Meine alte Deutsche Freundin

Ach mein Gott.........So back in school (UK) we all did a year of French aged 11.  Depending on your results, if you did well, you were then put into classes for German and if you struggled with Friench you then had to add Spanish to your class load.  I didn't take to French so well, but well enough to get into German.

We had the oldest German books ever.  I remember them now from 1982....Lieselotte was there on the  old photo slides - the white part of the blackboard (chalk board) being used as a projection screen.........the audio tapes playing with a beep every time the slide needed to be changed.  The slides were so scratched (as they were probably from 1960s) that it often looked like she had green slime coming out of her nose - or worse places - especially to a class of bored 12 year olds.  There were 2 German teachers - Mr Russell (Call John so he got the nickname Jack Russell as in the dog) and Mrs Adams (whose husband was so rich we all wondered why she ever needed to work - certainly given the maount of abuse they got on a daily basis). Those teachers would have to send kids out of the classroom without fail every single lesson.  i remember once we all plotted  to start humming from the back of the class to the front at the top of the hour.  He got so so so frustrated but it was one of the funniest things ever.

But something with me and German clicked.  Weird but it did. I loved it.  I learnt the words in record time.  The grammar was a challenge to me but then it also clicked.  I always say German grammar is almost mathematical in approach as there are so many rules and regulations.

My first trip abroad was to Germany.  I was 13.  It was organised through school.  We went overnight on the ferry where poor Mrs aAdams had a hell of a job keeping us all under control.  They patrolled the corridors of the boat to make sure no one had any encounters with the other tourists....There was the tart of the trip who spent all her spending money on the first day on some fancy dress from C&A (sounded so much posher in a German accent)...the diabetic girl who decided she had had enough of taking her insulin and had to be rushed to hospital where we all had to wait for her blood sugars to get back to the norm - we were all stuch on a bus outside..and then my favourite was the girl from our school who was really not great at German but had apparently spoken so much of it on our 7 days there that she then spoke English with a German accent.  I kid you not.

We all stayed with a German family - with varying degrees of success.  I had a great family but some how or other there were 2 of us staying with the German family so we spoke English more than German ....but we still had a good time.

I am not sure why but the following year I ended up with a different pen friend called Verena.  She lived with her mum  -her dad was dead and she had no brothers or sisters.  We wrote a fair bit and I went to stay with her - she was very sweet.  We got on well.  She lived in a small flat.  She had a sofa bed.  It was all so different but we were friends rather than just putting up with each other. 

I remember we shared the sofa bed and as we were falling asleep I said in English

'Wow Verena I am so tired - I am knackered' (which is English slang from where I am from that means really tired).  "Are you knackered?"

to which she answered "Er no, I have my clothes on."  God knows what she must have thought.........

She also came back to visit me in England and in the year or so between our visits she had so blossomed and was a very beautiful teen when she came over.  All the boys at school swooned over her - even my arch enemy from German class - he so wanted to get in her knickers.

Over the years we kept in touch - I was living in Germany for about 18 months and I would speak on the phone but we never got to actually see each other.  It was no big deal.  It then went onto Christmas cards being exchanged.  She became a lawyer, we moved over here.  I started having kids, she had a successful career.  She got married to another model looking guy (they could have been from an Abercrombie & Fitch ad I tell you) and all was well - I thought.

Sent her a Christmas card this past Christmas - addressed to her and Thorsten (husband) and got one in return to say she had split with her husband the previous year (it seems the letter she wrote me telling me all this never got here) - boy did I feel bad for having addressed the card to them both - but that she had met a new man, and at 35 she knew if she wanted kids she'd have to crack on with it.  2 miscarriages later and she was happy to report she is pregnant - due next month! 

It seems so strange that even though she is 2 years younger than me she is going for her first whilst I am so so so done!

Anyhow, I phoned her mom last night (their time) to get her number and her mom remembered me which was sweet.  It was very strange to SPEAK German again.  I have read it on and off over the years and occasionally I write German e-mails but to speak it - that probably hasn't happened in a good 10 years.  I was a bit rusty but not as much as I'd have thought.

And just now I got to speak to my old friend.  After all this time.  It was so so so cool. She is so excited about the baby but very nervous about the birth - she is certain she wants drugs.....and she is having a little girl - they may call her Valentina - she was asking me how you would say that in English. 

But it was just really nice to chat with her - from a further distance than we have ever been before (except maybe when I lived in California).  And my 4 years studying German came in handy after all :)

PS  Forgot to say...she thought that she knew Hubby - which seemed impossible to me.  I had dated someone ewith the same first name back at school when I was 17....and she had met him and just assumed he was the one I had married!!!