Ich Bin Americaner

We met Sabrina at Marktplatz (Market Square) in Schwabish Gmunde at 10 a.m.. Elle, Scott and I took bus number 1 from our apartment 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) to the city center for a tour of biggest city near Bargau. When we stepped off the bus, the cobblestone roads and smell of horses set the scene. Sabrina waited on a bench, maps and tourist pamphlets in hand, outside a red brick building that houses the city’s information office.

Sabrina is an English student at the University where Scott teaches. She spent a semester at Grand Valley State University last year and volunteered to orient us to the city. She had long, curly brown hair and brown eyes. She was about my size and was dressed similar to how I was dressed, with faded blue jeans and a casual short, sleeved blouse. We both wore sunglasses and minimal makeup.

 Her English sounded perfect to me, although she apologized for her bad grammar. I tried out some of my German on her and she smiled, amused. “How long have you been learning German?” she asked.

 I answered her in German, “Drei Wochen.” (3 weeks)

 Her eyes shot open and she raved, “WOW. Only three weeks! That is really good for only three weeks!” So throughout the day, I tried out German phrases on her when I could and she corrected my grammar issues (The order of their sentences is totally different than English).

When I told her I had to buy some cough medicine for Elle at the pharmacy, she became a teacher and asked how I would ask the pharmacist in German for what I wanted. I strung together the few words and phrases I knew, “Do you have…”, “I would like…” and “medicine” and I added in the prefix they use for anything concerning children “kinder.” When I tried to say what the medicine was for I realized I didn’t know what the word for cough was. She filled in that blank for me and escorted me to the pharmacist, who stood behind a tall counter in a white jacket. She allowed me to make my request and patiently waited for me to figure out what the pharmacist was saying when she responded with a question about the cough. It was a successful trial run. With minimal help from Sabrina, I walked away with cough medicine for Elle (which, by the way, I had already packed to bring to Germany but for some reason didn’t make it through customs).

I was impressed with Sabrina’s guidance as she walked us through the curvy little stone streets in town. She pointed to different storefronts and told us what we would find in each. When we mentioned specific things we needed, she walked us directly to the place we needed and helped us get it.

Scott wanted to get bus cards for us, so Sabrina took us to an office to buy them and patiently translated the whole conversation she had with the lady at the desk to be sure we got the best deal for how often we would be riding the bus.

At that point, I really admired the girl, and thought she seemed much older than her 20-few years. I let her lead the way out of the store and scanned her up and down from behind as she walked in front of me, thinking she was really a very pretty young woman too. That thought jumped involuntarily to English professor Jochen, and I wondered for just a split second whether Sabrina had ever had Jochen…in any sense of the word.

We walked past rows and rows of tables and chairs set in the middle of Marktplatz where locals sat drinking coffee or glass-bottled mineral water and eating pastries. Once in a while, a tiny mini-car maneuvered through the unmarked traffic circle, through pedestrian traffic to get to a road on the opposite side of the square. The warm morning sun shone down on little white umbrellas in the outdoor breakfast nook, walled in by beautiful old buildings now with modern storefronts. We stopped to admire the water fountain at the center of the square.

 “I want to show you the Kaufland.” She told us as she passed a tiny vegetable stand in front of an ancient church tower and meandered down a narrow side path, shaded between two stone buildings. “It’s the closest thing we have to your Meijer and you should be able to buy a lot of things there for your apartment; things that are not very expensive so they won’t last so long, but will work for the few months you are here.”

 While we walked toward the store, which was inside a small shopping mall complete with a bakery, Chinese food restaurant, a Euro-store (just like a dollar store), clothing stores, a hair and nail salon, and an erotic lingerie store, I asked Sabrina a question I had been curious about. “So Sabrina, do you think that people will know we are tourists just by looking at us?”

 Scott answered, “Well, yeah by our language.”

 “No,” I clarified, “Even before we open our mouths, will they be able to tell we are Americans.”

 Before I could get the question out, she was nodding her head up and down, “Yes.”

 I tilted my head and scowled in confusion, “How? I think we look just like everyone else around us.” I looked myself up and down, as well as Scott and Elle. “I think I'm even dressed a lot like you. How can you tell we aren’t German just by our looks?”

 She laughed and scanned us each from head to toe, shaking her head. “I can’t really say how I would know that you’re American, but we can just tell by looking at you.” I don’t know if she was just being polite and didn’t want to tell us what the glaring difference was, but she was 100% positive that we were obvious Americans as we walked through town.

 On the bus ride on the way home, Scott blurted out of nowhere, “It’s our shoes.”

 “What are you talking about?” I asked him, totally out of context.

 “It’s our shoes,” he declared, matter-of-factly. “That’s how they can tell we are Americans. It’s gotta be our shoes.”

 I looked down at my feet. I wore grey New Balance running shoes with sleekly designed, bright pink soles. Elle’s shoes were miniature near-replicas of mine, and Scott wore black basketball shoes with cushioned, visibly shock absorbent bottoms.

“Huh!” I shrugged and stuck my bottom lip out, considering it. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s it.”

 The next time the bus stopped, a woman got on with a Dalmation dog on a leash. It was clearly not a service dog, but not one person batted an eyelash as it sniffed its way down the center aisle. The woman sat in the seat in front of us, beside a young man in his late 20’s. Her dog scooched himself beneath the seat in front of him, happily planting his bottom end on the man’s shoes. Scott and I glanced at each other in disbelief then snapped our heads back to the scene to watch what happened next.

Nothing. Nothing happened. The man didn’t move his feet. The woman didn’t try to move her dog off his feet. He didn’t roll his eyes or ask the woman to get her dog away from him. She didn’t apologize for the dog. She didn’t even look at the man. Apparently, nothing abnormal had just happened at all!

 It reminded me of a story the marine at the airport, Brett told us about his new puppy he bought in Germany. He said he brought it to the vet for his puppy shots and the dog playfully gnawed at the doctor’s hand. The vet immediately pulled her hand back and swung a full-forced backhand across the small dog’s face. The dog squealed and Brett looked shocked. The vet gruffly declared, “GERMAN DOGS DO NOT BITE!”

The bus bounced along the road, curving through the rolling green hills that divide each little village until the next. We were nearing the sign for Bargau village limits when I randomly said, “Hey, Scott, I know something that’s different here than in America.”

“What?” he asked, curious.

 “There’s no roadkill.” He shook his head confidently, “Oh no. I did see roadkill.”

“Really?” I asked. “What was it?”

 “A chicken,” he answered nonchalantly. I laughed hysterically until we reached our stop.