALLY in Zittau. It was a 16eu cab ride about 6km outside of the town, which is in the middle of nowhere to begin with. We finally arrived, I paid the driver, and he took off. The real problem here being that I hadn't called ahead, and the place seemed to be about as dead as a midnight showing of Free Willy 3, in a Camp Verde dollar theater. (I know, that was random...)

This hostel was literally in the middle of nowhere. One road, no lights, no telephones, and no signs of life for miles. Luckily enough, the lobby, at least, was open. I went inside and tried to decifer the signs on the door, but they seemed to say something about calling "between the hours of 3 and 6 to make a reservation." I knocked and got no response. After spending about 30 minutes trying to figure out ANYTHING, I finally resigned myself to putting on an extra pair of pants and sleeping in the lobby.

Just as I was heading back to the lobby, a group of people came out of the hostel. It turned out that they were teachers of a group of handicapped students who were having some sort of convention over ths span of the week. I learned that two of the four individuals were from Germany, one was from the Czech Republic, and the last was from Poland. The two Germans obviously could speak with one another, but otherwise, nobody seemed to be able to communicate particularly well. Add an English-speaking, German butchering, American to the mix, and well, you can imagine the comedy of the situation. After relating my plight over a painfully long bout of fragmented German and a couple glasses of wine, it was decided that I should sleep on one of the German's floor for the night. Being distinctly better than the hard, cold lobby floor, I accepted. (And I've been told not to accept rides from strangers... HA!)

We arrived at the house, and Fredo, as he turned out to be named, gave me a beer, and a lecture in East/West german political difficulties with monetary spread and its general state of imbalance between the halves. 1am rolled around, and we decided it was time for sleep, since we had to get up early, (7am) the next morning to cook breakfast for the afore-mentioned group of handicapped kids.

From here, the rest is history. I helped cook, I ate some food myself, and around noon pointed again to a new page in the handbook as to where I needed to go. I arrived at the office of Frau Urban, waited outside for a few minutes for her to return, and heard the most wonderful thing I could've hoped for: American English.

Up the stairs, and approaching quickly, were the other two students from NAU, John Clark and Corinne McCoy, one of John's friends named Mike Shultz, and Frau Urban. I was promptly given my key to my room, taken to get the first installment of my stipend, (300eu/month just for being here!), and then taken to my new room.


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